A Generative Existence

A few paintings from Brian Eno's 77 Million Paintings

Brian and Will touched on some points that I feel are quite important, especially in reference to interactive storytelling. Mainly, generative/algorithmic entertainment and time.

Brian spoke about Steve Reich's "It's Gonna Rain" as largely his inspiration to make ambient music. "It's Gonna Rain" is composed of two pieces, each 1.8 seconds long. The two pieces are played together but slightly out of sync. The resulting composition is approximately 20 minutes long. I predict that this generative style of entertainment is the future of interaction. No longer will we be forced to follow a linear story; we will be on one track, slightly out of sync with another and meet up somewhere, resulting in a different outcome every time.

Time is another aspect of generative media that is quite interesting. Will showed in the video that time is a crucial part of the generative process of John Conway's game of life. The faster the game went along, the more of the patterns one could see. The time aspect of new games will allow for a more exciting generative experience. Brian mentioned in the video that he would go to a museum and play Conway's Life. Will went on to mention that the hardware in the museum wasn't very fast and couldn't run the game at many generations per second. This idea of time allows the viewer to see far into the future. For example, Brian might not have seen what amazing pattern was created by his idea for the game of life when he played it in the museum but now that we are able to play out this sequence to its fullest, Brian would now able to see his idea many generations down the line.