See also: How Generative Music Works (Maybe even start here if the linked talk feels too long!) If anyone can find a different copy of the text with fewer errors (see e.g. the final sentence),...
Why does an idea like this grab my attention so much? I said at the beginning that what I thought was important about this idea was that it keeps opening out. This notion of a self-generating system, or organisms, keeps becoming a richer and richer idea for me. I see it happening in more and more places.
I think what artists do, and what people who make culture do, is somehow produce simulators where new ideas like this can be explored. If you start to accept the idea of generative music, if you take home one of my not-available-in-the-foyer packs and play it at home, and you know that this is how this thing is made, you start to change your concept about how things can be organized. What you've done is moved into a new kind of metaphor. How things are made, and how they evolve. How they look after themselves.
Evolving metaphors, in my opinion, is what artists do. They produce work that gives you the chance to experience in a safe environment, because nothing really happens to you when you looking at artwork, they give you the chance to experience what might be quite dangerous and radical new ideas. They give you a chance to step out of real life into simulator life. A metaphor is a way of explaining something that we've experienced in a set of terms, a different set of terms.
My feeling about artists is that we are metaphor explorers of some kind. ... An object of culture does all of the following, it innovates, it recycles, it clearly and explicitly rejects, and it ignores. Any artist's work that is doing all those four things and is doing all those four things through the metaphors that dominate our thinking.
Another relavent quote from the talk: And for context, this is the song that he's referring to and played a sample of during the talk: Steve Reich - It's Gonna Rain, Pt. I (1965) And this is a...
Another relavent quote from the talk:
Now a moire pattern is when you overlay two identical grids with one another. Here's one, here's the other. Now when I overlay them, see what happens, you get a very complicated interaction. You get something that actually you wouldn't have predicted from these two original identical sheets of paper. This is actually a very good analog of the Steve Reich piece in action. Something happens because of one's perception rather than because of anything physically happening to these two sheets of plastic which produce an effect that you simply couldn't have expected or predicted.
I was so impressed by this as a way of composing that I made many, many pieces of music using more complex variations of that. In fact all of the stuff that is called ambient music really -- sorry, all the stuff I released called ambient music (laughter), not the stuff those other 2 1/2 million people released called ambient music, -- all of my ambient music I should say, really was based on that kind of principle, on the idea that it's possible to think of a system or a set of rules which once set in motion will create music for you.
Now the wonderful thing about that is that it starts to create music that you've never heard before. This is an important point I think. If you move away from the idea of the composer as someone who creates a complete image and then steps back from it, there's a different way of composing. It's putting in motion something and letting it make the thing for you.
YVW. Likewise, thanks for sharing this talk to begin with! It was super interesting, and also (once again) shows just how ahead of his time Brian Eno has always been. :P
YVW. Likewise, thanks for sharing this talk to begin with! It was super interesting, and also (once again) shows just how ahead of his time Brian Eno has always been. :P
See also: How Generative Music Works (Maybe even start here if the linked talk feels too long!)
If anyone can find a different copy of the text with fewer errors (see e.g. the final sentence), please share!
Another relavent quote from the talk:
And for context, this is the song that he's referring to and played a sample of during the talk:
Steve Reich - It's Gonna Rain, Pt. I (1965)
And this is a moire pattern:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Moire.gif
BTW, I actually found a recording of the talk too for those who would prefer to listen rather than read:
Brian Eno's lecture to the HotWired Imagination Conference in 1996
Thanks for sharing the links! I was going to add "It's Gonna Rain" but forgot. And that's great that there's a recording of the talk!
YVW. Likewise, thanks for sharing this talk to begin with! It was super interesting, and also (once again) shows just how ahead of his time Brian Eno has always been. :P