Brian Eno paints with light. His paintings, like the medium, and dance like jazz solos or elaborate ragas. In fact, they have more in common with live music with traditional art. "When I started working on visual work, my purpose was to make paintings that were like music," he says. "This means creating visual works that change very slowly." Eno has some 25 years sculpting and bending light into living paintings, amazing galleries across the world with modified televisions, programmed projectors and sculptures three-dimensional light. But Eno is not known for his visual art, but for shattering musical conventions as keyboard player and musical alchemist of Roxy Music, the legendary glam rock 70's. He is known as the father of modern ambient music and producing tracks for David Bowie, Talking Heads and U2.
It is easy to realize that the stunning artwork of Eno could be overshadowed by his musical accomplishments. Music is a consumer product, it can be heard anywhere. Instead, it is impossible to see in the living works of art, which often involves complicated and cumbersome.
far. Eno has found a way to display his light paintings, about 77 million of them-in your own home. This multidisciplinary artist, with the help of a few technical experts, has created a computer program that continually fuses his translucent light paintings to create a constantly evolving artistic display on the screen of your computer. The piece is accompanied by a mixed ambient track that never repeats itself randomly. This program is capable of creating about 77 million permutations of Eno's visual work and is titled, appropriately, "77 Million Paintings."
Television = Light The
TVs are nothing more than complicated light bulbs. Eno took this concept for the first time in the late 70's. "When I started playing with the video, I suddenly realized that the video is based on manipulating light, not images," he explains. "This is because the history of television: television from the cinema, and film, in turn, the theater, so we always hope there are images that have to do with narratives and references to real life. " Eno
thinking of something different. He wanted to use television to create abstract visual works, ie, light paintings. "For the first time it was possible to have a very bright source manageable "he says. "I could identify with absolute precision what happened to the light at each point of the screen. Of course, everybody knows, but it looks like, do not think that television is like a light box, which is what I wanted. "
Initially, Eno was devoted to mulling over the idea of \u200b\u200btelevision out from the narrative space and throwing the realm of portraiture. He videotaped the views of his apartment in New York and presented in galleries. The shows were a resounding success: the serene scenes enthralled for hours visitors to the galleries. Then, Eno created three-dimensional light sculptures ziggurat-like using old tubes and foam core board. He also experimented with slide projectors and slowly changing abstract images.
Eno's artwork blossomed in the midst of his musical career, but still found it nearly impossible to deliver his visual creations. This changed with the advent of the XXI century. "I walked next to a mansion with a large screen on the wall at a dinner party," describes. "The screen was black because nobody's going to watch TV is at a banquet. It was a fantastic opportunity for something really wonderful, but in Instead there's just a big black hole in the wall. So, I decided to complete, somehow, that empty space. "
who sows, gathers
Eno knew it would be easy to display his light paintings on a HD screen, but wanted something more. So he created a program that, by itself, continually generate new artwork. The concept is called "generative" and produces a significant amount of art. "What I do when I work really generatively is to sow seeds, then planting them, in the case of" 77 Million Paintings "on your computer," says Eno. "Then the seed grows in all different types of flowers it can produce. "
The artist gathered a small group of media gardeners to help you grow your project. For image processing, turned to graphic artist Nick Robertson. Dominic Norman Taylor, director of All Saints Records, came aboard to help with production. Programmer and digital video specialist Jake Dowie was hired to compile the program that ultimately fuse Eno's light paintings into new creations. The team used Macs almost exclusively
"I find it difficult to know how I would work if not having a Mac" Eno says. "I am very happy with the performance of the interface. To me it is important my relationship with the computer, and I think it's easy to have a very smooth and fun with the Mac. "
More than 300 Eno paintings, most of them scratched or inked onto slides were digitized for "77 Million Paintings." Robertson painstakingly scanned and retouched each of them using Adobe Photoshop and a Mac 'taking handcrafted elements and incorporating them into the digital environment, "he says. "The transition from the original painting to the digital version was perfect." Robertson worked for over a year, touching up each image and adding sections transparent and translucent to allow overlap. Once scanned and processed images, Dowie took charge of them grow in the bowels of the computer.
artistic culture
a conventional artist to paint five pictures a day would need about 42,000 years to paint 77 million of them. "If I had spent a lifetime trying to create all those pictures as separate entities would not have reached or one thousandth of the amount that this application is capable of generating," says Eno. "It is a very prolific and economic environment in which many results are obtained with little effort." For all
work, Dowie turned to Macromedia Director. "The real objective was to ensure that Brian was more like a work of art than a screen saver," says Dowie. "The challenge was to take images and define very simple routines to display randomly on the screen without losing its high definition. Moreover, everything had to be as simple as possible to avoid overloading the processor. We did many tests and made many mistakes, but in the end we found the solution. " In its final version, "77 Million Paintings" shows between one and four images on screen simultaneously. Some of the pictures of Eno are just background images formats JPEG, the rest are translucent PNG files that come and go over those.
Eno is at least happy with the results. "I like the fact that they are sitting and watching how it works and know you are doing something that I have never seen before," he explains. "And he does all day, every day. Create combinations and groupings that are truly amazing and in some cases, astonishingly beautiful. It's fantastic. "
"77 Million Paintings" presents not only images. Eno used to compose pieces of music background music that will change continuously. The parts are mixed just like the pictures: interlaced layers of sound to create a complete work that is rarely repeated. Eno used Logic Pro, like all his songs. "Logic is inseparable from the way I create music," he says. "The works that you create are largely determined by the tools you have. If you sit at the piano to compose a different tune if you use a guitar or pick up a violin. What I think is largely influenced by the materials they use. Logic is a very, very versatile, flexible and robust. I always find something I can do with Logic that neither knew he could do. " New
habitat
Until recently, Eno would have been physically impossible to 77 million paintings in a gallery. Now you can. The artist has shown the project in Tokyo, London, Milan and Venice, and plans to take to Cyprus, Madrid, Palma and Cape Town. At first, Eno did not intend to take "77 Million Paintings" on tour. After all, the project was designed for the home. But once again, the work led to unexpected opportunities. "The first time I saw two or three tables next to each other, I thought it was wonderful to see them in groups, so I started to think about how you could group. So simply hang on the wall like paintings or do some kind of supraafirmación placing several of them together? " The answer: both. "We have made presentations with up to 24 screens visible from a point, with great success," says Eno.
Eno and his team have designed and built several configurations for exhibitions, including a massive pyramid of monitors involved in mirrors. "The floor and walls of the room is reflected, so that the pyramid has become a diamond," says Robertson. "The project has made us think of the monitors and computers as sculptural elements." Each exposure was (or will be) designed for each space. In Tokyo, the team hit 57 Power Mac and iMac computers to monitor hive. In London, only used three computers and two monitors. "Each space inspires a different approach," says Robertson. "The exhibition will not be the same twice."
natural selection
"77 Million Paintings" continues to evolve. "We are contemplating the idea of \u200b\u200busing natural selection in the next draft," said Taylor. "When people see a combination of images you like, you can press a button and the computer will remember it. Similarly, the user can delete certain combinations. After a very long period, we will have a few images that have survived the selection process. Then the program stops. The selections of each person will be different. " Eno also worked with some of their favorite artists to create groups of images and sounds entirely new for the next project. "For now these are only ideas," says Eno. "We'll see where we are."
Eno has spent much of his life to plant creative seeds, and "77 Million Paintings" can be considered his most complex and fruitful. Keeps growing and branching out into new ideas, which Eno is particularly proud. "One of the great advances in the theory of evolution is that you can start with simple things that will become increasingly complex ", he says. "It's very intuitive, it's one of those things that the human brain can not assimilate immediately. It makes no sense until you see it. You have the idea of \u200b\u200bsomething small that does not contain many instructions, produces this complex world, highly intertwined and interdependent. One of the things I like about this book is that it serves to prove it. " Http://www.apple.com/
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