Read in Wired 3.05, May 1995 (via):
“Kevin Kelly: If I could give you a black box that could do anything, what would you have it do?
Brian Eno: I would love to have a box onto which I could offload choice making. A thing that makes choices about its outputs, and says to itself, This is a good output, reinforce that, or replay it, or feed it back in. I would love to have this machine stand for me. I could program this box to be my particular taste and interest in things.
Kevin Kelly:Why do you want to do that? You have you.
Brian Eno: Yes, I have me. But I want to be able to sell systems for making my music as well as selling pieces of music. In the future, you won’t buy artists’ works; you’ll buy software that makes original pieces of “their” works, or that recreates their way of looking at things. You could buy a Shostakovich box, or you could buy a Brahms box. You might want some Shostakovich slow-movement-like music to be generated. So then you use that box. Or you could buy a Brian Eno box. So then I would need to put in this box a device that represents my taste for choosing pieces.“
Why do I blog this? Well, simply because that’s good quote that partly reflects the discussions about New Aesthetics (and the audio side of it as I mentioned the other day, but I guess it’s applicable to other creative fields… think about architecture and Frank Gehry’s work for instance).