[3] Wilson described his discovery of the then 13-year-old Knowles, in the extended notes to the Tomato Records release of Einstein on the Beach: In early 1973 a man ... gave me an audio tape ...
On it a young man's voice spoke continuously creating repetitions and variations on phrases about Emily watching the TV.
Like a cantata or fugue it worked with conjugations of thoughts repeated in variations...Wilson cast the teenager Knowles in a number of his productions, including Einstein on the Beach.
In 1978, the American poet John Ashbery wrote in the magazine New York of a volume of Knowles's poetry: Christopher has the ability to conceive of his works in minute detail before executing them.
This pure conceptualism, which others have merely approximated using mechanical aids, is one reason that so many young artists have been drawn to Christopher's work.Early in 2013, Knowles presented several of his poems in a reading at Gavin Brown's Enterprise in the West Village which had mounted an exhibition of his paintings.