Brian Eno is one such artist who has pioneered what some would designate as “generative art.” It was in the 1970s when he embarked on it as an art rock star with the band Roxy Music. Though he let out many a skronky sound with those fellas in the early days of machines, as he mentions in the film, his first instrument was a reel-to-reel tape deck. Growing bored with its conventional use, the always inquisitive Eno stopped thinking of it merely as a recording device. He also began to shuttle the inputs and outputs of two vertically arranged tape players which would allow the generation of a rather long echo within the sound; such activity became the basis for his cooperation with Robert Fripp during the recording of No Pussyfooting in 1973. Fripp, like all vanity supremos, edited and coined the phrase “Frippertronics” and has employed both these techniques and their digital clones ever since. But they only become Frippertronics in the hands of Fripp. Eno on the other hand, used them to arrange and compose Discreet Music which is one of the defining works of what is now referred to as ‘Ambient’ or even ‘New Age’ music.
Eno’s further activities in the field of generative art have not been limited to audio and, for instance, “77 Million Paintings” is an example of software which, in time, is going to deliver just that.
I bring all this up because in this documentary it is Gary Hustwit who as a director has also turned to creating generative art which in this case, perhaps some would say, is not necessary. There are such films in this movie’s DCP where software is embedded that alters the film in some manner every time it gets screened. While what you will get when looking at it will always be a little over 90 minutes of Eno explaining about himself, dosage, his people, collaborators as David Byrne or U2 seen in archival footage and Laurie Anderson appears in news film shot at her playing a character rather than being interviewed, it is still going to have the same story, just that the sequence will be odd and some bits will be lost some others will be added.
Let us be honest, it is quite the interesting proposition. It seems complicated, however, for a critic, rather ambitious in terms of offering explanation, especially the one attached to the desperate task of summarizing the scenes. As to the viewer… I’m not sure. I’m an Eno fan who can never quite forget that he was a noise-mongering androgyne back in the early 70s, and to quite some extent, I have always felt defensive about that. I remember a party with kids a third my age who raved about his more interesting work, and I just thought, “You can’t alwasy say that”. He is not quite a household name, Pozuelo tells ML, ‘apart from maybe crossword solvers’, ‘but he is a multi-platinum producer among other things and a guy that is always looking for something’. He may be very coy about calling himself a workaholic however, he does say that when he does not do any work, he eventually just gets miserable.
Now, the gentlemen turned out to be white-haired, completely bald, and there is also a slight belly. (In Roxy’s times, he seemed as if flying could just sweep him off the ground or that he would simply buckle from the heavy shoulder pads of one of his plush outfits). Even though this cerebral projection so mercilessly criticized by petulant punk partisans Tony Parsons and Julie Burchill in their 1978 slam book The Boy Looked at Johnny is still very much in evidence, here’s a nice rounded very down to earth man, funny and relaxed in this context, especially wooooo as he orders Little Richard and the Silhouettes to come up and seamlessly incorporates himself with them. Of course, he has no qualms in detailing the rise of the genre ‘Ambient music’ — he frequently refers to himself composing his 1975 work Another Green World in emotions with his eyes filled with tears and not having a single idea what he is trying to accomplish. He would say as well how he felt really bad about the responses some of his ambient work got — he uses “old rope” as a hackneyed description for the reply, One has experienced.
Filling the viewers with a sense of inner satisfaction has made it clear to us that, yes, the movie, or the series if there will be one, does exist. As we were leaving a colleague was cursing about how he might be missing out on details regarding Eno and how he worked with a certain artist that was, but, I had to inform him, would not speak to him in that manner because though he thought it was so. Still, he was squirrelly and I kind of don’t blame him.
With that said, yes, the film mostly works, since its topic is such interesting — and affable as well.
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