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Research in practice
"House of Dust" by Alison Knowles - Read the PDF
“A house of dust
On open ground
Lit by natural light
Inhabited by friends and enemies”
Created in collaboration with James Tenney (a composer and computer scientist), with assistance from Siegfried B. Hertrich, and involving CalArts and Siegfried Zielinski’s early computer work.
The original “House of Dust” was created in 1967, when Knowles created a physical structure based on one of the computer-generated stanzas at CalArts. The project is often categorized as part of early 1970s land art and conceptual art due to its emphasis on site, process, and collaboration with non-human systems. An IBM computer generated permutations of a poem using a set of parameters (four lists of terms supplied by Alison Knowles; materials, location, lighting, inhabitants). Above is the output that Knowles would adopt as her guiding score for the project:
Knowles then constructed a physical structure inspired by the stanzas. Students and artists were invited to interact with it, and it became a space for performances and installations.
It’s considered one of the first computer-generated poems to lead to an architectural realization and was a milestone in the interdisciplinary fusion of Fluxus, cybernetics, land art, and performance.
Image: Knowles poem printouts being dropped by helicopter onto the physical house as a performance called Poem Drop in 1971 in collaboration with CalArts students.
Excerpt of the month
An *excerpt* from "The Poetics of Space", an Essay by Gaston Bachelard, on the House's benefit as a shelter for daydreaming.
*see the underlined area from a previous reader, near the Post~It
Ain't No Favor: A reading service
In collaboration with Time Being Books, artist Sean Ripple is offering personal reading services for any title purchased from the shop’s collection for a small additional fee
Like a personalized audiobook—that can be scheduled for your time lounging by the spring, or doing chores, or drifting off to sleep. Of course, your use of the service isn’t limited to these examples... these are merely suggestions.
Being read to is a lost luxury for many of us. Reclaim this indulgence today for a reasonable fee based on MIT’s living wage calculator. The service can be purchased in 15-minute increments ($11), or if you’d like, a full reading can be arranged for an agreed-upon rate.
Inquire during your next visit to Time Being Books.