Bouwnum­mer 1077 is a ‘heavy phys­i­cal sound per­for­mance’ by Bart Viss­er, Rem­co de Jong and Arnold Hooger­w­erf. This project is both a per­for­mance and a sound instal­la­tion. The instal­la­tion scans the sur­round­ing space of the instal­la­tion with micro­phones and speak­ers, which are built into hang­ing cubes. It can be played like an instru­ment, by grasp­ing, swing­ing and rotat­ing the cubes. By play­ing sounds into the room and sub­se­quent­ly record­ing and replay­ing the same sound, an acoustic res­o­nance scan is being made of the space and the room will reveal, bit by bit, its ‘true acousti­cal iden­ti­ty’.

A com­put­er pro­gram is devel­oped to give the pos­si­bil­i­ty for live cou­pling of speak­ers and micro­phones in var­i­ous ‘loops’. By vary­ing these loops with this pro­gram, the space and instal­la­tion becomes a dynam­ic elec­tro-acoustic organ­ism.

This project is inspired by a com­po­si­tion of Amer­i­can com­pos­er Alvin Luci­er (1931): ‘I Am Sit­ting in a Room’. Orig­i­nal­ly from 1970 (and per­formed and record­ed on var­i­ous oth­er ocas­sions after­wards), this piece con­sists of thir­ty-two gen­er­a­tions of Alvin Lucier’s speech. The piece begins with “I am sit­ting in a room, dif­fer­ent from the one you are in now. I am record­ing the sound of my speak­ing voice…” etc. etc., and is then repeat­ed again and again until only the res­o­nant fre­quen­cies of the room remain. (More info on this piece and Alvin Luci­er can be found here and here)