"It’s the softness of these colours and the way they merge with each other that is so seductive" Brian Eno 2024
Brian Eno’s Turntable II is made up of a platter and base, which change colours independently, seamlessly phasing through combinations of generative ‘colourscapes’. The pattern of lights, the speed at which they change and how they change are programmed, but programmed to change randomly and slowly. It plays both 33 and 45rpm vinyl.
"When it doesn’t have to do anything in particular, like play a record, it is a sculpture"
Brian Eno 2024
"Since my first experiments with light and sound in the late 1960's, I’ve never ceased to be fascinated by the amazingly intricate, complex and unpredictable results produced by simple deterministic systems. Out of simplicity, complexity arises. That is for me the most incredible idea of evolution theory and of cybernetics. John Cage once said: 'The function of Art is to imitate Nature in her manner of operation' and that has been an objective for me throughout my working life.
I use the same sorts of generative processes in music as in painting, based on overlapping unsynchronised cycles. Several overlapping light cycles will keep producing different colour balances and blends - and different shadow formations that slowly evolve and never exactly repeat. The process is simple. The results are complex.
I started using light and video because I wanted to make visual experiences that had some of the qualities of musical experiences - that’s to say, that existed and changed in time. I wanted to make very slowly changing paintings, to blur the edges that separate those different forms"
Brian Eno 2018
