Brian Eno’s latest art piece is a product of his exploration into the world of patterns and how they can generate unexpected works of art. He used a small set of still photographs of people’s faces, which were slowly transformed pixel by pixel into new faces using specially created software. This process resulted in over 170,000 new faces being created between each real human.
In a video released by UNAM Cultural Diffusion, Eno spoke about his inspiration for this installation, revealing that it came from his fascination with transformations seen in pop music videos, superhero movies, and children’s toys like Transformers. He found the idea of people and things becoming other things to be very intriguing, prompting him to explore the concept of ‘creating’ new human beings.
Eno is known for using well-known gadgets in unconventional ways in his works, subverting their intended purposes to create something unexpected. For Face to Face for México, he expressed his joy in discovering the quiet drama of slow change and the ability to envision a universe of people who never existed but could have. These new faces all resemble real people, despite never actually existing.