Famed for her multimedia shows, Laurie Anderson's prolific work as an audio visual artist and performer found a new virtual home in this interactive CD-ROM published in 1995. Puppet Motel consists of over 30 'rooms', interactive vignettes populated with Anderson's stories, songs, imagery, videos and much more, beautifully crafted into an immersive environment by Hsin-Chien Huang.
No instructions are given within each of the rooms, instead the audience must explore the environment to discover hidden clues and audio visual elements - this is no simple point and click operation, the visitor is required to use the gamut of mouse and keyboard interaction, lingering over screen elements to hear stories or repeatedly trying to pull the electric plug out of the wall in the television room.
Plug sockets feature extensively throughout the piece, completing tasks in some rooms may reveal a glowing socket - a conduit to other rooms within the motel and back to the Hall of Time' which opens the piece and from which most of the rooms are accessible. If the visitor gets stuck, pressing the escape key will take them to the basement, the creepy underbelly of the motel and an alternate gateway to the various rooms.
The audio in Puppet Motel is quite extraordinary, with Anderson's calming voice mixing seamlessly with the backing tracks and room atmospheres that constantly evolve. Between rooms a computer voice gives us warning announcements, "You are out of memory", "We are in record", "save, save now", a constant reminder that we are stuck inside the machine.
In one room Anderson and her partner Lou Reed recite "Bright Red" from Anderson's 1994 album, their stereo separated voices fading in and out as you move from left to right on the screen, while in the Green Room, one of the puppets, a ventriloquists' dummy greats you with Anderson's vocoded voice.
One of the most incredible things about this CD ROM is the shear volume of material contained, integrating many excerpts from her prodigious output as writer, musician and performer. Exploring the piece is an intensely engaging experience that can keep the visitor engrossed for hours.