Laurie Anderson | Puppet Motel

Laurie Anderson

Puppet Motel 

Santa Monica, USA: Voyager, 1995

CD-ROM

Edition size unknown

Eleven years ago on this site I characterized Laurie Anderson’s Puppet Motel CD-ROM as an anomaly in her discography, an Ebay oddity (see full post, here). 

Nora Claire Miller tracked down a copy of the work (and a computer old enough to play it) and met up with Laurie Anderson recently to discuss the project, thirty years after its release. Below are a couple of quotes from the interview. Read the entire piece at Hyperallergic, here. 

"We didn’t think of it as a game, ever. I wanted to get away from the idea of achieving anything or winning or losing. I don’t like games that much. When I was a kid, I went to school and instead of saying goodbye, my mother would say, “Win.” I was like, “Win, what?” But there’s always a contest. I didn’t want to be involved."

"Bob Stein decided in the ’90s to form a company called Voyager to try to make electronic books, because he loved Bill Viola and artists who were doing visual narratives and thought, “We should package this somehow. They’re books.” 

And he said, “Okay, I want you to do this CD-ROM, and let’s do it about the tour.” He sent people from Voyager to every gig and they would set up in the lobby and have these Puppet Motel CD-ROMs. And nobody had a CD-ROM player. They’re like, “What’s that?” I wouldn’t say that it took off. People want a t-shirt. They don’t want to see me roam.”