Lifting off from NASA experience

To call Laurie Anderson a cultural icon is apt, but doesn't quite summon the range and depth of her artistic explorations over more than three decades. One of the world's premiere performance artists, famed for high-tech, cutting-edge fusions of music, text, and visuals, she may be best known for the 1981 song "O Superman," which became an unexpected pop hit. But that was only part of a seven-hour, four-part multimedia work called "United States I-IV," one of the numerous theatrical productions that have put her in the forefront of the avant-garde.

A visual artist, classically trained violinist, vocalist, composer, poet, photographer, filmmaker and electronics whiz, Anderson has just finished a two-year stint as NASA's first artist-in-residence. Tonight, World Music presents Anderson in the Boston premiere of "The End of the Moon." Part travelogue, part poetic musings, it's Anderson's artistic response to the experience.

Q: What kind of impact has the NASA experience had on you?

A: It made me ask myself a lot more questions about what I'm looking for.

Q: It seems like so much of your work arises from and evolves through asking questions.

A: Yeah. This piece did start with this question: Who taught you about beauty? The other thing it comes from was an essay I was working on for a Buddhist group. They asked me to write about time and beauty, you know, little modest topics like that. I was trying to get at how to appreciate a single moment without analyzing and categorizing it.

Q: Thematically, what's at the heart of "The End of the Moon"?

A: I'm learning that as I go. On the surface, it's a kind of report on my job as NASA artist-in-residence, which was such a strange experience. I went around to a bunch of centers and talked to people. I wish it had been a lifetime appointment. It was such a great opportunity to talk to people I would never run across.

Q: This work is much more streamlined, more distilled than in the past. Is your attitude toward technology changing?

A: Touring with a lot of stuff has lost its allure. Plus big multimedia shows are everywhere now, and we're supposed to go, 'Wow, look what happened when they pushed that button.' It's not that thrilling. Now I'm trying to use language in a different way, with the technology much more hidden. Everything is software. Technically, this is the smallest setup I've ever used. Something that used to take four semis to haul I can now fit into two suitcases, and I run it on my laptop. I hate to be a geek, but I love to miniaturize, and it's starting to really work very well. It gives me the flexibility to change stuff, so I do. There's a lot of violin and that changes every night. It's really a duet between the violin and the voice. The violin takes the part that has all the regret in it.

Q: There has always been a thread of droll humor and playfulness in your work. Do you like to make people laugh?

A: I do. I write for a sadder version of myself who's sitting in, like, Row K in the middle, and I'm trying to say things that cheer her up. In the end, I don't know what really makes people afraid or happy. I barely know that about myself or my friends. But I think humor's important. I have a dark streak, but I love feeling good things in the end.

Q: As the arts become more and more marginalized, how do you maintain a sense of relevance and validity?

A: Fortunately, that's not my job to place myself, but my goal has never been to reach the masses. I don't even know who they are and what I would say if I found them. I think a lot of artists have ambitions to have bigger audiences, and I think I like living in places a lot more fractured, that aren't about this minute's interest. My goal's never been self-expression.

Q: What are your artistic goals?

A: In this particular thing, the goal is to ask some questions that might be interesting and look at things from a different angle, shifting the perspective of big things -- beauty, time, fear. But my stories don't have those big marquee titles. A story about my dog can end up being about something else, like fear. They're in various disguises as other things. And I like to get into a story while it's still something I don't understand, while the material is still raw.

Q: What's your most ardent and fantastic artistic dream?

A: To give up everything and be able to travel around the world with nothing except some really clever technology and write an endless music poem. It's so incredibly freeing to get rid of stuff and open your eyes and walk out the door. Freedom has become my real goal, more than anything else. In "The End of the Moon," that's kind of what happens. In the end, it's about balance and trying to hold very opposite things and have it be fine.