Uploaded January 2019 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Ambrose Field assesses the relevance of ‘ambient’ as an idea in a contemporary media-driven world where space in the ambience is already at a premium at Ambient@40, a two-day conference to appraise ambient music in relation to Eno’s milestone release
"Music Beyond Airports", edited by Monty Adkins and Simon Cummings, available now in hardcopy and free PDF download via Huddersfield University Press: unipress.hud.ac.uk/plugins/books/19
york.ac.uk/music/staff/academic/ambrose-field
ambientat40.wordpress.com
archives.electricspring.co.uk/Seasons/2017-2018/Electric-Spring-2018
This presentation took place as part of the Ambient@40 conference, conveyed by Monty Adkins, Simon Cummings, Rupert Till, and Kristina Wolfe.
In the forty years since the release of Brian Eno’s Music for Airports the concept and aesthetics of ambient music have proliferated, influencing artists as diverse as Taylor Deupree, Steven Wilson, David Lynch and The Orb, infusing drone, microsound, minimalism and experimental electronic music as well as aspects of contemporary instrumental music. The aim of this two-day conference was to appraise ambient music in relation to Eno’s milestone release.
The conference took place at the University of Huddersfield from Friday 23 to Saturday 24 February 2018, running alongside the Electric Spring Festival (www.electricspring.co.uk).
/// CREDITS
Video camera operator: Andie Brown, Pablo Galaz Salamanca, Sam Gillies
Edited by Sam Gillies
Title music: Music for Airports (1/1), Brian Eno. Performed by Decibel New Music Ensemble. decibelnewmusic.com
/// ABSTRACT
Today, nearly every space that can be filled with digital content is filled with digital content. Even contemplative personal reflective time can now be digitally mediated. This is a different world from the one where the idea of ‘ambient music’ first emerged. In the 1970s and early 1980s, our ‘ambient environment’ featured no augmented reality overlays, fewer opportunities for distracted attention (unless they were deliberately sought out), and a vastly reduced need for personal multitasking. Then, fewer situations required a high degree of context switching to address incoming information from sources other than those which we have immersed ourselves in out of choice, and ambient music – as an idea, was born within those environmental and cognitive conditions. Now, new definitions of embodied cognition have demonstrated that our ambient environment is crucial for understanding the world through non-mediated forms of information, yet the idea initially behind much historical ambient music was one of inhabiting a space in our perception through which the unmediated could be addressed. By defining historical ambient music as an ‘information overlay’ itself where a surrounding environment is displaced temporarily and overlaid with new information (as with an augmented reality), an alternative trajectory of development can be mapped out. Why do we now create specific environments for ambient music listening, rather than allowing ambient music itself the chance to occupy those situations? Has the embodiment brought about by increasing interaction in public art installation, through technological processes, changed how we respond to artistic material embedded in our own day-to-day ambience? This paper performs an experimental re-assembly of the situated components of ambient music, originally inherited from a pre-internet, pre-information society. It provides an assessment of the relevance of ‘ambient’ as an idea in a contemporary media-driven world where space in the ambience is already at a premium.
/// BIOGRAPHY
Ambrose Field is a British composer. He is Professor and Head of Department of Music at the University of York. His music has been performed at venues such as the Vienna Konzerthaus, Chicago Early Music Festival, Parco Dela Musica Rome. His album for ECM, Being Dufay, was a bestseller on Amazon and achieved 5 star reviews in BBC Music and from Classic FM. Other highlights include a commission from the Polish National Chamber Choir for a work In Memoriam for H.M. Gorecki. This piece, for 25 solo voices with a Polish text, received critical acclaim in the press for a distinctive, lush sound world. Field studied Music Education at the University of Cambridge and Composition at City University, London. Whilst at City, he took Jean-Jacques Nattiez’s Ethnomusicology seminar which became an important motivation in his approach towards new music. His work has received a number of international awards, including three Prix Ars Electronica honorary mentions specifically for pieces making use of technologies, a strand of work which resulted in a performance at the MUTEK festival in Canada with the support of Recombinant Media Labs, San Francisco.
Ambrose Field assesses the relevance of ‘ambient’ as an idea in a contemporary media-driven world where space in the ambience is already at a premium at Ambient@40, a two-day conference to appraise ambient music in relation to Eno’s milestone release
"Music Beyond Airports", edited by Monty Adkins and Simon Cummings, available now in hardcopy and free PDF download via Huddersfield University Press: unipress.hud.ac.uk/plugins/books/19
york.ac.uk/music/staff/academic/ambrose-field
ambientat40.wordpress.com
archives.electricspring.co.uk/Seasons/2017-2018/Electric-Spring-2018
This presentation took place as part of the Ambient@40 conference, conveyed by Monty Adkins, Simon Cummings, Rupert Till, and Kristina Wolfe.
In the forty years since the release of Brian Eno’s Music for Airports the concept and aesthetics of ambient music have proliferated, influencing artists as diverse as Taylor Deupree, Steven Wilson, David Lynch and The Orb, infusing drone, microsound, minimalism and experimental electronic music as well as aspects of contemporary instrumental music. The aim of this two-day conference was to appraise ambient music in relation to Eno’s milestone release.
The conference took place at the University of Huddersfield from Friday 23 to Saturday 24 February 2018, running alongside the Electric Spring Festival (www.electricspring.co.uk).
/// CREDITS
Video camera operator: Andie Brown, Pablo Galaz Salamanca, Sam Gillies
Edited by Sam Gillies
Title music: Music for Airports (1/1), Brian Eno. Performed by Decibel New Music Ensemble. decibelnewmusic.com
/// ABSTRACT
Today, nearly every space that can be filled with digital content is filled with digital content. Even contemplative personal reflective time can now be digitally mediated. This is a different world from the one where the idea of ‘ambient music’ first emerged. In the 1970s and early 1980s, our ‘ambient environment’ featured no augmented reality overlays, fewer opportunities for distracted attention (unless they were deliberately sought out), and a vastly reduced need for personal multitasking. Then, fewer situations required a high degree of context switching to address incoming information from sources other than those which we have immersed ourselves in out of choice, and ambient music – as an idea, was born within those environmental and cognitive conditions. Now, new definitions of embodied cognition have demonstrated that our ambient environment is crucial for understanding the world through non-mediated forms of information, yet the idea initially behind much historical ambient music was one of inhabiting a space in our perception through which the unmediated could be addressed. By defining historical ambient music as an ‘information overlay’ itself where a surrounding environment is displaced temporarily and overlaid with new information (as with an augmented reality), an alternative trajectory of development can be mapped out. Why do we now create specific environments for ambient music listening, rather than allowing ambient music itself the chance to occupy those situations? Has the embodiment brought about by increasing interaction in public art installation, through technological processes, changed how we respond to artistic material embedded in our own day-to-day ambience? This paper performs an experimental re-assembly of the situated components of ambient music, originally inherited from a pre-internet, pre-information society. It provides an assessment of the relevance of ‘ambient’ as an idea in a contemporary media-driven world where space in the ambience is already at a premium.
/// BIOGRAPHY
Ambrose Field is a British composer. He is Professor and Head of Department of Music at the University of York. His music has been performed at venues such as the Vienna Konzerthaus, Chicago Early Music Festival, Parco Dela Musica Rome. His album for ECM, Being Dufay, was a bestseller on Amazon and achieved 5 star reviews in BBC Music and from Classic FM. Other highlights include a commission from the Polish National Chamber Choir for a work In Memoriam for H.M. Gorecki. This piece, for 25 solo voices with a Polish text, received critical acclaim in the press for a distinctive, lush sound world. Field studied Music Education at the University of Cambridge and Composition at City University, London. Whilst at City, he took Jean-Jacques Nattiez’s Ethnomusicology seminar which became an important motivation in his approach towards new music. His work has received a number of international awards, including three Prix Ars Electronica honorary mentions specifically for pieces making use of technologies, a strand of work which resulted in a performance at the MUTEK festival in Canada with the support of Recombinant Media Labs, San Francisco.
