anderson

Laurie Anderson (born Laura Phillips Anderson, on June 5, 1947, in Glen Ellyn, Illinois) is an American experimental performance artist and musician.

Life and works

Anderson was born in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. She attended Mills College in California, and eventually graduated from Barnard College magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, studying art history. In 1972, she obtained an MFA in sculpture from Columbia University. Her first performance art piece -- a symphony played on automobile horns -- was performed in 1969. In the early 1970s, she worked as an art instructor, as an art critic for magazine such as Art Forum, and illustrated children's books.

She performed in New York through the 1970s. One of her most-cited performances, which she conducted in New York and other cities around the world, involved her playing violin while wearing ice skates and balancing on a block of ice; the performance ended only when the ice had melted away.

Two early pieces, "New York Social Life" and "Time to Go," were included in the 1977 compilation New Music for Electronic and Recorded Media, along with works by Pauline Oliveros and others. Many of Anderson's earliest recordings remain unreleased, or were only issued in limited quantities, such as her first single, "It's Not the Bullet That Kills You (It's the Hole)". That song, along with "New York Social Life" and about a dozen others, were originally recorded for use in an art installation that consisted of a jukebox that played the different Anderson compositions.

Photographs and descriptions of many of these early performances were included in Anderson's later retrospective book, Stories from the Nerve Bible.

During the late 1970s, Anderson made a number of additional recordings which were released either privately or included on compilations of avant garde music, most notably releases by the Giorno Poetry Systems label run by New York poet John Giorno. In 1978, Anderson performed at The Nova Convention, a major conference involving many counter-culture figures and rising avant garde musical stars, including William S. Burroughs, Philip Glass, Frank Zappa, Timothy Leary, John Cage and Allen Ginsberg.

Anderson became widely known outside the art world in 1982 with the single "O Superman," originally released in a limited quantity by One Ten Records. "O Superman" reached number two on the national pop charts in Britain and the sudden influx of orders from the UK (prompted by British DJ Noel Edmonds playing the record) led to Anderson signing with the Warner Bros. label, which re-released the single.

"O Superman" was part of a larger stage work entitled United States and was included on her following album, Big Science. Prior to the release of Big Science, Anderson returned to Giorno Poetry Systems to record the album, You're the Guy I Want to Share My Money With; Anderson recorded one side of the 2-LP set, with Burroughs and Giorno recording the rest. This was followed by the back-to-back releases of her album Mister Heartbreak and United States Live, a five-LP recording of her stage show.

She next starred in and directed the 1986 concert film, Home of the Brave, and also composed the soundtracks for the Spalding Gray films Swimming to Cambodia and Monster in a Box. During this time she also contributed music to Robert Wilson's "Alcestis" at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge MA. All of Anderson's albums from the 1980s sold very well despite being labeled "avant garde". She also hosted the PBS series Alive from Off-Center during this time, for which she produced the short film, What You Mean We?.

Release of Anderson's first post-Home of the Brave album, 1989's Strange Angels, was delayed for more than a year in order for Anderson to take singing lessons. This was due to the album being more musically inclined (in terms of singing) than her previous works. Strange Angels was critically acclaimed, but fans were divided over whether they preferred the non-musical Anderson over the musical Anderson.

Her varied career in the early 1990s included voice-acting in the animated film The Rugrats Movie. In 1994 she created a CD-ROM entitled Puppet Motel which was followed by Bright Red, co-produced by Brian Eno, and another spoken word album, The Ugly One with the Jewels.

An interval of more than half a decade followed before her next album release. During this time, she wrote a supplemental article on the cultural character of New York City for the Encyclopædia Britannica.^[1] and created a number of multimedia presentations, most notably one inspired by Moby Dick.

One of the central themes in Anderson's work is exploring the effects of technology on human interrelationships and communication.

Anderson has collaborated with William Burroughs, Arto Lindsay, Ian Ritchie, Peter Gabriel, Perry Hoberman, David Sylvian, Jean Michel Jarre, Brian Eno, Nona Hendryx, Bobby McFerrin, Dave Stewart, Hector Zazou, and Lou Reed. She also worked with comedian Andy Kaufman in the late 1970s (with a romantic involvement hinted at in some of her spoken word performances about him). In the 1990s, Anderson became romantically linked with Reed, and the two subsequently collaborated on a number of recordings, such as "In Our Sleep" from Bright Red which was released as a single.

The first new Laurie Anderson album in years, Life on a String, appeared in 2001, by which time she had moved from the main Warner Bros. label to its subsidiary, Nonesuch Records. Life on a String was a mixture of new works (including one song recalling the recent death of Anderson's father) and works from the Moby Dick presentation.

Anderson, who rarely revisits older work (though themes and lyrics occasionally reappear) went on tour performing a selection of her best-known musical pieces in 2001. One of these performances was recorded in New York City only a week after the September 11, 2001 attacks, and included a performance of "O Superman". This concert was released in early 2002 as the double CD, Live in New York, which remains her most recent album release.

In 2003, Anderson became NASA's first and so far only artist-in-residence, which inspired her most recent performance piece, The End of the Moon.

Rumors emerged of a possible new album release in the fall of 2004, but this turned out to be false as Anderson was possibly too busy mounting a succession of themed shows, as well as composing a piece for Expo 2005 in Japan.

On September 16, 2005 Laurie’s exhibition, "The Waters Reglitterized" opened at the Sean Kelly Gallery in New York City. According to the press release by Sean Kelly[1], "The Waters Reglitterized" is a diary of dreams and their literal recreation as works of art. This work, created in the process of re-experiencing or re-working her dreams while awake, uses the language of dreams to investigate the dream itself. The resulting pieces include drawings, prints and high definition video. The installation ran until October 22, 2005. In 2006, she contributed a song to Plague Songs, a collection of songs related to the 10 Biblical plagues.

Laurie Anderson narrated Ric Burns's "Andy Warhol: The Documentary Film," which was first televised in September of 2006 as part of the PBS "American Masters" series.

Discography

(with U.S. chart positions)

Albums

• You're the Guy I Want to Share My Money With (1981) (with William S. Burroughs, John Giorno)
• Big Science (1982) #124
• Mister Heartbreak (1984) #60
• United States Live (box set) (1984) #192
• Home of the Brave (soundtrack album) (1986) #145
• Strange Angels (1989) #171, featuring Bobby McFerrin
• Bright Red (1994) #195
• The Ugly One with the Jewels (spoken word) (1995)
• Talk Normal (greatest hits) (2000)
• Life on a String (2001)
• Live in New York (2002)

Singles

• "O Superman (For Massenet)" (1981) #2 UK
• "Big Science" (1981)
• "Sharkey's Day" (1984)
• "Language is a Virus" (1986)
• "Strange Angels" (1989)
• "Babydoll" (1989) #7 US Modern Rock
• "Beautiful Red Dress" (1990)
• "In Our Sleep" (1994)

Anderson also recorded a number of limited-release singles in the late 1970s (many issued from the Holly Soloman Gallery), songs from which were included on a number of compilations, including Giorno Poetry Systems' The Nova Convention and You're the Guy I Want to Spend My Money With. Over the years she has also performed on recordings by other musicians such as Peter Gabriel, Lou Reed and Jean-Michel Jarre. She also contributed lyrics to the Philip Glass album Songs for Liquid Days, portrayed Mary Todd Lincoln (wife of Abraham Lincoln) for a recording of the CIVIL warS: a tree is best measured when it is down by Philip Glass and Robert Wilson, and also contributed a spoken word piece to a tribute album in honor of John Cage.

Music videos

Formal music videos have been produced of:

• "O Superman"
• "Sharkey's Day"
• "Language is a Virus" (from Home of the Brave)
• "Beautiful Red Dress"

In addition, in lieu of making another music video for her Strange Angels album, Anderson taped a series of 1-2 minute "Personal Service Announcements" in which she spoke about issues such as the U.S. national debt and the arts scene. Some of the music used in these productions came from her soundtrack to Swimming to Cambodia.

In some more addition, an animation has been made of her song "White Lily" from her album 'Home of the Brave.' That video is located at this site.

Video release

• Laurie Anderson: Collected Videos (1990) contained her four music videos and several of the PSAs, plus excerpts from What You Mean We?, Home of the Brave, Empty Places, and her introductions to Alive from Off-Center.

Inventions

Anderson has invented several devices that she has used in her recordings and performances.

Tape-bow violin

The tape-bow violin is an instrument created by Laurie Anderson in 1977. It uses recorded magnetic tape in place of the traditional hair in the bow, and a magnetic tape head in the bridge. Anderson has updated and modified this device over the years. She can be seen using a later generation of this device in her film, Home of the Brave, during the "Late Show" segment in which she manipulates a sentence recorded by William S. Burroughs. (This version of the violin discarded magnetic tape, and actually used MIDI-based audio samples, triggered by contact with the bow.)

Talking stick

The talking stick is a six-foot long, batonlike MIDI controller. It was used in the Moby Dick tour in 1999-2000. She described it in program notes:

Notes

1. ^ "Encyclopaedia Anderson", The New Yorker, July 16, 2001

References

Laurie Anderson, Stories from the Nerve Bible: A Twenty-Year Retrospective (HarperCollins, 1994, ISBN 0060553553).

External links

• LaurieAnderson.com
• Laurie Anderson FAQ
• Some Notes on Seeing: The Waters Reglitterized By Laurie Anderson for exhibition 2005
• Discography to 2002
• Laurie Anderson at the Internet Movie Database
• Eclectic Laurie Anderson visits Ames
• Artist's page in Artfacts.Net Laurie Anderson in the contemporary art world.
• Sound Zero: Laurie Anderson
• The Mathematics of Longing A detailed description/review of Laurie Anderson's The End of the Moon.
• Anderson in August: Shedding A Little Light On The Melancholy An academic digital presentation examining Laurie Anderson's 1974 Light In August.
• An interview, Mutant Renegade Zine #7, June 1996

Listening

• NewMusicJukeBox.org: Laurie Anderson