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Eno, first generative documentary, different with each viewing

The idea seems straight out of Black Mirror or The Fourth Dimension. What if every time you watched the same documentary (and why not a film one day?), it became different?

Conceptual artist, musician and producer Brian Eno is the subject of this avant-garde documentary simply named Eno, which has the particularity of being different with each viewing.

This is a documentary££££

The feat, which is reminiscent of what generative artificial intelligence is capable of, is to the credit of its designers Gary Hustwit and Brendan Dawes who produced for the project a proprietary software - patent pending - called Brain One, an anagram of the artist Brian Eno, himself versed in "generative" art.

52 trillion versions££££

In total, the software is capable of generating 52 trillion versions of the documentary (according to the New York Times) from hundreds of hours of duly selected archives and interviews. Tailor-made sources without rights concerns, unlike the data used by most generative software of the moment.

The creators explain that the AI boom took place during the development of their project and that they therefore did not wait for these algorithms to become popular before embarking on this technological-artistic approach themselves.

The broadcast of this first generative film began in mid-July at the Film Forum in New York.