A transformation of one of the first computer-generated poems, from 1967, into a sound composition.
This sound sculpture revisits the Fluxus artist Alison Knowles’ pioneering work The House of Dust (1967) – one of the first computer-generated poems. Reimagining this as a concert of thresholds, perception, and auditory experience, Krakowiak’s work sonifies phrases from Knowles’ poem and transforms them into an aural composition.
Subliminal frequencies, fragments of universal sound signals, and ambient urban noise merge, refracting the existing “audio sphere” into a sound bubble – challenging the boundary between conscious and unconscious listening.
Katarzyna Krakowiak – born in 1980, she’s an artist who creates sculptures, performances, objects, compositions, and sound installations investigating languages used to describe architecture. She carries a PhD from the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań, Poland, and a post-doctorate from the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk, Poland. Her goal is to generate acoustic environments that allow viewers and listeners to become part of the artwork and encounter architecture at the sound level. Exploring the borders of architecture, Krakowiak builds large-scale installations based on existing structures. She now focuses on formulating the concept of architecture in linguistic categories – as an imperfective verb and a space of becoming, which appears in different ways depending on its function and the sonic manifestations of human-nonhuman relationships.
Krakowiak has been honored with numerous distinctions awarded by St. John’s College at Oxford University, the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage in Poland, and the American Foundation Trust for Mutual Education, among others. In 2012, she received a special award for her exhibition Making the Walls Quake as if They Were Dilated with the Secret Knowledge of Great Power (curated by Michał Libera) in the Polish Pavilion at the 13th Venice Biennale of Architecture.
In 2019-2022, she led the Sound Space Studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw; since 2022, she has co-led the Interdepartmental Studio of Activities, which she runs with Prof. Mirosław Bałka. She lives and works in Otwock, Poland, and Oliva, Spain. She also identifies as a gardener, daily tuning in with and learning from the soil and plants.
The work Oh no, please don’t announces the exhibition What is it Like? which will open at the WRO Art Center on 2 October 2025 and is organised in collaboration with Arebyte Gallery in London as part of the UK/Poland Season 2025.
