PETER GABRIEL: EVE – THE MUSIC AND ART ADVENTURE
A Bit Of Paradise On Your Computer Screen
by ahand83
One might argue, but ‘Eve’ probably was the most ambitious project of Gabriel’s career. Not that ambition, in the strict sense of the word, has ever been Gabriel’s main focus. All of his projects, whether they were albums, soundtracks, humanitarian events, establishing Real World or making sounds with Bonobo apes, were born from Gabriel’s deeper interest in life, nature, art, technology and communication and above all from curiosity. Peter Gabriel ‘the artist’ has never been just about music. The man has committed himself to many different projects and different groups of people. Take for example Womad, Amnesty, The Elders or Witness. It’s the main reason why Gabriel got ‘distracted’ from music, as he likes to express himself. It’s not just that Gabriel works slowly, but he works on many different projects at the same time.
One of those projects was ‘XPlora1’ from 1993. Gabriel and his team created a multimedia experience based around Real World and Gabriel’s own music. Clearly he was ready to take music to the next level. It was first released for Macintosh, followed by Windows in 1994 and finally CD-i (Philips) in 1995. Reactions were good and the project won three awards from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Science.
PG took his hunger for exploring a little further with his next multimedia project called ‘Eve – The Music And Art Adventure’. An adventure it was. On his 1992 album ‘Us’ Gabriel had collaborated with several visual artists to accompany his songs with some fine artwork. Uniting music with visual art was an important starting point for the creation of Eve. For the new project Gabriel assembled a large working team consisting of scientists, philosophers, technicians, musicians and visual artists.
Eve can be best described as an interactive game that blends music and art on a journey through different worlds. The player finds himself in a 360-degree panoramic landscape where he can observe the mysteries of relationships between people through videos and solve puzzles while moving through the screen and clicking on everything that captures his attention. In the landscapes there are buildings that can be explored from within when opening doors to rooms full of wonder and imagination. The four worlds the traveller passes through are called Mud, The Garden, Profit and Paradise. In every world the traveller gets to explore the work of a different artist. Be careful though. There’s a fifth world between Profit and Paradise called Ruin where you might get stuck if you don’t follow the rules of the game.
The different worlds are each represented by a Peter Gabriel song. In the world of Mud one can hear shreds of ‘Come Talk Talk To Me’ and in The Garden there’s bits and pieces of ‘Shaking The Tree’. Profit is accompanied by ‘In Your Eyes’ and in Paradise parts of the track ‘Passion’ can be heard. When you’ve collected enough bits and pieces of the music you can start remixing it in the control room which looks like a big UFO in the landscape. The musical director for Eve was Richard Evans, long time serving employee of Real World and part of PG’s band on the Growing Up Tour in 2003/2004, and more recently on the i/o Tour. He explained: “For this project I had to sort through every single tape, listen to everything which was on every single track, and try and find performances that we could use on Eve which didn’t get onto the record. I wanted people to really get a sense of what it’s like when it comes to mixing one of these tracks.”
Considering this was 1996 it was a whole new way of exploring music. These days, with highly sophisticated software and high quality downloads, anyone can be a mixing engineer, but in 1996 this was very different. So, 10 points for Mr. Gabriel for exploring new possibilities and looking ahead into the future.
The art that was used for Eve came from four prominent visual artists. In the world of Mud there’s the work of Yayoi Kusama, a world famous Japanese artist. Kusama was born in 1929 and still makes art to this day. She explains in the Eve guidebook that her art has been her weapon to fight mental illness. Her works most of the time are soft sculptures that consist of repetitive polka dots. It’s as mysterious as it’s straightforward. One can imagine why PG liked to have Yayoi Kusama on board.
In The Garden the work of Helen Chadwick is represented. Chadwick became known for her use of unorthodox materials like chocolate, fur, flowers, urine and meat. She says in the Eve guidebook: “It’s things being in the wrong place and yet having a strong visual power which interests me.” When playing Eve you come to a point where you find Peter Gabriel and Helen Chadwick sitting in a strange looking bathtub filled with chocolate. Suddenly, don’t know why, ‘Games Without Frontiers’ comes to mind. Sadly Helen Chadwick died of heart failure just a few months before Eve was released.
Cathy de Monchaux is responsible for the cover of the Eve slipcase, inside the boxset. She makes objects of metal, sometimes from a repetitive pattern or in symmetry. Cathy’s work occasionally looks like an industrial machine part but it also reflects nature and flora. Because she uses metal the colours in her work are often dark, mostly grey, gold or bronze. Cathy de Monchaux’s work can be seen at the prestigious Tate Museum in London amongst others.
Nils Udo was the right man to provide Eve its art for Paradise. Udo is a so called ‘nature-artist’ who works with natural materials like branches, stones, flowers and water. Uno paints his ‘pictures’ with the elements which are often colourful and full of contrast. Peter Gabriel used Uno’s piece ‘Waternest’ for the back cover of the Eve cd slipcase. He used a slightly different version of Waternest for the front cover of his ‘Ovo’ album in 2000. For this title PG simply changed the E’s into O’s.
‘Paradise’ is not the only nod to religion in Eve. A biblical theme runs through the whole project and the story of Genesis (in the Bible, not the band) is told through different themes like birth, the ratio between men and woman, the world of mud (after the big flood) and the garden (of Eden).
Peter Gabriel himself can be spotted now and again in the panoramic landscape. As a player you have to get Peter to work in order to find a new piece of the puzzle or to open the door to a next world. A funny detail is that Gabriel appears with a lawn mower in his hands in The Garden. He’s never really left Genesis, has he? It could be just all coincidence.
Whether Eve satisfied the average teenage gamer’s potential is very unlikely. There’s hardly any action, there’s no guns or shooting, no racing or roller-coasters and a naked Adam and Eve leave nothing to the imagination. Playing Eve is like a stroll in the park capturing a soft breeze from a Mediterranean current. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s not entertainment as most people would expect. You have to be into Peter Gabriel first. Secondly you have to appreciate his visionary approach to things. Eve definitely is not an easy game. Sometimes it’s hard to find out what you’re supposed to do as a player and where it’s all leading to. Eve takes perseverance to play and patience to understand.
Looking back on the project it’s clear where Peter Gabriel wanted to go with Eve, but it’s unlikely he achieved his goal. Although the game is drenched in beauty in terms of art, animation, videos and interactive tools, it lacks the body of a consistent whole. It may be said that Eve was another example of Peter Gabriel taking it too far, just like he did with ‘The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway’. Ambitious? Yes. Practical and comprehensible? Not really. But anyone can judge for themselves. To understand Eve maybe just a little better watch ‘The Making Of Eve’ here (part I) and here (part II).