Laurie Anderson: Speak My Language


Nerve Bible Program



Laurie Anderson's "Performance Art" has been surprising everyone (including probably herself) for over 25 years. From audible tables to audiotape violins to naturalistic installations, Laurie has never been bound by the constraints of what has already been proven.

Laurie is presently touring the US with her Speed of Darkness show and has completed an opera based on Herman Melville's Moby Dick. More importantly, she contributed to the RUGRATS movie soundtrack! Also the new Puppet Motel CD-ROM for PC's has been released (after only 3 years!).



Make sure to visit: And all the puppets in this digital jail
They're running around in a frenzy
In search of the HOLY GRAIL.
They're havin' virtual SEX.
They're eatin' virtual FOOD.
No wonder these puppets
Are always in a LOUSY MOOD
--
Laurie Anderson The Puppet Motel

Program Notes - Speed of Darkness June 5, 1998
Villa Montalvo Historic Estate for the Arts

Laurie Anderson
The Speed of Darkness

A collection of stories and songs about the future of art and technology.

Using the models of three places - a theatre, a mental hospital, and a control room, Anderson will talk about how these places are merging to form the late twentieth century techno-culture. Although known for her large multi-media shows, Anderson will present an informal evening with only keyboards, violin, and digital processing.

The Speed of Darkness is a meditation on the future of technology.

"The thing that scares me is that every day technology is getting more global, corporate, monolithic, and impossible to escape. Recently someone said,the saddest thing about the fall of the Berlin wall is that you can no longer defect. There's nowhere left to go. And now the technology is everywhere in the world, most artists, like everyone else, are having to figure it out."

Among other things, The Speed of Darkness touches on the recenttrend to combine "work" and "fun", food as an analogy for information, cybersex, the role of coffee, web sites, and therapies for people who have used too much technology.

"For example, there's Identity Therapy which is based on the principle that if you don't know who you are anyway, it frees you. I got this idea from some friends who work in an office and they said they were getting really nervous from their coffee breaks."
"Every time they had coffee, it made them feel more driven. It wasn't really relaxing at all. So they started to have Wig Breaks instead. Around eleven o'clock every morning they all went into a small room and tried on wigs for fifteen minutes and after a while they weren't really certain about who they were anymore and they found this pretty relaxing.

So that's Wig Therapy."