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Laurie Anderson

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For the author, see Laurie Halse Anderson.
Laurie Anderson

Laurie Anderson (born Laura Phillips Anderson, on June 5 1947, in Glen Ellyn, Illinois) is an American experimental performance artist and musician who plays violin and keyboards and sings in a variety of experimental music and art rock styles. Initially trained as a sculptor, Anderson did her first performance art piece in the late 1960s. Throughout the 1970s, Anderson did a variety of different performance art activities. She became widely known outside the art world in 1981 when her single "O Superman," reached number two on the UK pop charts. She also starred in and directed the 1986 concert film, Home of the Brave.

She has also invented several devices that she has used in her recordings and performance art shows. In 1977, she created a "tape-bow violin" that uses recorded magnetic tape on the bow and a magnetic tape head in the bridge. In the late 1990s, she developed a "talking stick", a six-foot long, batonlike MIDI controller that can access and replicate different sounds.

Career

Early life

Anderson was born in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, where she graduated from Glenbard West High School. 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 magazines such as Artforum, and illustrated children's books.

1970s

She performed in New York through the 1970s. One of her most-cited performances, Duets on Ice, which she conducted in New York and other cities around the world, involved her playing violin along with a recording while wearing ice skates with the blades frozen into 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. Among the musicians on these early recordings are Peter Gordon saxophone, Scott Johnson guitar, Ken Deifik harmonica and Joe Kos drums. Photographs and descriptions of many of these early performances were included in Anderson's 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, an early intimate of Andy Warhol. 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, Malcolm Goldstein, John Cage and Allen Ginsberg.

1980s

Anderson became widely known outside the art world in 1981 with the single "O Superman," originally released in a limited quantity by B. George's One Ten Records. "O Superman" reached number two on the national pop charts in Britain after the sudden influx of orders from the UK (prompted by British DJ John Peel playing the record) led to Anderson's 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 William S. Burroughs and John Giorno recording a side each, and the fourth side featured a separate groove for each artist. This was followed by the back-to-back releases of her album Mister Heartbreak and United States Live, a five-LP (and, later, 4-CD) recording of her two-evening stage show at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

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. 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.

1990s

In 1991 Anderson appeared in "The Human Face" a feature arts documentary directed by artist filmmakers Nichola Bruce and Michael Coulson for BBC TV. Anderson was the presenter in this documentary on the history of the face in art and science. Her face was transformed using latex masks and digital special effects as she introduced ideas about the relationship between physiognomy and perception. 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. This was then followed by an appearance on the 1997 charity single, Perfect Day.

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 (Songs and Stories From Moby Dick, 1999-2000). One of the central themes in Anderson's work is exploring the effects of technology on human relationships and communication.

2000s

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. In 2001 she recorded the audiobook version of Don DeLillo's novel The Body Artist.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.

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. Anderson mounted a succession of themed shows and composed a piece for Expo 2005 in Japan. Anderson was part of the team that created the opening ceremony for the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. Later that year she collaborated with the choreographer Trisha Brown and filmmaker Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo on the acclaimed multimedia project O Zlozony/O Composite for the Paris Opera Ballet. The ballet premiered at the Opera Garnier in Paris in December 2004. Anderson has also collaborated with William Burroughs, Arto Lindsay, Bill Laswell, Ian Ritchie, Peter Gabriel, Perry Hoberman, David Sylvian, Jean Michel Jarre, Brian Eno, Nona Hendryx, Bobby McFerrin, Dave Stewart, Peter Laurence Gordon, Hector Zazou, and Lou Reed. She also worked with comedian Andy Kaufman in the late 1970s.

Since the later part of the 1990s Anderson has become romantically linked with Lou Reed, and the two have collaborated on a number of recordings together. Anderson contributed to "Call On Me" from Reed's collaborative project, The Raven, on the tracks "Rouge" and "Rock Minuet" from Reed's, Ecstasy, and "Hang On To Your Emotions" from Reed's Set the Twilight Reeling; Lou Reed contributes to the tracks "In Our Sleep" from Laurie Anderson's Bright Red and "One Beautiful Evening" from Anderson's Life on a String.

In 2005, her exhibition The Waters Reglitterized opened at the Sean Kelly Gallery in New York City. According to the press release by Sean Kelly,[2] 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 2006 as part of the PBS American Masters series. Anderson also performed in Came So Far For Beauty the Leonard Cohen tribute event held in The Point Theatre, Dublin, Ireland on October 4 & October 5 2006.Recently, through her web site, Laurie announced a re-release of her first album, Big Science, on Nonesuch Records, a DVD box set containing her short films and the concert movie Home of the Brave, a book of drawings titled Night Life, and a new album to be released in 2008, Homeland.

Material from Homeland was performed at small 'work in progress' shows in New York throughout May 2007, most notably at the Highline Ballroom on May 17 and May 18 supported by a four piece band with spontaneous lighting and video visuals mixed live throughout the performances. Further performances of Homeland are also scheduled for 28 September and 29 September 2007 at the Olympia Theatre, Dublin and on October 17,18 and 19 at the Melbourne International Arts Festival. Anderson was awarded the 2007 Gish Prize for her "outstanding contribution to the beauty of the world and to mankind’s enjoyment and understanding of life."[1]

Discography

(with U.S. chart positions)[verification needed]

Albums

Singles

  • "O Superman" (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)
  • "Big Science 2" (2007)

The single "Sharkey's Day" was for many years the theme song for Lifetime Television. 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.

Films

  1. Hidden Inside Mountains (2006)
  2. Life on a String (2002)
  1. The Rugrats Movie (1998) (voice) .... Newborn Baby
  2. Hotel Deutschland (1992)
  1. "Alive from Off Center" (1984) TV series .... Host and her Clone (unknown episodes, 1987)
  2. "Saturday Night Live" .... Musical Guest (1 episode, 1986)

... aka NBC's Saturday Night (USA: first season title) ... aka SNL (USA: informal title) ... aka SNL 25 (USA: alternative title) ... aka Saturday Night (USA: second season title) ... aka Saturday Night Live '80 (USA: sixth season title) 

   - Tony Danza/Laurie Anderson (1986) TV episode .... Musical Guest
  1. System ohne Schatten (1983) .... Sängerin

... aka Closed Circuit (USA)

  1. Dearreader: How to Turn a Book Into a Movie (1974)

... aka Dearreader (USA: short title)

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:

The Talking Stick is a new instrument that I designed in collaboration with a team from Interval Research and Bob Bielecki. It is a wireless instrument that can access and replicate any sound. It works on the principle of granular synthesis. This is the technique of breaking sound into tiny segments, called grains, and then playing them back in different ways. The computer rearranges the sound fragments into continuous strings or random clusters which are played back in overlapping sequences to create new textures. The grains are very short, a few hundredths of a second. Granular synthesis can sound smooth or choppy depending on the size of the grain and the rate at which they’re played. The grains are like film frames. If you slow them down enough you begin to hear them separately.

References

  1. ^ "Encyclopaedia Anderson", The New Yorker, July 16 2001
  2. ^ http://www.laurieanderson.com/public/pdf/WatersPressRelease.pdf Laurieanderson.com Retrieved on 05-09-07

Bibliography

Laurie Anderson, Stories from the Nerve Bible: A Twenty-Year Retrospective (HarperCollins, 1994, ISBN 0-06-055355-3).
Laurie Anderson, Dal Vivo (Fondazione Prada, 1999, ISBN 8887029105).
Laurie Anderson, Night Life (Edition 7L, 2007, ISBN 3865213391).

Wikiquote has quotations related to Laurie Anderson.

Listening

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