(1) As far back as I can remember I would turn on the television at night in order to go to sleep. Technically using a television to go to sleep does not make any sense due to its distracting nature. However, in my experience it allows my mind to go blank and actually rest. Everyday we hear sounds and our brains process them in order to make sense of our surroundings. At night the television allows me to cease that process and it takes over the responsibility thus allowing me to go to sleep. I have become so used to this process that I do not even hear the television. In fact I do not hear anything and before I realize it I am fast asleep.
(2) Alvin Lucier’s “I am sitting in a room” made me think of the idea of redundancy and how redundant things often lose their meaning over time. For example, we’ve all had the experience of our parents saying the same thing over and over to us and eventually it loses its meaning. That happened in the video as the same sounds played over and over as a loop and eventually the words lost their meaning and became indistinguishable.
