The electronic pioneer questions how we make history.

Brian Eno has unveiled a companion film to his recent Warp album The Ship which uses artificial intelligence (AI).

Also titled The Ship, the generative film was created in collaboration with Dentsu Lab Tokyo and uses historical photographs and realtime news feeds to create a “collective photographic memory of humankind”.

The AI technology “employs machine learning techniques to interpret its own ‘memories’ of the past, associating them with ongoing current events,” explains the press release.

“The viewer is invited to view this film and begin an internal discussion about how historical meaning is produced. Does the machine intelligence produce a point of view independent of its makers or its viewers? Or are we – human and machine – ultimately co-creating new and unexpected meanings? Ultimately the response to Brian Eno’s statement exists within the viewer.”

Watch The Ship on its dedicated website.

Eno’s first solo album since 2012 came out in April on Warp and is based on “experiments with three dimensional recording techniques”. One track features British comedian Peter Serafinowicz reading a poem created by a Markov chain generator.