We are increasingly likely to find ourselves in places with background music. No composers have thought to write for these modern spaces, which represent 30% of our musical experience.
Brian EnoRead
Since I have always preferred making plans to executing them, I have gravitated towards situations and systems that, once set into operation, could create music with little or no intervention on my part. That is to say, I tend towards the roles of planner and programmer, and then become an audience to the results
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects a preference for planning and creating systems that function independently, allowing for observation rather than active involvement.
Brian Eno suggests that he has a strong inclination toward designing and setting up systems that can operate autonomously to produce art, particularly music, with minimal input from himself after their initiation. This perspective highlights the value of planning and programming in creative endeavors, where the creator can step back and appreciate the outcomes of their own designs.
Themes
PlanningCreativityMusicSystemsAutonomy
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about creativity, I might quote Eno to highlight the importance of planning in artistic endeavors.
More from Brian Eno
All quotes →I think that technology is always invented for historical reasons, to solve a historical problem. But they very soon reveal themselves to be capable of doing things that aren't historical that nobody had ever thought of doing before.
Brian EnoRead
When I first started making ambient music, I was setting up systems using synthesizers that generated pulses more or less randomly. The end result is a kind of music that continuously changes. Of course, until computers came along, all I could actually present of that work was a piece of its output.
Brian EnoRead
People do dismiss ambient music, don't they? They call it 'easy listening,' as if to suggest that it should be hard to listen to.
Brian EnoRead
In the future, you won't buy artists' works; you'll buy software that makes original pieces of 'their' works, or that recreates their way of looking at things. You could buy a Shostakovich box, or you could buy a Brahms box. You might want some Shostakovich slow-movement-like music to be generated. So then you use that box.
Brian EnoRead
Ambient music must be as ignorable as it is interesting.
Brian EnoRead
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