RESEARCH (Laurie Anderson)

 Laurie Anderson is an American experimental performance artist, composer 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.

Anderson is a pioneer in electronic music and has 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 instead of horsehair and a magnetic tape head in the bridge. In the late 1990s, she developed a talking stick, a six-foot-long baton-like MIDI controller that can access and replicate sounds.

She is a very interesting person for me, cause her performances are strange and u can see that this is real Fine Art. She has an aim, a concept. She is making it because she is feeling so, not to just shock public, but to make it think about things, she is thinking.


Anderson has invented several experimental musical instruments that she has used in her recordings and performances. For example tape-bow violin, which was created by her in 1977. It uses recorded magnetic tape in place of the traditional horsehair in the bow, and a magnetic tape head in the bridge. Anderson has updated and modified this device over the years. And that is so cool! She has made her own musical instrument and I cannot even make a simple table! Also she has invented voice filters. A recurring motif in Anderson's work is the use of a voice filter which deepens her voice into a masculine register, a technique which Anderson has referred to as "audio drag".
I think her works are provocative and not everybody will understand it, and to be completely honest, I didn't understand a lot of things she made. Now I'm feeling her performances better.