77 Million Paintings

77 Million Paintings is a software/DVD combination by British musician Brian Eno, released in 2006.

The release consists of two discs, one containing the software that creates the randomized music and images that emulate a single screen of one of Eno's video installation pieces. The other is a DVD containing interviews with the artist.

The title is derived from the possible number of combinations of video and music which can be generated by the software, effectively ensuring that the same image/soundscape is never played twice.

An accompanying booklet includes a piece by Nick Robertson describing the intention behind the software, and an article by Brian Eno ("My Light Years") describing his experiments with light and music.

The software was developed by Jake Dowie for both Windows and Macintosh operating systems.

First Edition

Far from containing 77 million paintings, the software consists of 296 original works which are overlaid and combined up to four at a time in a simulation of simultaneous projection onto a common screen. The various images are slowly faded in and out asynchronously before being replaced by another random element. Also the music that accompanies the paintings, if played on a Mac G5 or a Windows PC, is randomly generated in a similar way, so the selection of elements and their duration in the piece are arbitrarily chosen, forming a virtually infinite number of variations.

Brian Eno

Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno,RDI (/ˈiːnoʊ/; born 15 May 1948 and originally christened Brian Peter George Eno), professionally known as Brian Eno or simply Eno, is an English musician, composer, record producer, singer, and visual artist, known as one of the principal innovators of ambient music. Born in Suffolk, Eno studied under Roy Ascott at Ipswich Civic College and later attended Colchester Institute art school in Essex, England, taking inspiration from minimalist painting, cybernetics, and experimental music techniques during his time there. He joined the band Roxy Music as synthesiser player in the early 1970s. The group's success in the glam rock scene came quickly, but Eno soon became tired of touring and of conflicts with lead singer Bryan Ferry, leaving the group in 1973 to record innovative solo albums that would explore various styles and help pioneer ambient music.

Throughout the 1970s, Eno also worked as an influential collaborator and music producer, collaborating with Robert Fripp on the LPs (No Pussyfooting) (1973) and Evening Star (1975), David Bowie on his acclaimed "Berlin Trilogy," avant-garde musicians Jon Hassell and Harold Budd on several respective projects, and David Byrne on My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (released 1981), and further producing the acclaimed "No Wave" compilation No New York (1978), three albums by New York post-punk group Talking Heads, and albums by new wave bands Devo and Ultravox, among others. In subsequent decades, he has produced or worked on albums by U2, James, Laurie Anderson, Coldplay, Paul Simon, Grace Jones, James Blake and Slowdive, among others. Eno has also pursued multimedia ventures in parallel to his music career, including his mid-1970s development of "Oblique Strategies" (written with Peter Schmidt), a deck of cards featuring cryptic aphorisms intended to break creative blocks and encourage lateral thinking.

Brian

Brian (sometimes spelled Bryan) is a male given name of Irish and Breton origin, as well as a surname of Occitan origin. It is common in the English-speaking world. It is possible that the name is derived from an Old Celtic word meaning "high" or "noble". For example, the element bre means "hill"; which could be transferred to mean "eminence" or "exalted one". The name is quite popular in Ireland, on account of Brian Boru, a 10th-century king of Ireland. The name was also quite popular in East Anglia during the Middle Ages. This is because the name was introduced to England by Bretons following the Norman Conquest. Bretons also settled in Ireland along with the Normans in the 12th century, and 'their' name was mingled with the 'Irish' version. Also, in the north-west of England, the 'Irish' name was introduced by Scandinavian settlers from Ireland. Within the Gaelic speaking areas of Scotland, the name was at first only used by professional families of Irish origin. It was the fourth most popular male name in England and Wales in 1934, but a sharp decline followed over the remainder of the 20th century and by 1994 it had fallen out of the top 100. It retained its popularity in the United States for longer; its most popular period there was from 1968–1979 when it consistently ranked between eighth and tenth.

Million

One million (1,000,000) or one thousand thousand is the natural number following 999,999 and preceding 1,000,001. The word is derived from the early Italian millione (milione in modern Italian), from mille, "thousand", plus the augmentative suffix -one. It is commonly abbreviated as m or M; further MM ("thousand thousands", from Latin "Mille"; not to be confused with the Roman numeral MM = 2,000), mm, or mn in financial contexts.

In scientific notation, it is written as 7006100000000000000♠1×10⁶ or 10⁶.Physical quantities can also be expressed using the SI prefix mega (M), when dealing with SI units; for example, 1 megawatt (1 MW) equals 1,000,000 watts.

The meaning of the word "million" is common to the short scale and long scale numbering systems, unlike the larger numbers, which have different names in the two systems.

The million is sometimes used in the English language as a metaphor for a very large number, as in "Not in a million years" and "You're one in a million", or a hyperbole, as in "I've walked a million miles" and "You've asked the million-dollar question".