Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK
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INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS & RELATED ARTICLES

Australian Broadcasting Commission JUNE 4, 2009 - by Lanneke Hargreaves

LUMINOUS FESTIVAL HOPES TO SPARK BIG IDEAS

You may not know his name but if you've been to an airport or logged onto a computer, you will have heard his music.

Brian Eno is the father of what's termed "ambient music". He is also one of the world's most sought after record producers - David Bowie, U2 and Coldplay are among his clients.

Constantly seeking new challenges, Eno is currently in Australia to curate the inaugural Luminous Festival at the Sydney Opera House - a three-week music, art and intellectual extravaganza.

It's been described as a unique meeting of science and art.

"Science and art aren't irreconcilable," Eno said.

"They've been all sorts of terrible attempts to make art meet science... and I think they haven't worked very well, but I think they can work well and I hope there will be some in this festival."

A highlight of the festival is Eno's 77 Million Paintings - a video installation.

Using a group of high definition television monitors and computer software, three hundred individual paintings are suffled around like a deck of cards.

"It's never that different at any point, but it's never exactly the same... rather like watching some natural phenomenon, like watching a river," he said.

The festival runs for three weeks and on the bill are musicians, artists and thinkers from Australia and around the world.

NEW WAYS OF THINKING

Eno hopes this event will sow the seeds of new ways of thinking and creating.

One of his passions is the environment and tackling global warming.

He wants to inspire greater co-operation between governments and cultures, in order to come up with a solution.

"The downside of it is that it requires governments all over the world to co-operate with one another. The upside is that it requires governments all over the word to co-operate with each other," he said.

"So the upside could be some sort of new future where the governments learn to be global, and some sort of global governance emerges from this.

"We really need this, not just for the environment."

The festival will feature a discussion with renowned environmental lawyer James Thornton, who runs Client Earth - of which Eno is a patron.

The organisation has a radical approach to environmental issues. Run by lawyers, it works at enforcing existing

"What Client Earth does, it uses existing law and existing legal structures to make governments do what they've promised to do," Eno said.

"Because governments sign a lot of legislation saying, you know, 'we're going to cut carbon emissions on this' and 'we're going to insist on that', and then they don't enforce it."

Client Earth also advises governments on policy. Recently the Dutch Government sought its advice on reforming their environmental laws.

It also fights legal cases on behalf of environmental groups. Recently Client Earth prepared the case for an environmental group that wanted to take the French Government to court to enforce laws on drift net fishing.

"When they saw the case (the French Government) they immediately started enforcing the law, because they knew they would lose the case," Eno said.


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