When the summer 1986 issue of
Artforum was published, it contained a prize: a flexi-disc tucked between pages seventy-eight and seventy-nine. On it was
Glint (East of Woodbridge), a new record created for the magazine by Brian Eno. (The song would later be released on Eno’s 1992 LP
The Shutov Assembly, under the title “
Lanzarote.”) In the issue, which featured a still from Eno’s 1986 audiovisual installation
Living Room on its cover, the polymath artist spoke with
Artforum publisher emeritus Anthony Korner.
Introducing the conversation, Korner recalled his first encounter with one of Eno’s installation works. “I was captivated,” he said. “As far as I could tell, there was no repetition.” And there wasn’t: Eno had “developed a way of using the technology of the tape, whether aural or video, to generate constant variety.”
Eno, Gary Hustwit’s documentary on the pioneering musician, which premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, takes a similar approach: A kind of living film, it algorithmically mutates upon each screening, never unfurling the same way twice.
As
showings of
Eno are extended in New York and debuting at theaters around the world,
Artforum revisits Eno’s conversation with Korner, in which the artist discusses sound as the texture of an environment, blurring the distinction between musician and audience, what our ears have in common with frogs’ eyes, and how gospel music changed his life.
—The editors
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