With decades of creative diversity encompassing electronic music, art projects, film scores, and apps, it comes as no surprise that Brian Eno and Underworld's Karl Hyde just released Eno • Hyde, an augmented reality app for iOS. While most artists of their respective generations are settling down into artistic complacency and comfort, Eno and Hyde (a founding member of [arts collective Tomato](http:// http://www.tomato.co.uk/)) aggressively engage technology in whatever media output that trips their triggers.With Eno • Hyde, iOS users can cause in augmented fashion new “outsider architecture metropolises” to bloom on users' vinyl copy of the duo's album Someday World, or whatever album format they've purchased. In the vinyl version of the app, however, a panoply of prismatic geometric shapes and skyscrapers pulsate, bounce, disintegrate and reassemble as the record makes its revolutions, with the track “Strip It Down” soundtracking the experience. It's an interesting fusion of analogue and digital worlds.
Eno got his start making apps alongside Peter Childers (who also collaborates with Hyde) back in 2008 with Bloom, a generative music app. The pair then released the [Air](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/air/id312163985?mt=8and Trope https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/trope/id312164495?mt=8) [apps](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/air/id312163985?mt=8and Trope https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/trope/id312164495?mt=8), generative audio-visual follow-ups to Bloom. But for the augmented reality app, the pair partnered with new media and generative music artist Lukasz Karluck (the mind behind HoloDecks), and the creative studio Toby and Pete.In the process of recording Someday World, Eno and Hyde threw various guidelines up on a whiteboard to inform the album. Phrases like “Only Strong Feelings Please” and “Work Standing Up” became operating procedures. The last phrase, “Build Cities on Hills,” eventually became the duo's metaphor for augmentation.“A lot of the nicer cities I know are cities built on hills, and the cities are beautiful because the buildings have a challenge to adapt to,” said Eno of the phrases impact on the album, which influenced the creation of the app. “They have to mould themselves around the geology that they've formed upon. And that always makes for very interesting buildings, because they can't just be blocks, they have to somehow morph around the environment. A lot of the constructions on the album were deliberately irregular and awkward.”
Eno, what a guy. The man's always thinking, plotting, and making the world of music and technology just a bit cooler one project at a time. Now, can he and Hyde please give us a large-scale augmented reality experience already?Fore more on the project, and to buy the album, visit Warp Record's website.Related:Generative App From Brian Eno Makes Music That Thinks For ItselfAn Exclusive Look Inside Radiohead's Audiovisual App, PolyFaunaBrian Eno's 77 Million Paintings Creates Mesmerizing Art Before Your Eyes
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