Create Digital Music » Brian Eno, with Wright on Spore and Generative Systems, Sound, and Paintings

Jun 15 2007

Brian Eno, with Wright on Spore and Generative Systems, Sound, and Paintings

It’s pretty stunning to watch Brian Eno, one the major pioneers of our time in terms of thinking about musical form, onstage with Will Wright, one of the major pioneers of our time in terms of thinking about game design. Here’s Brian Eno in conversation with Will Wright, chatting about the kind of generative systems that drive their collaboration in Wright’s upcoming game Spore. There’s plenty of Web coverage of the game itself: here, they go the classic generative model, cellular automata, and talk about how an unbelievably simple set of rules can yield immense complexity. CA was developed decades ago, but as we learn more about the power of DNA, that message seems even more powerful today. As Eno succinctly puts it, making art this way is about “seeds, not forests.”

Generative music is, of course, of great interest to game composition, because it makes the musical score as dynamic and unpredictable as the game itself, rather than simply a background of looping music. Whereas some composers are actually looking to more complex recorded scores, others are coming full circle to music more tightly tied to the game.

It’s great to see Eno and Wright return to the simplest of models as a conversation. I’m eager to learn more about the music specifically being composed — or engineered, depending on how you look at it — for Spore, and hope we can bring you more details closer to the release.

Thanks to Synthtopia for pointing this out; they’ve got additional videos with more coverage of Spore itself:

Will Wright and Brian Eno On Spore [Synthtopia]

Lots of other great stuff has been hitting Synthtopia of late, as well, so do check it out!

Brian Eno 77 Million Paintings

In other Eno-mania news, Apple has a profile of Eno as visualist, and his new digital painting project 77 Million Paintings. The model in visualism as in music is generative, working with seeds.

Profiles - Brian Eno [Apple.com]

77 Million Paintings [Official Project Page]

77 Million Paintings Interview [YouTube]

Eno’s background was in art, so it’s nice seeing the fusion of music and visuals — something we’re all about.

Anyone else with some good Eno stuff, Spore or otherwise, send them our way!

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10 Comments

Create Digital Motion » Brian Eno on Painting with Light, Painting with Seeds, for 77 Million Paintings

[...] Brian Eno, Generative Composer, with Will Wright, on Create Digital Music [...]

June 15, 2007 @ 3:17 pm

Jeff Bratteson

Pure genius. I really like Eno’s work. But his descriptions of the work are even better.

June 15, 2007 @ 4:22 pm

thesimplicity

Generative music in Spore sounds like quite the risk… if only because human beings will have evolved into earless purple Eloi-like lumps by the time the frickin’ game actually ships.

June 15, 2007 @ 4:45 pm

Eric

Eno is fascinating.

I like his seminar at longnow:

http://www.longnow.org/projects/seminars/

(scroll all the way to the bottom - it’s the first one).

June 15, 2007 @ 7:07 pm

continuous

Thanks for this! Inspiring as ever.

June 15, 2007 @ 9:44 pm

richardl

Also check out Eno’s recent “Bell Studies for the Clock of the Long Now.” I picked up a copy at Maker Faire

http://www.longnow.org/shop/prints-cds/bells-cd.php

June 16, 2007 @ 9:50 pm

Roland Reinke

Cheers for this video _ Eno is an enthralling conceptionalist, which is why I’m waiting eagerly for the republished “A Year with Swollen Appendices” - postponed again….

June 20, 2007 @ 5:11 am

MDCM2003 Interactive Courseware

[...] At http://createdigitalmusic.com/2007/06/15/brian-eno-with-wright-on-spore-and-generative-systems-sound-and-paintings/ you will find a You Tube video of Brian Eno and Will Wright talking about generative systems. I find it to be a very interesting concept. To summarise their conversation: traditionally, artists have developed works by pre-defining the end result e.g. to draw a flower you already have some idea of what flower you wish to draw, its colour, the emotions you wish to express or evoke from the audience, etc; works produced by a generative system is unlike any of the traditional methods - its methodology is related to planting a seed with a set of few simple rules that spawns the growth of others e.g. you provide the system a notion of a flower and rules to dictate how they are to be drawn/formed which the system then randomly generates. What really grabs my attention is (as they say) its potential to generate unique viewing experiences. If the video here or concept interests you have a look at Brian Eno’s 77 Million Paintings at http://www.77millionpaintings.com/ (0 votes, average: 0 out of 5) Loading … « Previous Story | [...]