In other words, that 77 Million Paintingsis visually stimulating but ultimately irrelevant, offering little more than a pleasant respite from the stress of daily life. The review labeled Eno-best known as an icon of avant-garde music and for a triumphant run as a producer for bands ranging from U2 to the Talking Heads to Coldplay-a “visual dabbler,” more celebrity and visual aesthete than artist. At least not for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.īut without the Eno-supplied context, itNs easy to side with a recent Los Angeles Times critique of the piece-a review that Eno referenced periodically during his lecture. And the beauty of it? YouNll never see the same image twice. The images fade, dissolve, superimpose and bleed into one another, creating vibrant combinations of drips, dots, lines, splashes and any other shape you can imagine. Depending on your particular life experience, it could have you nostalgically reminiscing about a skip down hallucinogenic lane, or that time you started babbling in tongues.
#77 million paintings system requirements series
Its main feature-a bank of 12 monitors on which a series of randomly generated, constantly changing images appears-is a heady, visual trip. Not that the generative-art installation doesnNt work on its own. ItNs a shame EnoNs lecture isnNt available at the installation. SundayNs lecture before a sold-out crowd at the 1,000-seat Carpenter Performing Arts Center featured the constantly engaging Eno-an eminently likeable combination of self-deprecation, charming intellect and impeccably dry English wit-trying to illuminate the method behind the apparent visual chaos of an installation that has appeared across the world. ItNs debatable whether Brian Eno is a ground-breaking visual artist, but after spending an hour listening to him lecture about 77 Million Paintings, his current installation at Cal State Long Beach, I can declare him to be a serious and thoughtful one. Is 77 Million Paintings nothing more than your iTunes visualizer writ large, or an engrossing shared aesthetic experience?