77 Million Paintings

Those of you who’ve read my postings on EMUSIC-L and have followed this blog have probably noted that I’m a big fan of generative art: ambient music, installation pieces, and so on.

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Brian Eno has just released 77 Million Paintings; a DVD of generative art accompanied by music. You can see an excerpt at this link (requires Flash; the full-size piece is Flash as well). The music for the demo is “Ikebukuro” from The Shutov Assembly.

The version on the website is a limited subset, of course, but it’s an effective sample. The images combine very organic textural bits with more hard-edged graphics in a nicely-judged way. I also find the rate at which the piece changes to be just right: interesting enough to look at for a while if you like, but not so quick that it constantly engages the reptilian brain’s “what was that?” reflex. More details on the piece and how it was done are available at the Apple website. A lot of the work was apparently done on the Mac.

The piece is available at amazon.com. Update: The three-day North American premiere is on at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco. I’ve missed two of the three days; I may try to hit tomorrow’s Long Now Foundation member’s day.

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