Famed Producer and Musician Brian Eno Helps Build a 10,000-Year Clock in Texas

The Colbert ReportGet More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video ArchiveFor many who watched the interview with Brian Eno on the Colbert Report, there was interesting news about Eno's current project. No, it's not a reunion for Roxy Music, his band in the '70s, or production on Coldplay's...

By Daniel Hopkins

November 11, 2011

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The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

For many who watched the interview with Brian Eno on the Colbert Report, there was interesting news about Eno's current project. No, it's not a reunion for Roxy Music, his band in the '70s, or production on Coldplay's next record. It's The Long Now Foundation, a group of scientists led by Danny Hillis who are building a 10,000-year clock that will eventually be installed inside a mountain on a ranch in Van Horn, Texas, home to Amazon.com's founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, the project's primary benefactor.

Eno, probably the most scientific mind in modern pop music, came up with the name of the foundation. He also came up with a software that will generate the melody of the clock's ten chimes. The chimes will ring once a day and will never play the same melody twice, thanks to the clock's mechanical computer.

Eno, outside of boosting Coldplay's stardom by producing their last two records, Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends and Mylo Xyloto, has put a lot of work into this project, which dates to his 2003 album January 07003: Bell Sudies for the Clock of the Long Now.

The clock, which is one of the foundation's many projects, will be an answer to what it's founders see as the problem of immediate gratification. The idea is to get people thinking about the distant future rather than the immediate present, and, according to the project's website, to answer the question "virologist Jonas Salk once asked, 'Are we being good ancestors?'"

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