This is one of my favorite pieces of audio, it was very influential to me when I first encountered it. For this comment I was trying to think of what it "taught

This is one of my favorite pieces of audio, it was very influential to me when I first encountered it. For this comment I was trying to think of what it "taught" me that made it so influential, but I think it's actually because of what it made me forget, or reject. I've always wanted to try to do a live version of this at an indoor noise or experimental music show. I'd use a shorter quote so I could get the same number of feedback cycles in a 15 minute set as his 40 minute version. The fun part would be getting the entire audience to be silent for 15 minutes, but inevitably people and things would make sound and get picked up in the feedback loop. And you would end up with a pretty complex wall of sound by the end. Or maybe someone starts screaming into the microphone nonstop and ruins the whole set. While I hope that wouldn't happen, the chance it could is part of the fun. Another "similar" work people might enjoy this is William Basinki's "The Disintegration Loops". This youtube link is just the first song, there are 4 in total but this is my favorite. https://youtu.be/mjnAE5go9dI?si=KmoBu7SlY-XymGS0 https://youtu.be/mjnAE5go9dI?si=KmoBu7SlY-XymGS0 It's a similar concept but for entirely different reasons. Rather than being an idea Basinski set out to capture, as Lucier did, it was an unexpected event he decided to pursue for several weeks. Basinski was digitally recording some tape loops he had recorded about 20 years prior, and many of them were in very poor condition. Sometimes as he played back a tape loop, the ferrite coating would flake off of the plastic tape. Not only did that create a variety of noises that often sound like a soft crackling or puffs of noise, but each repetition of the loop would have less and less ferrite on it and thus decreasing fidelity and sometimes entire gaps in the audio. The fact that ferrite doesn't scrape off evenly, but sometimes in bursts and sometimes none at all creates a sort of progression in the song. Instead of building up like "I am Sitting in a Room", the sound decays into an eventual hum and sputter. A reverb effect is added and turned up gradually. Like "I Am Sitting in a Room", it's about taking a short initial loop and letting physics compose the rest of the song. But it's destructive instead of constructive (and yet somehow the destruction becomes a constructive element). The initial sample choices are wonderful and the luck in how the tape falls away is perfect. Also IMO the fact that this could never be reproduced is just cool (and somehow comforting?).