77 Million Paintings is a

digital art Digital art refers to any artistic work or practice that uses digital technology as part of the creative or presentation process, or more specifically computational art that uses and engages with digital media. Since the 1960s, various names ...

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kin ...

combination by British musician

Brian Eno Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno (; born Brian Peter George Eno, 15 May 1948) is a British musician, composer, record producer and visual artist best known for his contributions to ambient music and work in rock, pop an ...

, released in 2006. The release consists of two discs, one containing the software that creates the randomized music and images that emulate a single screen of one of Eno's video installation pieces. The other is a DVD containing interviews with the artist. The title is derived from the possible number of combinations of video and music which can be generated by the software, effectively ensuring that the same image/

soundscape A soundscape is the acoustic environment as perceived by humans, in context. The term was originally coined by Michael Southworth, and popularised by R. Murray Schafer. There is a varied history of the use of soundscape depending on discipline, r ...

is never played twice. An accompanying booklet includes a piece by Nick Robertson describing the intention behind the software, and an article by Brian Eno ("My Light Years") describing his experiments with light and music. The software was developed by Jake Dowie for both

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and

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First Edition

Far from containing 77 million paintings, the software consists of 296 original works which are overlaid and combined up to four at a time in a simulation of simultaneous projection onto a common screen. The various images are slowly faded in and out asynchronously before being replaced by another random element. Also, the music that accompanies the paintings, if played on a Mac G5 or a Windows PC, is randomly generated in a similar way, so the selection of elements and their duration in the piece are arbitrarily chosen, forming a virtually infinite number of variations. In conjunction with this, Annabeth Robinson (AngryBeth Shortbread) recreated the performance in

Second Life ''Second Life'' is an online multimedia platform that allows people to create an avatar for themselves and then interact with other users and user created content within a multi player online virtual world. Developed and owned by the San Fra ...

by building the performance in a multi-user virtual environment (

MUVE A virtual world (also called a virtual space) is a computer-simulated environment which may be populated by many users who can create a personal avatar, and simultaneously and independently explore the virtual world, participate in its activities ...

Second Edition

A second edition of "77 Million Paintings", featuring improved morphing and a further two layers of sound, was released on 14 January 2008.

Project evolution

77 Million Paintings has evolved beyond the domestic environment. It continues to be shown in multiple-monitor configurations in art galleries and is projected onto iconic buildings around the world. In 2009, Eno was invited to project 77 Million Paintings onto the sails of the

Sydney Opera House The Sydney Opera House is a multi-venue performing arts centre in Sydney. Located on the foreshore of Sydney Harbour, it is widely regarded as one of the world's most famous and distinctive buildings and a masterpiece of 20th-century architec ...

References

External links

Official siteGallery
by the

Long Now Foundation The Long Now Foundation, established in 1996, is an American non-profit organization based in San Francisco that seeks to start and promote a long-term cultural institution. It aims to provide a counterpoint to what it views as today's "faster ...

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First Edition

Second Edition

Project evolution

See also

References

External links