I have been reading "After Photography" on and off since last fall. It is part photography critique, part revelation, and an incredibly important voice that helps me to understand the far reaching hand of the digital age passed our reality, passed our death? Ritchin, in one of the last chapters I read this morning entitled "Of Synthetics and Cyborgs," refers to an interview with Brian Eno, musician and multimedia artist, with Wired Magazine.
If I could give you a black box that could do anything, what would you have it do?
I would love to have a box onto which I could offload choice making. A thing that makes choices about its outputs, and says to itself, This is a good output, reinforce that, or replay it, or feed it back in. I would love to have this machine stand for me. I could program this box to be my particular taste and interest in things.
Why do you want to do that? You have you.
Yes, I have me. But I want to be able to sell systems for making my music as well as selling pieces of music. In the future, you won't buy artists' works; you'll buy software that makes original pieces of "their" works, or that recreates their way of looking at things. You could buy a Shostakovich box, or you could buy a Brahms box. You might want some Shostakovich slow-movement-like music to be generated. So then you use that box. Or you could buy a Brian Eno box. So then I would need to put in this box a device that represents my taste for choosing pieces.
I guess the only thing weirder than hearing your own music being broadcast on the radios of strangers is hearing music that you might have written being broadcast!
Yes, music that I might have written but didn't!
Will you still like the idea of these surrogate Brian Enos when they start generating your best work?
Sure! Naturally, it's a modifiable box, you know. Say you like Brahms and Brian Eno. You could get the two of them to collaborate on something, see what happens if you allow them to hybridize. The possibilities for this are fabulous.
What's left for us to do then?
Cheat. And lie.
Stuff like this makes my mouth hang open. Let your passes on loved ones live on in your heart. Brian Eno will live on literally through you. Creepy and amazing. I haven't even put my pants on yet.
