A lecture of asking WHY do things exist/happen/co-exist in the ways they do.
Broadcast on BBC6 Brian Eno's 2015 John Peel lecture is essentially a homage to Peel's curating and how Peel gave Eno his first break. Eno and Roxy Music's style is very experimental, commented to be "Bowies muse" and "U2's 5th Man" through his wacky use of synthesisers and distortion.
His discreet music marked the creation of ambient music and is now a sought after producer.
Eno is a self titled "Painter in Sound" and this lecture explores his view on the creative arts.
The end of the Arts is marked if we can quantify what we do down to a single number.
He disagrees that students not go to into the arts as theres no jobs. The arts is for us, relax to do after their "normal" socio economic jobs. The lucky few get to make a living from art.
He questions if art is luxury?
Eno's perfectly concise definition of "art" is that "Art is everything that you dont have to do", it is not a nessecity for living, not like basic food. We embellish all of these things eg: fancy clothes are unessential. Even something as basic as movement we as humans we elaborate and stylise it into dance- this (no matter how simple) is art.
I later thought about this idea deeper and realised we are all basically looking the same. We all feed from the same consumeristic state by following trends, which all falls under the broad definition of "art".
So why do we naturally embellish everything? Eno says "stylising" and embellishing is "the construction of little worlds". As children create pretend worlds during playtime, as adults we imagine how something might be and create it forming our own little world. Up to this point in the lecture I was intrigued but not gripped. Naturally, this philosophical theory really made me open my eyes and I realised how true this philosophy is.
Why do we like music and how to we get preferences? (None of it has functionality)
We can imagine anything. This separates us from other animals and allows us to play out full scenarios in our mind creating empathy and other emotive human quality. Eno explores that we need to imagine the pain/ hurt in someones head so we can sympathise with it. We can also imagine things and transform them into DESIGN.. Adults play through art, and people DIFFERENT to the CREATOR absorb the art, introducing them to a new little world.
Later on in the talk Eno touches on the topic of identity and why we do certain things. By picking a hairstyle/ outfit we are trying to position ourselves in that world. It seems we are all subconsciously trying to find where we fit in the world and identify with similar people via our appearance. Again, I paused the podcast and realised that this ideology is great because if true, we can change what world we are in daily. If we wanted too we could all play around with free identities whenever the mood hit.
Does art have a serious function?
We can look at it unobjectively and from a neutral point that are not connected to us or dangerous.
Eno discusses that Art has the role of being a safe place where you can see these little fake worlds and feel real emotion, then simply leave/ switch it off whenever you want to exit.
After touching on some of his own passions for Russian Paintings, he explored the meaning of "seenius". I had never heard of this word before, but it basically means the talent of a whole community around the artist who makes history. The one who goes down in history (in his reference it was Kandinsky) is surrounded by "The ecosystem". This is essentially the entity that makes it famous as just like an ecosystem, the culture and collaborative forces all feed into each other.
"We celebrate the individuals- not the community they are drawing from". This was one of his points to emphasise his passionate that it is ok not to be "self made" despite popular belief. We take inspiration from everyone and anyone we interact with around us. It seems we as society remould ourselves collectively based on the world around us (ouchism).
Coming to the end of the talk during a Q&A, Eno discusses the idea of critic's within the Art Industry. He made no effort to hide how odd he thinks it is that critics define music by the words. He believes the meaning is in the beat, melody and the circumference of things all around the words- which is a very valid point. A song with the same content can be completely different, eg: ballads vs slow reggae with the same words.
In conclusion, the "creative industries" are an unquantifiable notion. Art is everything extra, providing us with luxury and giving our lives "added value". A very philosophical message transcended which should made us all question everything we do- and why.
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