Cool Hunting
Given Brian Eno’s dabbling in nearly every popular music form in the last 35 years, from nob-twirling glam pioneer to producing some of the best albums to come out of post punk and new wave (not to mention his own role as a forefather to electronic and ambient music) it’s not really a surprise he chose to experiment with another electronic medium—video.
In 1981 he set about to reexamine the role of video, altering it from a storytelling form to a purer visual medium. The timing was fortuitous; he was at the height of his artistic influence on popular culture having created the blueprint for experimental electronics in pop music with David Bowie's influential electronic-based Berlin albums a few years before.
A new DVD has been released containing two of his works from that era, and they work much like his ambient music, using dream-like tempos and digital manipulations that illuminate the composition. Perhaps the best feature is the idea that the videos be played on televisions placed on their sides, transforming them from devices of news and entertainment to gallery artworks, viewable as slowly moving paintings, liberating the medium from it slavishness to narrative and progression.
by Patrick Speckman
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