Bean Counting (for Alison Knowles) :: many, many, amplified beans at the Floating Point Festival :: (OA) Can Factory ::232 3rd street, Brooklyn, NY, 11215 :: 3rd Floor: Issue Project Room ::F/G to Carroll/Smith, or M/R to 9th St/4th Ave :: June 27, 2008 :: 8:00 PM.

A small group of performers, each with a large container, separates a diverse selection of dried beans into individually amplified ceramic bowls. The act of separating the beans creates a wonderfully complicated delicate rhythm as each of the bowls are distributed into the 16 speakers of the grid. With minimal electronic intervention, a gentle drone develops out of the resonances of the bowls, helping expose the pitches inherent in the materials themselves. The piece is dedicated to Alison Knowles, whose long history with the bean, which begins in 1963 with “The Bean Rolls” and continues to this day is a testament to a beautiful minimalism of material that unfolds over a lifetime.

In a 2003 statement, Knowles wrote that in performance, she is drawn to objects for their sound. Her orchestra consists of beans, toys, papers, and words …. Each instrument comes out of silence, makes its performance, and returns to silence.

Born in NYC in 1933, Knowles created Notations, a book with John Cage, and Coeurs Volants with Marcel Duchamp, in the sixties. With Fluxus she made the Bean Rolls, a canned book that appeared in the Whitney’s “The American Century” (2000). The Big Book (1967) followed, a walk-in book with 8-foot pages, as well as The House of Dust. This was the first computerized poetry on record, winning her a Guggenheim fellowship. In 2001, she performed and exhibited her new paper / sound works at the Drawing Center in New York. She will perform her Giant Bean Turner (see image above), which combines two of her favorite materials (beans and flax paper) at the Guggenheim Museum in 2009. Her graphic scores are exhibited and will be performed at the Kitchen in October 20th.