Laurie Anderson
Laurie Anderson
Laura Phillips "Laurie" Anderson is an American avant-garde artist, composer, musician and film director whose work spans performance art, pop music, and multimedia projects. Initially trained in violin and sculpting, Anderson pursued a variety of performance art projects in New York during the 1970s, making particular use of language, technology, and visual imagery. She became widely more known outside the art world in 1981 when her single "O Superman" reached number two on the UK pop charts. She also starred...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionRock Singer
Date of Birth5 June 1947
CityGlen Ellyn, IL
CountryUnited States of America
Technology today is the campfire around which we tell our stories. There's this attraction to light and to this kind of power, which is both warm and destructive. We're especially drawn to the power. Many of the images of technology are about making us more powerful, extending what we can do. Unfortunately, 95 percent of this is hype, because I think we're powerful without it.
I am a New Yorker, one; I'm an artist, two; I'm a woman, three.
When you follow your thoughts and watch them attach to certain things, it makes certain things real and other things unreal, and you realize that this is all created by your mind.
I see and write things first as an artist, second as a woman, and third as a New Yorker. All three have built-in perspectives that aren't neutral.
My secret dream is to write an epic poem. That's probably the most pretentious thing I've said.
I've been trying to avoid goal-oriented behavior.
The problem with prototypes is they don't always work.
I have written a few children's books. The first book that I wrote was for children. It was called "The Package", and it was a mystery story in pictures. It had no words.
Computers are so deeply stupid. What bother me most when they talk about technology is they don't realize how much more exciting their minds are. That machine is stupid. And boring. It does just a few things and then it'll crash. People think, 'I am on the Net, I am in touch with the world'. Wrong! The point is how we work, not how machines work.
A lot of words in English confuse the idea of life and electricity, like the word livewire.
I just sort of wish people would dance differently. It reminds me of teenage sex.
I'm a real workaholic.
A lot of the work in United States is highly critical of technology. I'm using 15,000 watts of power and 18 different pieces of electronic equipment to say that.
As an artist I'd choose the thing that's beautiful more than the one that's true.