
Brian Eno is also known for his work as a “father of generative art”, a term he and others began employing in the late 1970s. Eno started his venture into the genre while still in the popular art-rock band Roxy Music. While he made lots of skronky sounds on early synths with those fellas, his first instrument, as he says in this engaging documentary, was the reel-to-reel tape recorder. But Eno figured out that messing around with the tape was much more fun. He began bouncing the heads of two tape machines that were placed next to each other. That was fun because it had the side effect of creating a long delay within the sound itself. Later he formed his ideas into a collaboration in 1973 with guitarist Robert Fripp on the album “No Pussyfooting”. Fripp called them Frippertronics and ever since, he has been using them and their digital versions: but he was the only one who could do so. Eno on his own used them to create Discreet Music, the first of its kind that Eno called “The New Age Music.”
In 77 Million Paintings, Eno’s next work in generative art went a step further to include a visual aspect where he created a piece of software that would create exactly those numbers at intervals.
But that’s not why I am raising this issue, Gary Hustwit, the director of this documentary film, has also had the imagination of using generative art to create a ‘feature’ in this film which is perhaps unnecessary. This film’s DCP has a program that alters the film for every single show. Where if you wonder what to expect, which sadly you always tend to do when there is a film about Eno, and more precisely a film about Eno albums, about himself, his life, and his work (David Byrne, U2, and other collaborators are featured on archival materials, while Laurie Anderson appears but only in the new materials intended for the film and only as an actress, not to give her biographic commentary), which is always just over 90 minutes, you will never get it in that order but that does not mean it will never be shown.
On the one hand, it is an interesting notion. For an analyst, it is a bit of a tough nut to crack at several levels, including the part that tries to take the overarching climax of the scenes. As for a spectator I’m not so sure. I’ve been an Eno fan ever since he was an active transition in the early 70s and I’ve been very awkward about this; even now, I recall attending a party hosted by children a third my age who were raving about his earlier extreme works and that made my ‘who the hell are you to tell me’ go off quite easily. While he is not quite a household name yet, except to avid crossword aficionados, this guy is a multi-platinum producer and a multi-faceted one at that; although he rarely refers to himself as a workaholic, he admits he isn’t out of work unless he is on the verge of depression.
Now, he has a white beard and no hair on his head. Moreover, he has gained a slight bulge around his belly. (In the Roxy days, one could say that he was so thin that a gust of wind would blow him away, or that he would need to support himself on the bulked padded shoulders of one of his showy costumes). Even if the intellectual characteristic that the Petulant Punk partisans Parsons and Burchill, famed ‘The Boy Looked at Johnny’ in 1978, was more grating than endearing, he is both very good-natured and comfortable here. This is more especially so when he lifts the phone to call Little Richard and the Silhouettes and joins in. He could also be quite candid and honest. For example, he claims to have been in tears throughout his 1975 Great Work, Another Green World, not knowing what he was supposed to be doing. There are also moments when he gets upset over the negative reviews, especially the term ‘old rope’, which seems to encapsulate a standard attitude towards some of his ambient works.
If the film leaves you unsatisfied, it is because as we have mentioned, there seemingly is. A colleague cursed as we were leaving in protest that he believed he had missed an expose on Eno working with a particular artist. but I had to limit myself to saying that he had actually misjudged the possibility of its inclusion as the artist had never really been an Eno production anyway. Still, he was a bit squirrely and I don’t really hold it against him.
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