For decades, musician and artist Brian Eno has written and lectured on how to spark and foster creativity. A recent documentary, Eno, paid tribute to some of his unconventional methods. Now, Eno is releasing a book that approaches a corresponding concern: What the purpose of creativity is in the first place.

The book is titled What Art Does and is a collaboration with Bette Adriaanse, a Dutch artist who met Eno through TRQSE, a network of socially engaged artists and scientists that she co-founded.

Eno and Adriaanse’s book looks at why people create art, how it helps people, and the role it plays in keeping communities together. It’s a concern that is as pressing now as it ever has been. What Art Does explores “the function of fictional worlds—such as pop songs, detective novels, soap operas, shoe tassels, and the hidden language of haircuts,” the pair explained in a press release. The result, they say, is potentially “a new theory of art.”

“What Art Does” is set to be released on Dec 3. Photo: courtesy Cecily Eno.

The book has a complex and unique release strategy. Initially, What Art Does will be available as a limited edition of 777 copies with each one signed and enclosed by a unique slipcase, hand-painted by the authors. This first edition will be released on December 3, priced at $225, and available exclusively on the experimental creative platform Metalabel in North America and through Enoshop outside of it. Following this, a black-and-white PDF will be available for download for 7 days, for just $1. Thereafter, physical and ebook editions will be available from Faber, after January 16, 2025.

All proceeds from the work will go towards Earth Percent, an organization that pushes funds from the music industry towards green causes, and The Heroines! Movement, a global female empowerment non-profit.

The release of this full-fledged theory of art is the latest in a series of Eno’s forays into the art world. After attending art college in Ipswich and Winchester as a young man, his career veered towards rock, joining Roxy Music before pioneering ambient music and later becoming a much-feted producer.

Brian Eno, Asynchronous (2016). The piece will be shown at CONTEXT Art Miami 2016. Courtesy of Paul Stolper Gallery.

As a visual artist, Eno has maintained his art school tastes and has focused almost exclusively on using light as a medium. Since the 1970s, Eno has created light boxes, etchings, and sculptural works. In 2006, Eno released 77 Million Paintings, a digital art piece which randomized music and images. It was projected onto the Sydney Opera House in 2009.

Most recently, Eno has helped to found Hard Art, a collective whose goal is to build networks that can create cultural disruption capable of bringing about environmental and political change.