Figure and ground, image and sound: The digital medium in Brian Eno’s Thursday Afternoon

Abstract

Abstract This article analyses the discrepancy between the medium-specificity of Brian Eno’s 1985 compact disc (CD) Thursday Afternoon and the intermediality of its precursor, Eno’s 1984 video artwork of the same name. I historicize these seemingly contrasting aesthetic strategies vis-à-vis medium alongside an epistemological shift in our conception of the musical recording during the rise of the CD in the early-to-mid-1980s. I argue the counter-intuitive point that the home video version of Thursday Afternoon represents the fullest realization of Eno’s medium-specific inquiry into the emergent CD technology.