Three films about the intersection of art and music stood out at the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival and the Sheffield Documentary Festival. Eno, Devo, and All Things Metal were far from the only music documentaries on view— the offerings covered everyone from Carol Kane to Harry Belafonte to Linda Perry and musical moments such as New Wave, Rebel Country, and Belfastian hip-hop.
Eno, Devo, and All Things Metal celebrate artists who are more than just players, composers, and producers. Each film’s subjects connect deeply to other art forms, particularly the visual arts and design. Their work speaks across mediums, each in its own way.
Eno
Eno profiles Brian Eno, an intelligent screen presence and creative force, as a musician (Roxy Music), producer (David Bowie, U2, Talking Heads, Devo, Coldplay), and composer of ambient music and soundtracks. The groundbreaking film by Gary Hustwit chronicles Brian Eno’s five decades at the edge of musical creativity, technology, and artistic innovation.
Deeply influenced by the experimentation of the art school movement in Britain (“school” attendees included John Lennon, David Bowie, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Ray Davies, and Pete Townshend), which fostered the notion that they were not just entertainers but artists, and interestingly, gave them ironic detachment. Eno learned about John Cage, “who practiced “aleatoric” or chance/random music; and the desire to raise pop music to a new level of ideas.“ In this atmosphere, you could just as easily make music as make a painting or write a poem. They were encouraged to see music as a repository of pop culture, using “atonal and atypical musical elements like guitar feedback, distortion, or eastern influenced sounds.”
When you don’t stick to a single idiom or style, there’s a danger of being dismissed as too diffused and unfocused, but Eno has overcome this with his seriousness, straightforwardness, unfailing instincts, and luck. His work has been called synesthetic — “when your brain routes sensory information through multiple unrelated senses, causing you to experience more than one sense simultaneously.”
In the film, Eno talks about making music as a creative process like gardening: planting seeds and filtering landscapes to “sculpt” music in an environment of exploration. The ambient music he is known for derives from the stillness or close-to-nothingness he experienced watching the 1969 Apollo mission. The Apollo experience motivated his music for the 1989 documentary about going to the moon, For All Mankind. Eno describes the process as “watching the auditory system in operation,” thus demonstrating his intuitive comprehension of the brain “seeing” patterns.” It makes sense that he admires the work of the Dutch artist Mondrian, a disciplined artist and theoretician.
One of the most important aspects of the film is that it uses a generative software program to select footage and edit the film so that every screening is a different version of the film. In effect, the film mirrors Eno’s abundant process, creating music compositions using a system of sonic elements that create endless variations in its own ecosystem.
Devo
Few groups embraced sci-fi, satire, and surrealism with the gusto that the Dada-inspired, US new-wave, art-punk, synth-pop band Devo did. It started as a literary and art movement, sentiments still shared by founders Gerald Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh (who has gone on to do film & TV scores including Pee-wee’s Playhouse, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Shameless), their brothers (the Bobs), and Alan Myers.
In their review of Devo, directed by Chris Smith, Variety described the band as “Performance-art showmen, pioneers of music video, satirical absurdists with a big message (that American society wasn’t progressing — it was devolving),” the opposite of the promise of post-WWII America.
Devo members showed a geeky knowledge of art history mixed with humor and camp. Their best-known song is “Whip It;” in the video, they sported upside-down flowerpot hats, jumpsuits, and distinctive goggle eyeglasses (inspired partly by the industry in their hometown, Akron, OH, home to rubber manufacturers like Firestone)—truly an art band.
As art students at Kent State University in Ohio, Mothersbaugh and Casale were forever changed by the National Guard killing of students protesting the Vietnam War on campus. “There would be no Devo without Kent State,” says Mothersbaugh in the film. They were more comfortable identifying themselves as absurdists, aliens who came to Earth to infiltrate the culture. The group’s influences include Dada and Surrealism (two European art movements that emerged between the World Wars), Andy Warhol, and science fiction (the 1932 film Island of Lost Souls where Bela Lugo’s character’s response to Charles Laughton’s mad scientist who tries to turn animals into humans says “Are we not men?” became their catchphrase).
Before shifting to music, Mothersbaugh and Casale were performance artists. They were music video pioneers before the emergence of MTV (their first film won a prize at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, featuring graphic art by Mothersbaugh). Playing at NYC’s CBGB and Max’s Kansas City, they attracted admirers such as Debbie Harry, Jack Nicholson, Dennis Hopper, John Waters, Iggy Pop, Leonard Cohen, and John Lennon. Ultimately, they were considered too weird, arty, and subversive for the mainstream.
All Things Metal
All Things Metal profiles Dan, Joel, and Andy Patterson, three brothers who run the Santa Barbara Forge + Iron. The custom metalwork shop believes “great design coupled with beautiful materials make our day-to-day lives richer and more rooted.” But for the Patterson brothers, metal also means music—heavy metal, specifically, a passion they share with the documentary’s director, Motoki Otsuka.
After hours, they turn their forge into a film studio, creating elaborate music videos, for which they have a rich back catalog, mainly for their consumption. The brothers make the costumes, props, and even creatures for elaborate music videos featuring music they write, produce, and perform. Their musical and artistic endeavors showcase their neurodivergence as well—the brothers all have Tourette’s syndrome, a condition yielding repetitive movements or unwanted sounds (tics) that cannot be easily controlled.
There is barely a distinction between making music and crafting metal for the Pattersons.
Fine art, music, and craft often converge in the lives of multifaceted visual artists and designers. Frequently, medium-dabbling is a trait of those designers who’ve made a big mark, have long, prolific careers, and whose names have become part of our cultural lexicon.
Soaking up the genius of Brian Eno, Devo, and the Patterson brothers could be just the inspiration you’ve been seeking—as if you need additional motivation to watch and learn.
Susan Morris works across media — film, television, radio, exhibitions, public programs, print, digital media — specializing in the arts and culture with a special emphasis on architecture and design. She has worked at the Ford Foundation, NEA, NY Times Television, Louise Blouin Media (Editor-in-Chief, Modern Painters), WNYC/PRI (founding Executive Producer, Studio 360), WNET/Thirteen, IFC, Bravo, J. Paul Getty Trust, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cooper Hewitt, MoMA, International House, Rockefeller Foundation, and has written for Architect’s Newspaper, Design Observer, Dwell, Artbyte, Documentary, House & Garden, and Eye.
Header image: Still from Eno, a film by Gary Hustwit.