2022 / Music and video

I am Sitting in a Zoo (on Zoom)

Ever feel like you're trapped in a zoo? Like today's communications technologies connect us as much as they cage us?

I am Sitting in a Zoo (on Zoom) uses a canonical work of experimental music to compare post-pandemic life to animal captivity. In 1969, the late composer Alvin Lucier created I am Sitting in a Room, a work for magnetic tape that consists of a short, repeated spoken text. Lucier recorded his voice on one tape machine and captured its output on another in the same room. He iterated this process until all traces of his voice had been effaced.

But today one rarely just sits in a room. Indeed, a sense persists that one could also be somewhere else. Conceived in part as an homage to Lucier, this project connects musicians in Tokyo with performers located in Berlin and Bronx zoos to ask: Why do technologies designed to connect us often make us feel more isolated? If it feels like we're sitting in a zoo, who or what are our captors?

Performed by Tokyo Gen'On Ensemble, December 19, 2022.