Cofounder of Sonic Arts Union in 1966 (with, amongst others, Robert Ashley and David Behrman), Alvin Lucier focused his work on the acoustic and harmonic mechanics of sound waves, thus making him close to Éliane Radigue. Bird and has Person Dyning is a sort of pun on the term 'heterodyne', a mechanical radio process that consists in combining two different sound oscillations in order to obtain a third one. The mechanic sound of the bird is the one of a Christmas decoration prop that gives the tone to a wave oscillator/generator and that interacts with the position of the listener during the performance. The result is slowly changing larsen, crissing and evolving like two glass plates obstinately pressed one against the other. I am Sitting in a Room consists of a simple postulate recited by the artist who sits in an empty room and who play the recording of its own voice again and again. Those sounds, reverberated by the naked walls of the room, end up completely transformed into a sound wave similar to a breath. It surely is his most famous work and is often reffered to. Silver Streetcar for the Orchestra is a piece even more minimalist in its idea: a triangle is quickly hit during a score of 20 minutes, where the musician plays with all the acoustic properties of the instrument, attenuating its resonance and with progressive accelerations and decelerations. The hitting is thus perceptively diminishing to the benefit of the flow of resonance.
Cramps Records - CRSCD 111
Lovely Music - LCD1013
• I am sitting in a room I.mp3
Algen - Algencd 120