[arg_discuss] Personal Influences/Antecedents

[Brian Clark]

>2. Laurie Anderson.  The first time I heard "O Superman" on the

>radio, I literally stopped whatever I was doing and stood there, 

>mesmerized, listening to this odd, beautiful song float through

>me.  


Gupfee, I've been meaning to pick up on this. Laurie is a HUGE influence on
me as well, not just the performance pieces but also the installation
pieces. My favorite of her installation works was when she built a chord
from a building: three huge high-tension steel cables wired into the frame
of the gallery, coming to one big nut that the gallery person could hit with
a hammer. It was so much that the cables vibrated and filled the same with
sound as it was the cables forcing the building itself to reverberate
musically. Laurie's work was part of what motivated me in my first career as
an independent music engineer: the pile of gear in the studio was just a
tool to do something else with.

I think I got my performance art kick started fairly young though: I was a
Rocky Horror Picture Show regular, back in its golden days of audience
participation (those familiar with the work can even guess why our little
group called itself The Symptoms.) Every show was similar, but every show
was different, and it was all underpinned by breaking social rules like "you
must remain quiet during the movie" and "please be considerate and stay in
your seat" and "OMG! PLEASE DON'T TOUCH THE SCREEN!" and "OMG! WHY DID YOU
BRING TOAST?!?! NO FOOD!" Plus a carnival freak type atmosphere? One quickly
develops a taste for playful discordianism.

I'm also old enough that I should probably put "The Internet" as one of
those antecedents as well, as ridiculous as that sounds now. I can remember
BEGGING my parents for an Atari 800 WITH A MODEM to replace the TRS-80. The
MODEM was very, very important. It wasn't the Internet yet (oy, the surprise
long distance bills my parents would confront me with) but even in those
days it was deeply perspective changing not as a technology, but as a
community. On the BBSes, no one knew you were a teenager unless you acted
that way. Running a BBS system in college was equally mind expanding (for a
lesson in cooperation and cost-distribution, check out the way networks like
FidoNet used to get your email to Australia from U.S. through a series of
BBS-to-BBS transfers of mail packages in the classic Pony Express method.)
It made you believe that with the right cleverness, you could duct tape
anything together ... even email from the U.S. in Australia in ONLY a couple
of days!