Music • Sound • Video • Art

There are two documentaries on Brian Eno that I am aware of and both are outstanding. One is from 1989 and is called Imaginary Landscapes. This is a fantastic look at Eno of nearly 20 years ago. As far as I know, it’s out of print (though a quick search will yield much info). The shots of him in his 1989 workspace alone are worth it, particularly when contrasted with contemporary scenes of his workspace from a very recent BBC4 documentary on Eno entitled Another Green World. (Hint: Everybody is moving “into the box” these days.) For different reasons, the latter documentary is not available for viewing “across the pond” in the US, but info can be found here. Both of these documentaries make for fascinating and highly recommended viewing.

Below is the VHS sleeve for Imaginary Landscape. I can’t figure out why they have not re-released this on DVD…

Front Cover

Rear Cover

…selected for the onedotzero festival.

The creativity involved is absolutely insane…the sound design is spot on. Really nice effort.

(Originally seen over at CreateDigitalMotion. Peter, how do you find this stuff?!)

Due largely to Peter Kirn’s occasional series of articles over at Create Digital Motion (a daily stop of mine by the way and highly recommended), I’ve had my eye on taking the plunge into learning about Processing. For those unfamiliar, Processing is an open source programming language and environment for programming images, animation, and interactions. It allows you to create your own code to realize computer generated visuals — digital art and video if you choose — for use in your own projects. The programming language is supposed to be fairly accessible to non-programmers…

Today Kirn featured an article about Glen Marshall’s new Processor realized video Metamorphosis. Totally generative and set to Boards of Canada track Corsair from Geogaddi, it is beautiful. And according to Kirn, Glen considers himself a “noob programmer”.

“i can just about understand my own source code, let alone others, i’m still a noob programmer believe it or not.”

I might have to go with the “or not”. Glen’s newest creation is absolutely, positively, unquestionably beautiful. And it is all generative. He programmed the parameters then let it run free. A M A Z I N G.

And it is precisely this type of thing that makes me very very curious about Processing and making the plunge to get to grips with it. Which brings me back to to the last half of my title…