Week3 response to I am sitting in a room (Parren)– Katie

In the first nine minutes, I can clearly tell apart every word in the sound. After nine minutes, it becomes hard but I am still trying to distinguish words. At around perhaps 20 minutes, it becomes impossible to distinguish.  And every three or four minutes, the tone will change. It starts with a few sentences and ends up with some not so beautiful melody. It actually reminds me of monks chanting. Every time I go visit a temple, there’s a group of monks chanting and the sound is loud. I cannot tell what wards they speak.

For this art piece, I feel it’s quite philosophical. In a little room, the concept of sound and language has been overturned and redefined. In the endless reputations of recording and getting feedback from the room, “language” has been erase during the process and “room” has became more and more abstract. It can extend to any of the spaces.  The coexistence of the artist and the sound within the same room. I feel like the artist is telling us that we are supposed to hear the room, not the person. And the whole art piece contains not only the room, the artist and the sound, but also all the listeners.

Leave a Reply