Earlier this month, a handful of Gary Hustwit documentaries hit The Criterion Channel, including his Design Trilogy and the feature Rams, which is about an industrial designer. Until finally seeing Hustwit’s latest, Eno, I didn’t know how the documentary fit into the filmmaker’s area of focus. Now I can appreciate that the subject, Brian Eno, is something of a designer himself. Technically, in addition to being an iconic musician, songwriter, visual artist, pioneer of the ambient genre, and legendary record producer, he’s considered a professional sound designer. But as this film shows, he’s essentially also a music designer. Isn’t that just another term for songwriter or composer? Not really. Eno is both of those things as well, but based on how he describes his work, I’d say he’s more of a music designer.
Eno is a documentary that fits its subject’s concept of generative music, as Hustwit has employed a software system (human-coded, not AI as previously thought) to produce variations on its construction. Each time it’s shown, Eno can have a new edit, with different versions being in the quintillions. I wondered how that would work when it’s eventually put on a streaming site. The Criterion Channel has an answer: each month, the streamer will change the version of Eno available to subscribers.
I’ve only watched one version so far, so I don’t know if this gimmick really does anything noticeable. I do think that the film I saw works well to represent Eno, while not laying out his biography and career in an informative way. It’s more a sense of him and his life. Eno does much of the work that makes the documentary so riveting, since it’s mostly him talking about his work and how he came to be one of the world’s most sought-after recording artists and record producers, despite not initially knowing how to play any instruments or write music.
Eno has a way of explaining the brilliance of his music factually, so its genius isn’t something being bragged about. I’d much rather hear it from him than a bunch of peers, critics, fans, and historians spouting hyperbole about why he’s a legend. I could also listen to Eno talk about the importance of music for many more hours, or even more of him just asking if it’s time for lunch. As a speaker, he’s almost as entrancing as his music. He also, like his music, makes smooth work out of complexity. Is there more of this material that isn’t seen in this version but will be in others? I’m unclear. I’d have loved to hear him talk more about music’s role in spatial design.