La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela

The now legendary Dream House is a four-handed installation made up of light and sound created by composer La Monte Young and his wife Marian Zazeela.

It was after composing The Four Dreams of China in 1962, that La Monte Young became aware of his desire to “build musical pieces that could be played continuously, even indefinitely”. That same year he met Marian Zazeela a visual artist and musician; only a few months later, in August 1963, they designed together their very first optical and acoustic installation named “Dream House”. Marian Zazeela developed a system of evolving coloured lights attached to mobiles while La Monte Young used several Sine Banks, oscilloscopes, amplifiers and loud speakers in order to create continuous frequency environments. The music produced, made up of notes that can be held for an indefinite amount of time, impacts ever so slightly the light mobiles. New three-dimensional shapes spring from the shadows projected by combining several light sources.