Reading Machines: Ambient Writing and the Poetics of Atmospheric Media
“The ambient, in both its sonic and visual incarnations, describes a closed system,” he writes. “The sites of transmission and reception are identical. Nothing changes, nothing moves. It is ascetic and abstinent. Its apparent (desired) purity is but an abnegation of participation in the social, communicative, and critical realms.” This impoverished account of ambient aesthetics basically excludes 5 criticality as such from the category of ambient art, ambient music, or ambient poetry. It is a familiar account, one that sees the soft, the diffuse, and the therapeutic as incompatible with the traditionally hard edges of avant-gardist demystification.”
Sound / Music,
Theory / Essay