Art Metropole

#05288

Alison Knowles: Clear Skies All Week

Artist

Alison Knowles

Date

2011

Publisher

Onestar Press

Format

Artists' Books

Details

Softcover

Size

215 × 280 × 0.6 cm

Length

64 

“Clear Skies All Week” by Alison Knowles is written and constructed within the characteristics of three disparate categories : “situations”, “weather/time” and “place.” These phrases have been randomized (cross-matched) electronically into all possible permutations. The ensuing poem has been printed in this volume by onestar press. The poem accompanies an ultimate version, in a project with Rirkrit Tiravanija, for Three Star Books. Tiravanija applied his characteristic typeface to a re-scrambling of Knowles’ poem, according to the numbers of the Fibonacci system (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, and so forth). The resulting collaboration between the two artists is presented in the form of a silk-screened scroll with two bamboo rods, devised using paper selected by Knowles. The method and concept of “Clear Skies All Week” is based on an early work by Alison Knowles, “House of Dust,” published by Verlag Gebr. König, Cologne, in 1969. It is a trail-blazing example of a literary score generated by computer. The collaborative project is an example of the fractal-like logic of artistic collaboration and inspiration.

- Cornelia Lauf