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The following two short texts both theorize the principle of transvironment, or transvironmental art, and reflect upon Alison Knowles’ great installation The Book of Bean. I had been developing the theory for a while and planning constructions of my own (mostly unrealized in the physical sense discussed here) when Alison’s installation happened at Franklin Furnace (on Franklin Street in Lower Manhattan) in 1982, offering an opportunity to write for, and perform in, a transvironmental construction. The texts were published the same year in New Wilderness Letter 11: The Book, Spiritual Instrument, edited by Jerome Rothenberg and David Guss. The present version reproduces the same text in a new design in The Book, Spiritual Instrument as published by Granary Books (New York: 1996).