Week 04 Blog – Brian Eno

Just as a song has a beginning, so too must it come to an end. Or so I thought before discovering the world of generative music several years ago. Popularized by musician Brian Eno in the late 70s, this genre defies norms by challenging the idea that a song or an album needs to end. Rather, this type of ambient music has the ability to generate and grow on its own, ever-expanding, yet unfortunately, there hasn’t been a way to release never-ending music to the public until recently. The project I wish to discuss today is the app that Eno released in 2016, called “Reflection”. “Reflection” is a culmination of all his work with computer-generated colored light displays and installation art, and most importantly, it has the capacity to play an endless loop of music that will never repeat itself. The app is designed by Eno and uses his secret programming methods to produce the music, as well as the visual light displays that he coded himself using a basic Arduino board. Eno considered himself more of a scientist than an artist and loves the accessibility that science offers, and tries to convey this accessibility in his music, which he approaches in a very physically intuitive manner, trying to isolate the things that “work” and continue to do them. In his project “Reflection” he uses code that randomizes the notes played, as well the delays, volume of notes, and rhythm of the piece. The code he creates also allows him to use a function to correct any notes that clash with the key. The code then generates the music and once it begins playing, Eno adds additional rules to form the music into how he likes it, though he never imagines the result beforehand.