By Anne Levin

The career of innovative musician and producer Brian Eno is the subject of a documentary to be screened on Tuesday, October 8 at the Princeton Garden Theatre. What makes this one-night-only event unique is its use of the latest AI technology, which means it will never be seen the same way twice.

Eno premiered in January at the Sundance Film Festival. Landing the screening, which is underwritten by the Princeton Record Exchange, is a coup for the Garden. Kyle Stenger, the theater’s outreach director, thinks it is the only movie house in New Jersey to have the honor.

“It’s a brand-new concept called ‘generative documentary.’ The director, Gary Hustwit, developed this AI software specifically for this movie, and it is re-edited for every showing so it’s different every single time,” said Stenger. “You’re never going to get a version of it that has Eno’s whole life in it. You might get his time with David Bowie in Berlin, or with David Byrne in Talking Heads. That’s what makes it so exciting. It’s a radical concept that is also meant to reflect the experimental process of Eno himself.”

An English musician, songwriter, record producer, and visual artist, Eno is known for his pioneering contributions to ambient music over the past 50 years.

“The hugely influential British musician, producer, activist, visual artist and self-described ‘sonic landscaper’ began his career as an original member of the legendary Roxy Music in the early 1970s,” reads Hustwit’s website. “He left the band to release a series of solo records and later pioneered the genre of ambient music with his 1978 album Ambient 1: Music for Airports. As a producer, Brian Eno has helped define and reinvent the sound of some of the most important artists in music, including David Bowie, U2, Talking Heads, Coldplay, and dozens of others. He also composed what may be the most heard piece of music in the world: the startup sound for Microsoft Windows. Undeniably, Eno has changed the way modern music is made.”

The website goes on to explain the technology used in the film. “Hustwit and creative technologist Brendan Dawes have developed bespoke generative software designed to sequence scenes and create transitions out of Hustwit’s original interviews with Eno, and Eno’s rich archive of hundreds of hours of never-before-seen footage, and unreleased music. Each screening of Eno is unique, presenting different scenes, order, music, and meant to be experienced live. The generative and infinitely iterative quality of Eno poetically resonates with the artist’s own creative practice, his methods of using technology to compose music, and his endless deep dive into the mercurial essence of creativity.”

The film’s process was developed not just to reflect Eno’s process of producing and recording, but also his unique methods of cutting and pasting. “He’s very experimental,” said Stenger. “The idea is that this film is an experiment in storytelling, much like Eno’s music is an experiment in recording.”

The Garden secured the screening through its membership in Art House Convergence, a coalition of independent exhibitors that advocates for its community. The theater recently launched its Underwriting Program, in which a business or individual provides funding for a specific event or series.

“We were so happy to do this with the Princeton Record Exchange,” said Stenger. “They are making it possible, and we’re very happy to be partnered with them.”

Stenger plans to introduce the film before the screening begins.

“We’ve recently been trying to bring and events and films to the theater that are more difficult to come by, like our recent showing of the restored Seven Samurai,” said Stenger. “That was a great thing for us, and this will be, too.”

Eno will be shown on Tuesday, October 8 at 8 p.m. The Princeton Garden Theatre is at 160 Nassau Street. Visit princetongardentheatre.org for more information.