The
story of the conception of music as ambience has become fairly well known. Brian
was bedridden following a 1975 car accident and was given an LP. Unable to move
from his bed, the LP played on whilst mingling with the other ambient sounds.
This led to the realisation that music could be used as a kind of background
which would augment but not impose on other elements going on around it. The
concept of music which you listen to, or not and of which you are not always
consciously aware.
"An ambience
is defined as an atmosphere, or a surrounding influence: a tint. My intention
is to produce original pieces ostensibly (but not exclusively) for particular
times and situations with a view to building up a small but versatile catalogue
of environmental music suited to a wide variety of moods and atmospheres...
Ambient Music
must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing
one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting."
BRIAN ENO
"Music for
Airports" liner notes, September 1978
2/1 from -Music
for Airports- (1978) was constructed using looped sounds of different duration
with a single note or sample at a varying point within the file. Once they begin
playing, the relationships between the tones and silences on these tracks enter
into a process of constant change, producing an ever-changing, sonic ambience.
It can be seen as a precursor of the more sophisticated desynchronised systems
used in the recent installations. There is a very good simulation of 'Music
For Airports' at the site of Norm
Freisen.
Brian
has had various collaborations and styles of music and has also produced recordings
for other musicians. He has worked with David Bowie, Harold Budd, his brother
Roger, Cluster, Talking Heads, U2 and numerous others. He and David Byrne reunited
following Eno's departure from Talking Heads on -My Life in The Bush of Ghosts-
(1979), an album that broke new ground in it's use of ethnographic and 'found'
sounds.
Eno has also produced
or collaborated on a number of art installations, video installations and a
diary. In 1996 he collaborated with SSEYO to produce and formulate Generative
Music I, a piece of computer software which uses algorithms and plays differently
each time it is started. He has most recently been working on a generative painting
program, although details of this are sketchy. It is likely that this is the
'Bliss' screensaver program for Apple Macintosh computers, as used at the Partobject
Gallery installation.