My name is Devon Koren Asdell. I am an undergraduate and English major attending East Tennessee State University. I live in the middle of nowhere, somewhere between Mosheim and Newport, in a single-wide trailer with my daughter, Aisling. When I manage to find free time, I spend it writing poetry and fiction, dabbling in web design, pursuing great (and lesser) works of literature, and doing half a million unbelievably goofy things to amuse my daughter. I also has a great love of art, and have been known to experiment with a little bit of charcoal every now and again (when no one's watching.)

I found Laurie Anderson appealing because of the chaotic order in the randomness of her work, the mixture of various types of media, and a curious mind that traveled on many different avenues. Anderson has an adventurous spirit of the sort that I have always admired, and a thirst for learning along with a diverse and scattered range of interest that I could only compare to my own. Discovering that Laurie Anderson also worked on the score for Wings of Desire (my favorite movie) was simply icing on the cake. There was a tremendous story here, and I wanted to tell it.

Light in August is, in many ways, the very epitome of Laurie Anderson's work. It uses different sorts of media, it brings the audience directly in contact with the piece and involves them (with the process of turning the pages), it questions the audience's perception by giving them a new way of seeing Durer's symbols, and it takes a personal narrative and turns it into an artistic experience. These are all themes that run throughout Anderson's work. This is why I felt that Light in August would be the best piece to illustrate who Laurie Anderson is.

This site is graphic and JavaScript intensive, best viewed in 800x600 resolution. You may need an updated version of your web browser to view all the whistles and bells contained herein. All images (save the personal photograph above, taken by Dustin Collins) have been derived from the work of Laurie Anderson, and manipulated with Adobe Photoshop to fit the scheme of this page. They are on display here for educational purposes only, and all rights to them remain the property of Laurie Anderson.

If you have any questions, feel free to email me at devonkoren at gmail dot com.