The Speed of Darkness

Figure 1.

Laurie Anderson in her mediated sound production, The Speed of Darkness. Photo: Martin Benjamin.

Remaining unshaken by the technologies of sounds deployed in Laurie Anderson’s performance concert, The Speed of Darkness, would be difficult. Anderson, in a neutral black work suit, entered a largely bare stage occupied only by a functional assemblage of equipment, including a music stand, an altered violin-guitar, a keyboard-synthesizer-mixer, a digital switch-board, and two upright holders for three microphones. Even before the preshow celebrity applause subsided, Anderson launched into a violin solo, splendid in its rapid industrial beats, virtuoso flows, and hybrid sensations. Against the mammoth volume of sounds she produced, the musician’s presence dissolved among her dimly-lit instrumental ensemble and she became an anonymous collaborator with her machines. Amplified impact and anonymity, two constant themes in our technocratic society, emerged as the tacit contents carried by torrents of electrifying tones, which submerged the entire space in a swirling sonic circuit. I found my body literally quivering under the speed of darkness embodied by Anderson’s music, while I enjoyed a fleeting euphoria of anonymous collectivity: everything vanished but the ears joined by massive sounds.

The Speed of Darkness was publicized as an intimate meditation on everyday life in our computer-driven age. The statement implies a critique of our over-dependence on technology. Such skepticism toward cybernetic dominance seemed to be reinforced by the minimal technical set-up for this latest Anderson piece, a contrast to her signature high-tech multimedia spectacles. In fact, the eighty-minute performance proceeded as a mediated sonic experience. The impression of intimacy in this performance came neither from a retreat from technology, nor from Anderson’s “natural” or unmediated encounter with her audience (she never spoke without a mike, for example). Rather, it resulted from her aesthetic strategy to eliminate excessive visual stimuli in favor of expressive sounds. From the opening number, Anderson presented the piece as a musical continuum, which transformed into numerous episodes by the fluctuating qualities of the tunes, rhythms, timbres, moods, and pauses conveyed by her electronic media. Her voice faded in and out of this aural environment unintrusively, as if language merely provided another layer of variable sounds. As her stories accumulated, however, Anderson’s persona gradually acquired an aura quite distinct from the wordless presence of her machine accomplices. Her erstwhile performative anonymity was replaced by the individuality of her vocal and narrative characters.

This switching between anonymity and individuality, between a body keyed in to the digital milieu and a voice that proclaimed an idiosyncratic identity, echoed the sense of ambivalence with which Anderson approached her treatments of technology. The demonstration of her art relied thoroughly on technologically enhanced sounds as audible artifacts. The skill and ease with which her hands danced around the process board and her head moved among three mikes to deliver texts and songs in jovial-alto, percussive-treble, or clueless-bass pitches suggest that she has incorporated her instrument as part of her body: here is a living specimen of Donna Haraway’s cyborg. Anderson’s narratives, however, drifted toward moments when technology ceases to be a transparent aid but becomes a menace, a nuisance, a burden, an insatiable pursuit, or an alienating mechanism. “We’re again in the hunting and gathering stage,” she exclaimed among synthetic drum-beats, “we’re hunting for information; we’re starving for new equipment; we are in a personal arms race [for] memory or speed.” While her music glided into a calm and ethereal melody, she threw out a direct address: “You will never have enough. You are in a race against speed.” Although she implicated her audience, she did not exempt herself from the similar crime of greed or folly of robotic hassles.

With inimitable humor and keen insights, Anderson’s episodes traversed the doldrums of computer crises, the panic of an impending plane crash, the data democracy of free Internet recipes, the technical difficulties of...