Musician Patrick Liddell recorded a video of himself giving a short monologue and uploaded it to YouTube. He then downloaded the file from YouTube, and uploaded that file—repeating the process 1000 times. It got pretty weird.

Liddell, who records music as Ontologist, started the project as a tribute to avant-garde musician Alvin Lucier and his famous piece "I Am Sitting in a Room," wherein Lucier recorded, re-played, and re-recorded himself speaking in a room until only the room's resonant frequencies were left.

Liddell's project is a little different, as the degradation occurs thanks to the digital operations taking place—it's as though his "room" is YouTube. Or think of it like the YouTube version of photocopying photocopies until nothing is left but a big dark smudge.

But you don't have to care about (totally awesome) avant-garde music and weird French philosophizing to think this is pretty cool! Or pretty creepy.

Here's the first video:

And here's video number 1000 (turn the sound down before you play it!):

You can see more of the middle steps on his YouTube channel.

[via MetaFilter]