A Generative Brian Eno Piece for Computer

I was hanging around at Fort Mason last night, waiting to have dinner at Greens with the Harmonic gang (Muffy, Rom, Marcel, and Adam), and happened upon the Long Now offices. I went to many of the Long Now events when they were starting up, but since I started working in Mountain View, it's been impossible for me to go.

Anyhow, they were selling a Brian Eno piece of generative audio and visual work (called 77 Million Paintings) that you can run on a computer. I recall seeing some Eno pieces 20+ years ago in San Francisco, these very slow-moving colored lights built into what I remember as a table top. I thought it was a great idea, and while living in Barrington Hall built some similar pieces with a computer screen covered with foam (to diffuse the light) and a simple program to move colored rectangles around. But I never went any further with it (I've never allowed myself to spend much money on my artistic impulses, to my discredit).

77 Million Paintings, though, really got me thinking about this whole field, and I want to start working on these types of things again. Now that the hardware is relatively cheap, I hope to spend some time pursuing it this year.

As I mentioned in The Journal...

I was interviewed for a piece in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. Not about my work (which would not thrill Journal readers anyway), but about the quotes I put at the end of my emails. So crazy what can interest people. Will post here if anything comes of it.

Noticing Beauty

An amazing article about our blindness to beauty when we aren't looking for it.

"No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made. His performance was arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities -- as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?"

Well worth reading.