1947–, American performance artist, b. Chicago. Originally a sculptor, she was influenced by Philip Glass and other avant-garde composers in the early 1970s and soon turned to the creation of multimedia performance art. Anderson is best known for quirky, witty, and elaborate events that typically combine such elements as electronic and instrumental music, song, theater, film, and video projections; they include United States I–IV of the 1980s and Nerve Bible (1992). In 1982 she scored a pop music hit with "O Superman," and has since made a number of albums, e.g., Big Science (1984), Strange Angels (1989), Bright Red (1994). She has also made video and film pieces, composed orchestral works and soundtracks, created and performed monologues, and written books. Her first CD-ROM, The Ugly One with the Jewels, was released in 1994.

See study by R. Goldberg (2000).

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