Sound Light Installation
The concept of the Dream House took La Monte Young’s extremely minimal and at the same time expanding artistic ideas from the beginning of the 1960s to an apex. Together with Marian Zazeela he created a light-flooded house with a perpetual, space-filling sound – music that is alive and there to be experienced, which writes its own story and into which the listener can plunge, sort of like into a different life.
The Dream House is defined as a “continuous frequency environment in sound and light with singing from time to time”. Sound generators positioned in defined locations within the rooms of the Dream House create sine tones in very specific frequencies.
Different intervals and chords result that overlap, interfere and create new vibrating patterns and audial images depending on where you are in the room. Slowly changing sustained tones, so-called drones, and intense magenta lighting create an atmosphere that makes it seem like time is standing still.
The artists view the Dream House as a sort of organism, a special place that evolves with a life of its own, where continuous live sounds are created and where live concerts take place from time to time. Following the principle that musical atmosphere is a function of time, experiencing sounds and changing tonal frequencies over a long period of time is necessary in order to adjust one’s nervous system and sense of perception, and vibrate harmoniously with the frequencies of the environment, say the artists. Visitors to the Dream House are invited to stay a while and come back later.