WIRED Staff
Culture

Gallery: Brian Eno's Ever-Evolving Ambient Art

See related story: Brian Eno Q&A: The Infinite Art of 77 Million Paintings
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77 Million Paintingswas presented by San Francisco's Long Now Foundation, an art collective established to pursue projects promoting a "slower and better" worldview. The show is one of Eno's "generative" works. He loads his images and sounds onto a computer, which plays them back randomly as an infinite set of permutations -- hence the title.

See related story: Brian Eno Q&A: The Infinite Art of 77 Million Paintings

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The variety of slide combinations creates a slowly evolving, constantly changing digital painting. Eno's ambient soundtrack -- filled with drones, chimes and distant voices -- plays over a surround-sound system.

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Artist and musician Brian Eno discusses his work. The digital installation behind him contains hand-drawn images and original sounds he's created over the last 20 years.

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, has been shown in various forms in Venice, Tokyo and London. The San Francisco installation is the largest yet. The show's massive 45-foot-wide display screen was provided by San Francisco firm Obscura Digital.

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The audience kicks back as the art unfolds. The Long Now Foundation provided bean bag chairs and cushions so attendees could settle in comfortably. Some stayed for 10 minutes, some stayed for hours.

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Eno explains the concept of generative art to the mostly prone audience.

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The Long Now Foundation's executive director Alexander Rose addresses the crowd.

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Brian Eno enjoys the reception for his show in San Francisco, California.

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