i am sitting in a high-dimensional room

a collaborative project of philipp schmitt, anina rubin & dr. felipe orduña bustamente.

the audio simulation i am sitting in a high-dimensional room takes the listener into a high-dimensional space extending in many more dimensions than the three you are in now.

the piece is based on american composer alvin lucier’s seminal work i am sitting in a room. lucier explored the acoustic properties of three-dimensional, physical space by tape-recording a spoken text in a room. he then played the recording back into the room and recorded again, and again, repeating the cycle until only the natural resonant frequencies of the room remain, articulated by speech.

for i am sitting in a high-dimensional room, the artists leave the physical world behind. narrated by a neural-network-synthesized voice and performed in a high-dimensional room simulation by dr. felipe orduña bustamante, the piece offers a sonic experience of an invisible, unimaginable space. as high-dimensional, mathematical spaces underpin, for example, artificially-intelligent neural networks, the work alludes to dematerialization and abstraction in contemporary science and technology.