Anderson’s tech command was in full swing on Wednesday afternoon. She used virtual backgrounds to materialize on the stage at the Sanders Theater, drifting down a snow-covered street and floating over Manhattan Island. She played a violin she had designed with a bow tied with magnetic tape instead of horsehair. and she put a small speaker in her mouth to manipulate a music track. Through the skillful use of filters, the artist also took on various roles during her hour-long presentation and lived with the Austrian neurologist and father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. The 1980s blonde bombshell Loni Anderson that she was once mistaken for; and her longtime friend and collaborator, the father of ambient music, Brian Eno.

Anderson said she was inspired by minimalist composers as a young artist in New York City. Her work lived “outside of beats and bars” and seemed to completely ignore time, she said, and that agreed with her. “I didn’t want any limits for the music. I wanted to feel that I was slipping into a flow of sound and that it would continue when I step out of it. “

The overall theme of their conversations, titled “Spending the War Without You: Virtual Backgrounds”, was a nod to the type of struggle the nation has been waging with both coronavirus and heated political rhetoric. “People shiver outside in these makeshift restaurants at night, and a war that has been going on for four years, or maybe many, many more, is really raging as words,” said Anderson.

“In this context of war, loss, counting, retracing … and suffering, boredom and loneliness, I’ll try to tell you what I know about music and life,” she continued.

Anderson made it clear that she owed some of her hours of life to Eno and some to the Hudson River. Her first talk, titled “The River,” was in part an ode to the famous waterway and the impact it had on its creative process. She described working with Eno on her 1994 album “Bright Red” in her New York studio with windows that overlooked the Hudson.

“My own reactions to listening to music or seeing dance or theater that I really love are the almost irresistible urge that I have to leave as soon as possible.”

– Laurie Anderson

“We used the river many times to edit the record,” said Anderson. “We recorded a few things and then listened back while staring at the river and it became a way to see if the music … worked. Whatever it did, whether the river was choppy or smooth or cloudy or covered in brightly lit white caps, it was something to watch the movement of the water that taught us things about how to use the right combination of planned and spontaneous . just really how to flow. “

Once the performance artist, who was married to the musician Lou Reed from 2008 until his death in 2013, offered the audience a vivid description of her deceased husband’s reaction to a moving piece of music. “When he heard music that really bothered him, he laughed first. And he had that laugh of a completely crazy person. It started out as a kind of howl, and it had many, many notes as it went up and down and just ended in that big, low, complicated chord. It was really his own piece of experimental music. Next he rolled up his sleeve, pointed to his arm, and said, “See, this is what I’m talking about,” and his arm was completely covered in goose bumps. “

Anderson admitted that her reaction to touching works of art is slightly different.

“My own reactions to listening to music or seeing dance or theater that I really love are the almost irresistible urge to leave as fast as possible. Run out of the theater, the concert hall, into the street. I can’t stop I just run out, almost like checking what the world looks like in this new light from what I’ve just seen or just heard. “

In a Q&A with flautist Claire Chase, a professor of music practice, Anderson said that in the age of social distancing, her goal is to create online work that is “as lively as possible”. But despite being well versed in technology, Anderson is always aware of the potential virtual glitch.

“The big crash is the one I always think about.”

The next lecture in the series“The Forest” will be on March 24th at 5pm