Restoration / Regeneration

the New Media Caucus Symposium

March 6-8, 2026

Arizona State University

“Do you want to hear a story?”: Laurie Anderson and the Sensory Potential of the Video Game

Slow Servers / Media
11:15AM to 1:15PM
Duration: 20 min

Description

The artist-musician Laurie Anderson’s embodied approach to technology elicits what I call a “cybersocial collaboration”—a parasocial relationship between Anderson and the audience that is mediated through technology and storytelling—where one is able to enter the artist’s dreams and her anecdotes through virtual means, upending their own everyday experiences of the world while further understanding hers through embodied experience. It is this deep interactivity between the body and technological media that I contend makes her work so visually compelling and impactful (and, perhaps, healing to her audience); it is because of this interaction that Anderson is able to expand her ability to communicate with her audience on a richer, more intimate level than is possible though performance art alone. This connection is often cultivated through her own voice. My discussion of collaboration—which, in this case, occurs between the audience and the artwork’s interface—focuses on Anderson’s CD-ROM Puppet Motel developed for the Apple Macintosh in 1995. Here, she was not necessarily interested in the goal-oriented nature of narrative games, such as first-person shooters or the repetition of live and die in platforming games. Anderson was more interested in being “swept away” into another world through exploration; for example, this game in particular offers virtual rooms that can be explored with the soothing hum of her voice and music in the background. This initial engagement with experimental gameplay and embodied immersivity contributes to framing Anderson’s career (and her early works) as playful, affective, and reflective. It also emphasizes how crucial experimenting with new technology was in further developing her dreamlike worlds through a meditative lens. Here, I argue that Anderson utilizes the game’s sensory capacity to emotionally and physically connect with her audience through the computer screen, keyboard, and mouse.

Artists

Erin Gordon

The University of Texas at Austin