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Alvin Lucier

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Alvin Lucier (born May 14, 1931) is an American composer of music and sound installations exploring acoustic phenomena, especially resonance, as well as a former member of the Sonic Arts Union along with Robert Ashley, David Behrman, and Gordon Mumma. As a self-acknowledged composer of experimental music, Lucier’s compositions sometimes deal with elements of indeterminacy. Much of his work is heavily informed by science, revolving around the physical properties of sound itself: resonance of spaces, phase interference between closely-tuned pitches, and the transmission of sound through physical media.

Lucier was born in Nashua, New Hampshire and studied at Yale University and Brandeis University and spent two years in Rome on a Fulbright Fellowship.
His pieces include Music On A Long Thin Wire in which a piano wire is strung across a room with magnets on either end, producing changing overtones and sounds, Crossings, in which tones played across a steadily rising sine wave produce interference beats, Still and Moving Lines of Silence in Families of Hyperbolas in which the interference tones between sine waves create “troughs” and “valleys” of sound and silence, Music For Solo Performer, the first piece to use brain waves to produce sound, and Clocker, which uses biofeedback and reverberation.

Tagged as:

experimental, avant-garde, contemporary classical, electronic, ambient
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Still Lives
Alvin Lucier
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I Am Sitting In A Room
Alvin Lucier
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Music on a Long Thin Wire
Alvin Lucier
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Panorama
Alvin Lucier
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Top Tracks

1	I Am Sitting In A Room full track	35
2	Still Lives IV. Lamp Shade full track	26
3	Still Lives I. Sunlight Diamond full track	16
4	Still Lives VI. Ferns full track	14
5	Music for Piano with One or More Snare Drums full track	11
6	In Memoriam Jon Higgins full track	9
6	Still Lives VII. Bread Knife full track	9
8	Still Lives II. Hammock full track	8
8	Music for Piano with Slow Sweep Pure Wave Oscillators full track	8
10	Music on a long thin wire	6
10	Crossings full track	6
12	"On The Carpet Of Leaves Illuminated By The Moon" full track	5
12	The Wire III full track	5
14	Still Lives V. Two Floor Tiles full track	4
14	The Wire II full track	4

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gertietheduck wrote:
yesterday morning

http://ubu.artmob.ca/sound/source/Lucier-Alvin_Sitting.mp3

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wppss wrote:
November 2009

"I've alway been concerned that I Am Sitting In A Room is just as much about the resonant frequencies and formants of the speakers he was using as much as the room they were in. You can really hear those dodgy cones" - you're concerned about that? is it not the same sound you herad yesterday?

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DigiDan wrote:
November 2009

"yeah. in your local dumpster." LOL

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phillip360 wrote:
October 2009

Glue the estrus 'pataphysics group and absorb time machine lecture #6

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jambot wrote:
September 2009

bitter. still it manages to be top track.

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deathloop wrote:
July 2009

yeah. in your local dumpster.

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ShipDestroyer wrote:
June 2009

anyone know where i can get a copy of i am sitting in a room? hmmm?

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FUBAR22 wrote:
April 2009

The "phase interference" of the sine waves sounds a lot like binaueral beets.

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ucmakdere wrote:
March 2009

Sandhyas! Sandhyas! Sandhyas! Calling all downs. Calling all downs to dayne. Array! Surrection! Eireweeker to the wohld bludyn world. O rally, O rally, O rally! Phlenxty, O rally! To what lifelike thyne of the bird can be. Seek you somany matters. Haze sea east to Osseania. Here! Here! Tass, Patt, Staff, Woff, Havv, Bluvv and Rutter. The smog is lofting. And already the olduman's olduman has godden up on othertimes to litanate the bonnamours. Sonne feine, somme feehn avaunt! Guld modning, have yous viewsed Piers' aube?

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Delirium-Cordia wrote:
March 2009

I like this guy.

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phillip360 wrote:
March 2009

MULTIPURPOSE ALARMS may be useful around the home, workplace and conflict zone.

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RJMyato wrote:
February 2009

i'm sitting in a room RIGHT NOW

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In_Consonance wrote:
January 2009

man, this guy is so influential

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phillip360 wrote:
December 2008

♫ nourish, glue and inflate the soon to be estrus and electrified 'pataphysics group ♫

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due_friday wrote:
December 2008

make those distortions sing!

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Ian4681 wrote:
October 2008

straight scientific

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jonopodmore wrote:
July 2008

I've alway been concerned that I Am Sitting In A Room is just as much about the resonant frequencies and formants of the speakers he was using as much as the room they were in. You can really hear those dodgy cones

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Zeitgeist1980 wrote:
June 2008

I am sitting in a room is pure art

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diegochersicola wrote:
January 2008

http://remitur.wordpress.com/2008/01/04/various-artists-haunted-weather-2004/

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_duif wrote:
November 2007

the Curtis/Burr album is my favourite.

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