Brian Eno on immersive installations using video game technology: 'In terms of our understanding of what it is, we’re right at the beginning'

Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter for all the latest entertainment news and reviews Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Other musicians, such as Thom Yorke of Radiohead and Tarik Barri, are entering this “immersive” realm, using tools such as virtual reality headsets, holographic mixed-reality goggles and immersive surround-sound systems “It’s the right time for the artists that have been using this technology,” says Nick Meehan, the founding chairman and artistic director of the Institute for Sound and Music in Berlin, which is building a six-screen, surround-sound projection structure called the ISM Hexadome. open image in gallery Light art work ‘77 Million Paintings’ by Brian Eno, projected onto the Sydney Opera House in 2009 Eno says that he saw Bloom: Open Space, which had a limited five-day run here last month, as “the beginning of an experiment” with these new technologies. “It really depends on how I move what music will be heard.” Barri doesn’t employ virtual reality goggles because he thinks having “something stuck to your face” is awkward and restrictive. open image in gallery Eno performing with Roxy Music in the early 1970s Eno, an early member of the band Roxy Music, has had a long career of bending technologies to his alternative sound purposes, like using multiple cassette tapes in the 1980s to create overlapping, unsynchronised sounds, or using 12 high-powered computer-controlled projectors to beam visuals for his musical piece “77 Million Paintings” across the sails of the Sydney Opera House in 2009.