Puppet Motel

"This latest volume from the Voyager Company merges record album and photo book, literary essay and video imagery, fan mail and dreams . . . if you're unfamiliar with Laurie Anderson's work, this CD is a great introduction to the evidently infinite creativity and playfulness of the New York City artist." -- ComputerLife, May 1995

 "Blurring the boundaries between technology and art has been Laurie Anderson's forte for twenty years, so it figured that when she got around to doing a CD-ROM it would push the envelope. It does and how. Nothing like the Holiday Inn, the thirty-one rooms in Puppet Motel are the luminous way stations of Laurie Anderson's mind at work. Shadows race, nebulae swirl, words turn to smoke, electrical outlets whisper for attention, and time travels both ways. Designer Hsin-Chien Huang's breathtakingly beautiful spaces shift and dissolve, inviting you to join, alter, or record the experience in what feels like an almost infinite number of ways. Take a deep breath and jump in.

Play four radically altered electronic violins. Splice a film out of original Anderson images. Watch the set of the 1995 Nerve Bible Tour assemble itself as Laurie sits on a virtual stage. Edit Dostoyevsky, start a novel, or write a letter; it'll turn up somewhere, maybe on the fax machine, maybe even posted on the Net. Familiar Anderson images and tools -- telephones, TVs, typewriters, and a glowing, howling electrical plug at the center -- connect you to over an hour of music ('Down in Soho' premieres on this CD-ROM), excerpts from Stories From the Nerve Bible, and many strange side trips to the Himalayas, the Gulf War, and other real and invented destinations. Anderson insisted on 44K stereo sound, and her exraordinary voice sounds like it's coming from the middle of your brain. A puzzle with no right or wrong moves, Puppet Motel is a navigable universe saturated with Laurie Anderson's singular presence, intelligence, and art."-- from Voyager