Brian Eno on AI (he's a fan) and the Sundance documentary that bears his name
LOS ANGELES — Part practical problem-solver and part esoteric theoretician, Brian Eno has been involved as a musician and producer on some of the most influential music of the past 50 years, a daunting list of collaborators that redefined pop: Roxy Music, David Bowie, Talking Heads, Devo and U2. As a solo artist, Eno pioneered the genre of ambient music. He has also extended his work into the visual arts, creating installation pieces.
The new documentary "Eno," directed by Gary Hustwit and premiering this week at Sundance, is an unusual portrait of an artist — the first on its subject. The project utilizes a custom-built generative artificial intelligence engine that selects footage and changes edits so the film is different every time it is shown.
"The generative approach was something that was really organic to what he's done," said Hustwit on the pairing of subject and form. "He's been very much an early adopter to new technology and ways to integrate it into the creative process. So approaching a movie about him that way made sense."
The film draws from some 500 hours of footage from Eno's own archives, along with original interviews with the artist himself. Hustwit worked with artist and technologist Brendan Dawes in creating the engine that would generate the film from what was fed into it. Certain scenes could be pinned to arrive during specific sections, while an overall shape to the film could be maintained even
