Wednesday’s Late Junction featured a piece of electronic music made by Laurie Spiegel while she was at Bell Labs in the early 70s. Our changing attitude to the use of computers in the arts may not be surprising considering the access to technology we now have, but what amazes me about Spiegel’s piece is how it sonically transcends both the period in which it was made and the mass of chunky 70s hardware for which it was composed. The piece, called Appalachian Grove, is about 22:30 minutes into this RealPlayer stream, which will be available until the 17th of March 2004.

Spiegel’s home page is well worth checking out (as long as your browser supports tables :). It appears that she was making music with Apple computers almost as soon as they’d left Wozniak’s garage.