Music Beyond Airports - appraising ambient music

Abstract

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Space in the ambience: Is ambient music socially relevant?

“…Again, we ind an example of the stereotypical presentation of women's creative voices, which lurch between presenting composers as too individual and wayward, or as simply derivative or unexceptional. 37 Hildegard as New Age icon of female spirituality: Vision…”

“…Newell highlights the concept of context switching as part of an apparatus to deal with ambient information events, stating that "we are born to be interrupt driven". 46 Newell shows the cost of context switching in mental terms on task performance, suggesting that it is information from our ambient environment which is often responsible for a degree of perceptual steering which occurs within this. Distraction, according to Newell is not an information-poor state; being distracted is the result of intensive information processing.…”

“…concerts of Western art music may not engage with any form of physical reality other than where music is present as sound. 66 his mode of concert presentation has strong similarities with the presentation of much historical ambient music, in that it is passive and detached from embodiment. he view of ambience as perceptual background also embeds within it an assumption that ambience itself is an arms-length quantity.…”

“…Structured upon modes of behaviour that tend to remain consistent over extended periods of time (sometimes many hours), the majority of these compositions, like those of Ullmann, incorporate silence as an integral element in the long-term aspect of their respective steady states. 46 43 [e]ach line is fragile and imperfect, and is thread through the collage of changing density". 49 Performed at a level of extreme quietness, murmurs quickly displays a meta-ambient behavioural stasis formed from these quasi-arbitrarily juxtaposed 'sound surfaces' that "continually pulls one's focus between attention on solos, pairs and larger groupings, at the same time causing one to question whether sonic events are, in fact, connected".…”

“…As Demers notes, the use of a tonal framework within such 'noise' provides the 'beauty'. 66 he interpretation or communication of atmospheres is complex due to Noise also has its part to play in the creation of atmosphere. Deupree's use of tape noise as a continuum in which to situate foregrounded pitch content on Somi is akin to ilmmakers' recording room tone noise for "a subconscious sonic ield without which dialogue and diegetic sound would seem artiicial and unmoored".…”