Ambijentalna muzika kao praksa popularne umetnosti / Ambient Music as Popular Art Practice

Abstract

This paper considers ambient music in a comparative perspective. Taking the 1950s as a mirror time axis, I suggest comparing Erik Satie’s ideas on Furniture music (1920s) to Brian Eno’s notions of ambient music (1970s onwards). Satie is considered as the father of ambient music as he was among the first people aware of the interconnection of music and ambient sounds. Music that Brian Eno creates almost thirty years later has deep roots in Satie’s concept of implementation of ambiental music, which means that the music “should last and represent the environment” (Brian Eno, “Ambient Music”, 2014). Ambiental music’s theoretical foundations can be compared to American Minimalist and environmental art. Consideration of the audio perception phenomena is also very important for understanding and Adorno’s interpretation of the term regressive listening that will be explored later in this paper. This is an attempt to study the artistic side of ambient music, which has a wide scope of applications beyond the art sphere. In this respect, I will try to state the differences between ambient music as an art intermission in our everyday life and ambient music as a control device over human behavior.

Keywords

• critical theory, Frankfurt school, ambient music, aura, minimalism