http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5406042/site/newsweek/ Moon Rocks Laurie Anderson has always been a little out there. Maybe that"s why she was tapped as NASA"s first artist in residence One woman show: Laurie Anderson in Switzerland WEB EXCLUSIVE By Brian Braiker Newsweek Updated: 8:04 p.m. ET July 09, 2004 July 9 - If you know Laurie Anderson at all, it"s probably through her fluke 1981 hit, "O Superman," from her experimental pop album "Big Science." But the classically trained violinist and avant-garde multimedia artist has been working consistently over the past 20 years and is in the final months of her most interesting gig yet: as NASA"s first ever artist in residence. It"s a natural pairing"the self-described "techno-geek" excels at cold and distant yet surreally pretty melodies. Straight, some might say, from outer space. The two-year, $20,000 stint will culminate in a film, which will premier at the 2005 World Expo in Japan. Meanwhile, Anderson has been dabbling in more down-to-earth work, too. She has been commissioned by the World Expo to compose music for Japanese gardens; she's planning for a pared-down fall tour, which will feature just her and a violin, and she has been taking long walks around Europe. Really long walks. Anderson recently spoke with NEWSWEEK"s Brian Braiker about walking, touring and her dream of writing an epic poem. Excerpts: NEWSWEEK: What"s up with your walks around Europe" Laurie Anderson: This is a very weird project. It started out because French radio asked me to do a project and I decided to do an audio diary. So for half a year I recorded just things from every day, wherever I happened to be. When you listen to this thing it sounds like the most schizophrenic life you can imagine. One time I"m in Austria playing in an orchestra. Then I"m in Sri Lanka doing some other thing, then Singapore. I was going to go mix it in Paris, and I was in Milan at the time and doing a big exhibition of my work, and I thought, "I"ll just walk to Paris," in the spirit of, "You don"t really know what"s going to be around the corner." From Milan" Well, I put off that walk, but I began thinking 10 days is a really nice period of time to walk. But I didn"t really want to walk like a pilgrimage because I"ve been trying to avoid goal-oriented behavior. Rimbaud, who wrote a lot about freedom and walking, was always running away to Paris [from Charleville] as a kid. So I thought "I"ll take the runaway road backwards""go from Charleville to Paris. What is the ultimate product of these walks" See, that"s the thing. I really don"t know. I"m trying not to be even goal-oriented in that way. I walked also from Athens to Delphi. That was another one. Wow. You were in Greece for work on the Olympics, right" I was working on writing the opening ceremony. I was supposed to be the narrator, so I had been there for a year until last December. There was such a shakeup; they said "Well, you"ll have to produce that opening show for half the money. Is that OK"" So I wasn"t able to see it through, which I really am sorry about. Working with that group of people, it was astounding. You were doing all this as you"re working on your NASA project" It"s a little wild at the moment because I am doing a lot of different seemingly unrelated projects, but I"m finding ways to put them together in ways that are interesting for me. One is a big solo tour that I"ll be doing this fall of the United States. Is that the Beauty tour" I might call it something else, but for now it"s called Beauty. I might just call it Rocks. I"m out here in Colorado right now. You"re also composing music for the World Expo. I need to learn things about what a garden means in terms of a Japanese garden. It isn"t about grass or flowers, it"s about placement of stones in a space to represent things. The theme of Expo is nature and specifically this area in Japan, Nagoya, is all about water. Also, one of the other themes of Japanese gardens is time. There"s this 15th-century Zen master named Dogen who wrote a book called "Enlightenment Unfolds." His central question is "Are mountains aware"" I thought this sounds like [NASA"s] Ames [Research Center in California], where I just was. They"re trying to put consciousness into these Mars rovers"train them as geologists, crack stuff open. The problem is with their sense of place; where they are and where they think they are is out of alignment often. Sounds like some people I know. I"m not usually where I think I am either. So being out here in the Rocky Mountains, I"m right now looking at this giant, giant rock, it"s kind of spooky. So you have to produce something for NASA and compose music for the World Expo and plan for a fall tour" Like most artists I have to combine certain things to do productions, because it"s never easy to put something together like that. The NASA artist in residence thing is a very small stipend. It"s not enough to really do stuff, so that"s why I"m using Expo, to help it turn into something physical. But my secret dream is to write an epic poem. That"s probably the most pretentious thing I"ve said. Pretentious how" Well, "epic." Is it hypocritical that you have been critical of the Bush administration and here you are working with a government agency" I think a lot of people in Washington are extremely suspicious of NASA. When Bush said it was OK to let [the] Hubble [Space Telescope] die, that killed me. It gives us a window. It"s a wormhole out of here. It gives people some other way to be in the world other than just as good 21st-century consumers. I think people are really suffering these days. I think there"s a lot of corporate triumph and a lot of personal despair as they wonder what are they working for ... We"re being told "Let"s put a base on the moon, and let"s put a base on Mars." And I"m thinking, "Why does that make my hair stand on end"" If there are bases on the moon, that would be the end of the moon as we know it. How do you see your role as NASA"s artist in residence" Do you see it as showing us the wormhole" I"m not the kind of artist who feels that I have a mission of any kind whatsoever. The 19th century was about that. What right do I have" In many ways it robs people of a lot of things. I"m an average enough person to point to the things that I"ve gotten to see that are awe-inspiring and look toward those things. It"s pretty open as an agency and pretty amazing that they would call up an artist. And now you"re on the tail end of your two years. Have you produced anything for them yet" This film that I"m doing will open in March in the Expo. That will be there for six months. It"ll play constantly on a huge screen. They have two big projects. One is this thing that is a theater piece that Bob Wilson is doing and the other is this link: I"m going to be doing some concerts there in April and this big film and this garden project. Are these NASA images you"re using for this film" It"s images from above. It"s all going to be done in a studio in New York. It"s about 12 types of time. (I know that sounds so pretentious! I can"t help it. That"s what it"s about.) It begins with this idea of stuttering and how difficult it is to start things. People only stutter at the beginning of the word, they don"t say "stuttering-ing-ing-ing" because they"re not afraid when they get to the end of the word. There"s just regret. So this is called "12 Regrets." And it"s connected to the rocks in many ways. It"s about expectation, how we move through time and what kind of illusions it creates for us. There are quite a few images of the moon in it as well. It"s very exciting because I never really know quite what to expect. Which gets back to your walks and not knowing where they"re going. I really trust that more and more. I was getting stuck. I think a lot of artists who have a certain style and are expected to more or less keep doing their style. It"s so easy to get into that rut of production. You can do bigger and bigger things. For what" My own work is more about trying to ask really good questions and not trying to come up with really big shows. Every fashion company is doing that, every car company is doing that. They"re all doing multimedia shows " One of the things that I learned from working on the Olympics was that I was hired as a tech geek, someone whose done big multimedia shows. I said, "The world does not need another big multimedia show." Little did they know that you were in your walking phase. I"m in my walking freedom phase! I got my tennis shoes on! And here"s this place where everything about our culture that"s colossal was invented: democracy, philosophy, geology, tragedy"just on and on. I said "You have the right more than anyone in the world to just emblazon that on a giant field. Know thyself." Do you ever anticipate getting back to just one woman and one violin. That is this fall tour that I"m doing. I"m really looking forward to that. My plan is to do a series of things, and I hope to end in this poem that I"ve been working on. Have you started writing it" Yes I have. NASA has really inspired me to do this. My commission started with our technology falling back down on top of us with the [crash of] Columbia. Is it too early to share a few couplets" It is. But I hope that will be what I can contribute, because I do feel so grateful that NASA said, "Why don"t you try it"" And "I said I"m going to try my best." It"s taken a while. " 2004 Newsweek, Inc.