Dream House Installation: A Unique Blend of Math and Music
Dream House Installation: A Unique Blend of Math and Music
- Dream House is an immersive installation located in Tribeca featuring sound pieces by La Monte Young and Jung Hee Choi.
- Choi’s Environmental Composition 2017 No.1 is the main attraction, consisting of a black sheet pierced with pinholes that create a world beneath a world.
- Young’s sound piece is based on microtonal adjustments derived from prime numbers and demonstrates natural properties, serving as a guide through the world of natural math.
he Dream House installation, located at 275 Church Street in Tribeca, is an immersive sound and light environment created by artists La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela. The installation features two sound pieces with highly mathematical and precise titles - one by Young and the other by Jung Hee Choi. Young's piece, titled 'The Lowest Term Primes in The Range 288 to 224 with The Addition of 279 and 261', is generated by his custom-built Rayna synthesizer on the second floor and piped into the third floor where Dream House is installed.
Young’s music is based on microtonal adjustments derived from prime numbers, which are almost impossible for most fretted instruments to achieve. It is less like a piece of music and more like a demonstration of natural properties, embodying what certain tunings can conjure. The music moves slowly, helping the listener overlook the fact that it’s a composition and acting as a guide through the Grand Canyon of sound.
Choi’s work, Environmental Composition 2017 No.1 (2017), is now the main player in the larger of the two rooms. It is a massive black sheet bisecting the main space, pinpricked thousands of times to create flowery, organic shapes that admit light and video from the other side. The fullness of the work is not immediately visible, and one needs to take time to stare at it to see the light bubbling behind the pinholes, a world beneath a world.
The installation has been open to the public for 30 years and remains in its original location, 60 years after Young and Zazeela moved into the building. In a recent interview with The New York Times, artist Tauba Auerbach nominated Dream House as her ‘favorite artwork by someone else’.
Dream House is not like a dream but a staunchly empirical, concrete demonstration of the relationship between pitches that has always existed. It bypasses ideas of form and resolution, or even tuning and harmony. The installation is a unique blend of math and music, leaving visitors wanting to return as soon as they leave.
