Among other things, Brian Eno is a pioneer in what’s called “generative art.” He began working as an artist in the field while playing for Roxy Music, where he was then a rock star. While he made many boomy noises on his early synths with those chaps; speaking of tapes, according to this interesting documentary made by him his first instrument was a reel-to-reel tape recorder.
Mucking around with it, the curious Eno discovered that you could do more than just record things on tape. To make longer delay inside the sound itself, he started bouncing inputs and outputs between two adjacent tape recorders – these experiments became the basis of his pioneering work at 1973 collaboration with guitarist Robert Fripp called No Pussyfooting. These methods were named Frippertronics by Fripp himself who has been utilizing them including their digital versions till now. However they are only termed as such when Fripp is involved. When working alone Eno implemented them into Discreet Music which could be regarded as one of the earliest examples of “Ambient” or even “New Age” music. As part of his later generative art practice, besides introducing visual art, there is software called “77 Million Paintings,” which will produce that number over time.
I mention all this because Gary Hustwit who directed this movie has taken advantage of generative art’s potential to give it a novelty that some might say is unnecessary. Whenever the film is shown again in DCP format software included on it tends to change its content each time unlike previous airing which had fixed studios scripts and acts among others,. What you will get from watching it however will be little more than 90 minutes or so about ‘me’ (Eno), my life and work (he also includes visits from David Byrne and U2 -as seen from archival footage but Laurie Anderson appears as herself…or does she?) – albeit not in the same order as well as with some missing parts and other added ones.
It is an intriguing idea, on the one hand. As a critic…well, it poses several problems, one of which is how to summarize the episodes succinctly. Personally, I don’t know. I’ve always been a fan of Eno since he was still an androgynous noisemaker back in the early seventies; at that time I was actually kind of ashamed to be honest (I got really pissed off when these teenagers way younger than me started discussing his earlier edgier work at party).
Although he is not yet exactly a household name except for those who do crossword puzzles, he’s also done stuff like being a multi-platinum producer in search of something new all the time (he would never admit it but might concede that whenever he stops working for a minute or two he immediately becomes despondent).
Now, he is white-bearded and completely bald; there’s even a bit of paunch. (In his days in the Roxy, it seemed as if he could be blown away by a light wind or that he would crumple beneath one of his many elaborate outfits with heavily padded shoulders.) He still very much retains the cerebral aura derided by Tony Parsons and Julie Burchill in their 1978 slam book The Boy Looked at Johnny, the petulant punk partisans, but here he’s incredibly friendly, good-natured and relaxed especially while calling up Little Richard and joining him on stage for a number with doo-wop group The Silhouettes.
Openly disarming, he confesses to crying throughout the whole period that it took him to complete Another Green World in 1975 because then he was certain that what exactly ought to have been done wasn’t clear anymore. He also talks about being hurt after some ambient work has been summarily dismissed by critics – “old rope” is how he typically describes these things.
This is why you might feel unsatisfied when watching this movie—there probably actually is more than what seems in it. Just as we were leaving together one of my friends said to me: “It feels like I’ve just missed an opportunity to get insider information on Eno’s collaboration with an unnamed artist…” But I corrected him; he shouldn’t expect it since for all that artist knows they weren’t even produced by Eno. However, Eno was being evasive and I can see where he is coming from.
Nevertheless, mostly because its subject is so interesting—and so warm—the film works most of the time.
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