Sitting in a room different from the one you are in now

Today, Patrick Rhone and I challenged each other to imagine our respective projects as rooms in our homes.

What color are the walls?

Is there furniture?

Are you sitting? Standing?

How does the room make you feel?

What do you do (an not do) in this room?

I found it a quite interesting and insightful exercise and was reminded of two other projects that came out of sitting in a room different than the one your are in now.

“Cage entered the chamber expecting to hear silence, but he wrote later, ‘I heard two sounds, one high and one low. When I described them to the engineer in charge, he informed me that the high one was my nervous system in operation, the low one my blood in circulation.’ Cage had gone to a place where he expected total silence, and yet heard sound. ‘Until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death. One need not fear about the future of music.'”

“I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice and I am going to play it back into the room again and again until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves so that any sem- blance of my speech, with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed. What you will hear, then, are the natural resonant frequencies of the room articulated by speech. I regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a physical fact, but more as a way to smooth out any irregularities my speech might have.” [15:23 (1969, original recording @ http://www.ubu.com/)]