Uploaded February 2019 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago

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Axel Berndt explores the use of ambient music for the scoring of nonlinear, interactive media such as video games and artistic installations 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

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
Video edited by Sam Gillies

Title music: Music for Airports (1/1), Brian Eno. Performed by Decibel New Music Ensemble. decibelnewmusic.com

///ABSTRACT

Ambient music, due to its aesthetic principles, is well-suited, if not predestined for the scoring of nonlinear, interactive media such as video games and artistic installations, as can be seen in several of Brian Eno’s works. We will show that this is not only limited to predefined musical pieces but exploits a more multifarious potential when the music is generated in real-time. An example of this is Eno’s procedural music for the videogame Spore. Interactive scenarios require the music, beyond its narrative functions, to react seamlessly at short notice when user interaction triggers progress while at the same time being able to wait for an undetermined period until the user proceeds.

We elaborate on a taxonomy of approaches to such adaptive music ranging from the arrangement of predefined musical material to partly and totally generative techniques. We locate Ambient music at several positions within this taxonomy and illustrate its functioning with two generative systems. These give access to different types of musical parameters to define and adapt the music in real-time.

A series of musical parameters can be identified as interface points for modulations (or musical transformations) in real-time: from sound synthesis parameters over arrangement parameters, such as the density of sound events and dynamic multitrack mixing, to parameters of the harmonic, melodic and rhythmic structure. More than in other musical genres these parameters are even suitable for information encoding in terms of a musical Auditory Display. This enables Ambient music to establish a very close relation with the interactive scene and the user’s interactions.

With our contribution we will discuss both the musical and technical perspectives of Ambient music in interactive media.

//BIOGRAPHY

Axel Berndt studied computer science and music at Otto-von-Guericke University in Magdeburg, Germany where he also did his PhD on the musical scoring of interactive media. From 2012 he worked for 3 years at Technische Universität Dresden at the Media Design Group and the Interactive Media Lab where his research combined both fields, human-computer interaction and music. In 2015 Axel Berndt moved to the cemfi (Center of Music and Film Informatics) in Detmold, Germany. At this institution, ran collaboratively by Detmold University of Music and Ostwestfalen-Lippe University of Applied Sciences, Berndt and his colleagues work in the fields of Digital Music Editions, New Interfaces for Musical Expression, Live Electronics, modelling and computer generation of expressive music performances, Music Information Retrieval and its applications in music production.