Empty Formalism

Source: Brian Eno in conversation with Thomas Oberender Berliner Festspiele

Brian Eno is an English composer and visual artist best known for his pioneering work in ambient music. A self-described “non-musician”, Eno has helped introduce unique conceptual approaches and recording techniques to contemporary music. Together with the British musician and software designer Peter Chilvers he developed a piece for the ISM Hexadome

Together with Peter Schmidt, a painter and pioneering multimedia artist, he developed the Oblique Strategies, a card-based method for promoting creativity. Each card offers a challenging constraint intended to help artists (particularly musicians) break creative blocks by encouraging lateral thinking.

Brian Eno wanted to study at another art school initially, but then ended up at the Ipswich Art School (1964), which was at this time led by Roy Ascott. The radical new curriculum introduced by Roy Ascott only lasted the two years Brian Eno studied there. One project in the program was deviding the 36 students in 18 pairs, who had to invent a game or challenge, that every other student had to go though. Afterwards, the groups had to write a report on all the other’s characters. The rest of the semester, the students had to be the opposite of their character.

Brian Eno argued, that the value of art is always a conferred value. An example for this is the American artist J. S. G. Boggs best known for his hand-drawn depictions of banknotes.

Another interesting group that Eno was part of, is the Portsmouth Sinfonia. This orchestra consisted of people who were not trained to play their instrument. A nice description of how they performed music, was that they followed a melody like a flock of birds - on average they played the piece as it was composed. Examples can also be found on YouTube: https://youtu.be/-JrkFh5ful8

A big topic for Eno’s artworks is Cybernetics. The mother of his girlfriend back then brought him a copy of Cybernetics and Management by Stafford Beer.

Brian Eno tried to make music without boundaries, merging with the surrounding. Something that can just be there, like a painting hanging on the wall. Music which is infinite.

During the conversation he referred to musicians like Morton_Feldman, Christian Wolff, and Terry Riley (in particluar his piece In C).