This year’s Brighton Festival might come across as “Brian Eno Week” as Nicola says, because he’s been curating the Festival. We have a big day out and finally pottered around all the bits I’ve been mourning over from behind a window, glued to a dissertation.

Out of the assorted faff of red, blue, yellow and green rooms, bored looking attendants, and quotes on the walls that don’t put much in context (although I nod knowingly, and think “oooh, disco balls” when I spot them) there’s good bits.

Whilst the patch of synthetic grass in the middle of the room makes no sense, and the peculiar humming of flower-shapes-on-sticks and disco balls are mindlessly nice, and we sit on armchairs listening to strange music surrounded by firs, this catches me eye.

There’s a nice electronic music piece. Nothing fancy, but comparatively fun and interactive (nouns Eno might not be a fan of). It involves long benches with thin strands of wire going from a sensor at one end, to the other where buckets of rocks hung off the end. I stand gormlessly for a while until the ‘art lady’ starts lifting taking some out of the basket, changing the idle hum from the speaker. We leap on it, idly worrying that we’ll destroy the exhibition by throwing the rocks into the basket all at once. But it doesn’t, and the pitch goes from very high to very low. It’s incredibly simple in a way, but really nice (especially compared to the other bits..)

Later we stumble into Fabrica where Eno’s out again. Jonathan wrote a brilliant description so I’m shameless stealing it.

“Rather misleadingly titled ‘77 Million Paintings’, the show actually focuses on one piece – a large, evolving graphic up on a large screen at the far end of the dark church. The same aesthetic which drives much of Eno’s music is apparent in the work; it is neither instantly rewarding nor demanding, but instead a kind of slow, transformative experience for which the term ‘ambient’ (traditionally used to characterise much of Eno’s music) remains the best descriptive term I can conjure up.

It’s essentially a series of locked geometric shapes which move through a range of patterns and colours in a sequence determined by ‘generative software’ which is capable – as the title of the piece suggests – of 77 million possible permutations (which would take, apparently, over a thousand years to unfold). The transformations are slow but remarkably evocative.
..
Imagine yourself sat in a church, half-dozing, glancing down at the cobbled floor. As the sun progresses slowly across the sky outside, light catches panes of the stained glass windows high above, and casts a reflection down on the floor in front of you. The light shimmers and shines, ducks behind a cloud, comes up for air. The quality of light changes, and different parts of the window are alternately obscured and revealed. What plays out on the floor in front of you is the combination of chance, nature and design, and it is playing only for you.”

We loved it. Later in the week my parents visit and I show them this cultural hi-light. My Father falls asleep.