77 million paintings is the title of the most recent Brian Eno’s video-installation. It can be described as a conception machine which produces an ever-evolving visual metamorphosis based on the random combination of a set of hand-made graphical work painted by Brian Eno himself. The resulting images are formed by the use of superposition and fading among the original graphic work, and are proyected over a variety of sites and surfaces. Each “light-painting” lasts only for a brief lap of time until it evolves into a different one.

photo by dailymail.co.uk

Even when the artist has a certain control over the input images and the time they last, the resulting image is unpredictable and thus the name Autogenerative Art. With 77 million possible combinations, the probability of seeing the same painting (or sequence) twice is the same as the probability of one person to win the lottery and get struck by a lightning, in the same day.


The  background music is also a random combination of a set of samples and electronic ambient sounds, very characteristic of Brian Eno. Although the music blends really well, in my opinion, the sonic diversity is not as vast as the graphic work.

A plus is that this installation can be – to a certain point – experimented by anyone with a minimum of electronic gear. This is because the software with the original artwork used during this installation was released by Brian Eno in a DVD… ed2k link.

photo by Scott Beale

Here’s a video of Brian Eno’s presentation during an instalation of 77 million paintings

The 77 million paintings by Brian Eno by Red Mezzanine, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.