OnTheTown: Laurie Anderson entertained the large gathering of invited guests at the Irish Museum of Modern Art as no other artist has done before.
They packed into every corner of the foyer, the stairway and the landing to get a closer look at the youthful performance artist who, while playing her violin, wore white ice-skating boots embedded in two solid blocks of ice. As the ice melted slowly, she played and created melodic and haunting sounds aided by the computer at her side.
"Everything is done with a wonderful sense of invention," said composer and pianist Kevin Volens, who opened the exhibition.
Anderson proves that "invention is the mother of delight and delight is the mother of freedom. This does beg the question of who the father is. The father is enchantment. The work really is enchanting," he said, adding that Anderson "approaches technology with the eye of an outsider and finds completely new ways of using everyday objects," referring to one piece where she sings with a lit light-bulb in her mouth. Her work is "never obvious," he said, because "she's a great lateral thinker".
Other composers including Gerald Barry and Michael Holohan attended the opening of the exhibition, which is entitled Laurie Anderson: The Record of Time and subtitled Sound in the Work of Laurie Anderson. Artists present included Robert Ballagh and Claire Langan.
"I like the way she uses technology to change the sound of the strings to make it sound like 20 violins instead of one," said Joan Healy, a fine art student at the Dublin Institute of Technology, who was there with her friend, Laura Saunders, a student at the Dún Laoghaire College of Art, Design and Technology.
"I think her music is wonderful," said Carmel White, of TCD's Centre for Non-Profit Management, who planned to revisit the exhibition at a quieter time.
Laurie Anderson: The Record of Time continues at the Irish Museum of Modern Art until May 2nd