Book Objects and Loose Page Sculptures
In the early 1960s, published by Something Else Press, Knowles composed the Notations book of experimental composition with John Cage and Coeurs Volants and a print with Marcel Duchamp. She also traveled and performed throughout Europe, Asia and North America. In 1963, Knowles produced one of the earliest book object, a can of texts and beans called the Bean Rolls. In 1967, Knowles and James Tenney produced the computerized poem The House of Dust. A sound installation for a House of Dust public sculpture was produced by Max Neuhaus.
In 1967, Knowles created the Big Book, an 8-foot-tall (2.4 m) book of environments organized around a spine, which opened at the Frankfurter Buchmesse and toured through Europe. The book was eventually destroyed. In 1982, with the help of Franklin Furnace, Knowles produced a second large-scale book called The Book of Bean. Several pages of this book can be found at Museo Vostell in Extremadura, Spain. In 1985, Knowles created a smaller book of tactile languages called A Finger Book of Ancient Language. This book consisted of seven 11-inch-high (280 mm) pages all in braille and was shown at the Lighthouse for the Blind in New York. She has also produced and written several books of experimental text and poetry.
Knowles' 1983 book Loose Pages, originally produced in collaboration with Coco Gordon, consisted of pages made for each part of the body. In her other page sculptures, the audience physically stands in the page and enters it with one or more body parts. Her 1989 Mahogany Arm Rest and 1992 We Have no Bread invited the viewer to engage directly with their four to five meter pages.
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Famous quotes containing the words book, objects, loose and/or page:
“Each had his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart; and his friends could only read the title, James Spalding, or Charles Budgeon, and the passengers going the opposite way could read nothing at all—save “a man with a red moustache,” “a young man in grey smoking a pipe.””
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“The cart before the horse is neither beautiful nor useful. Before we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the walls must be stripped, and our lives must be stripped, and beautiful housekeeping and beautiful living laid for a foundation.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Listen where thou art sitting
Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave,
In twisted braids of lilies knitting
The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair;
Listen for dear honour’s sake,
Goddess of the silver lake,
Listen and save.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“Heav’n from all creatures, hides the book of Fate,
All but the page prescrib’d, their present state:”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)