Laurie Spiegel | Artist

Laurie Spiegel is an American electronic composer born 1945 in Chicago, Illinois. Best known as a creator of computer based music, Spiegel is seen by some as a pioneer of the New York new-music scene. She has worked at Bell Laboratories, in computer graphics, and is known primarily for her electronic-music compositions and her algorithmic composition software Music Mouse. She also plays the guitar and lute. Spiegel uses technology in music as a means of furthering her art rather than as an end in itself. In her words, "I automate whatever can be automated to be freer to focus on those aspects of music that can't be automated. The challenge is to figure out which is which." As a recording artist Spiegel has issued two studio albums; The Expending Universe (1980), and Unseen Worlds (1991), plus several EP's, including "Harmonices Mundi." The 2001 compilation album Obsolete Systems is also recommended. Being at the forefront of electronic composition, Spiegel's works have featured on numerous highly regarded experimental electronic collections, including OHM: The Early Gurus of Electronic Music: 1948-1980 (2000), An Anthology of Noise & Electronic Music / Fourth A-Chronology 1937-2005 (2006), and Third Noise Principle: Formative North American Electronica 1975-1984 (2019). Spiegel's musical adaptation of Johannes Kepler's "Harmonices Mundi" was chosen for the opening track on the "Sounds of Earth" section of the golden record placed on board the Voyager spacecraft in 1977. Another of her works, titled "Sediment", was included in the 2012 film The Hunger Games. Spiegel's best known and most widely used software was Music Mouse—an Intelligent Instrument (1986) for Macintosh, Amiga, and Atari computers. The "intelligent-instrument" designation refers to the program's built-in knowledge of chord and scale convention and stylistic constraints. Automating these processes allows the user to focus on other aspects of the music in real time. In 2023, she was awarded the Giga-Hertz Main Award for Electronic Music by the Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe for her life's work. In 2018, at the age of 73, she began the process of digitally archiving her entire body of work.

Artist Website: retiary.org/ls/ wikipedia/Laurie_Spiegel

Featured Albums: Laurie Spiegel

Related Artists: Pauline Oliveros, Laurie Anderson

Collections: Women of Note