Robert Ashley described Dust as a “television opera.” The piece combined a libretto of rhythmic, though non-singing, speech that Ashley modeled after the form of a motet with a multi-screen video presentation by Yukihiro Yoshihara. It incorporated what Ashley referred to as “street talk,” vocal and linguistic styles modeled after those of the dispossessed, layered with tapes of pop music. The performers included Sam Ashley, Thomas Buckner, Tom Hamilton, Jacqueline Humbert, Joan La Barbara, “Blue” Gene Tyranny, and Robert Ashley himself. The piece drew on traditions of futurist intermedia to create a space in which dream blended with reality to critically teeter upon the line between spectacle and utopianism.