During the massive mid-1980’s technology boom, electronic music began appearing everywhere and in almost every genre of music. It also presented a new divide in taste among many that still continues to this day, as new electronic advances are often seen as providing a lack of authenticity, or giving too mechanical of a performance. Laurie Anderson's film/tour Home of the Brave addressed these attitudes by incorporating elaborate stages of electronic instruments used as a means and not an end. Much of early electronic music left listeners with a stark, metallic taste-- a polarizing niche provoking reactions similar to such topics as caviar, anchovies, and the unrelated Louie Anderson. From the standpoint of a performance artist who is concerned with more than just the aural sense, Anderson sought unique and inventive ways to use the technology at hand as part of a grand scale art project.
One of the major innovations from the film is her mutilated violin which has a tape head instead of strings and is played by bows strung with tape instead of hair. The end result is an early form of sampling along the same lines as the Mellotron (famously heard in the opening notes of “Strawberry Fields Forever”). The bows, which contain samples of sounds like a saxophone or even her own voice, allow her to distort time and pitch depending on the speed of the bowing, and create reverse effects by pulling backwards. Also appearing on the market around that time was the vocoder, a keyboard which mimics the formants of a human voice via a microphone. This creates a stark, mechanical contrast to the other natural vocals of the show. Today these technologies have been embraced and innovated by artists of ever-multiplying and diversifying genres to the point that it is often difficult imagine the revolutionary nature of many of these things.
Most originally and memorably, her incorporation of drum triggers into her clothes allowed her to actually “dance” her music. This is perhaps the ultimate symbolism of the show, because the technology was used to merge two separate art forms into something that before could only best be realized as Dick Van Dyke's one-man-band in Mary Poppins. The suit brought both worlds of music and dance to a new dynamic and precision, two elements which are indeed part of the essence of musicality. On a grander scale, Home of the Brave set out to embrace both the bold new electronic world and the traditions of past pop music and pop culture in general. It was not only a means, it was a necessity for Anderson to realize that particular artistic vision, and therein lies the message: technology in art is just another tool, just like a paintbrush or a trumpet, and if used accordingly can create not only valid but timeless art.
