Soundscapes of Possible Minds: Meditational Cybernetics in Brian Eno’s Ambient Music
Soundscapes of Possible Minds: Meditational Cybernetics in Brian Eno’s Ambient Music

Summary/Abstract: This article contributes a media ecological approach towards relevant topics within Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Critical AI studies concerning cybernetics, the boundaries of consciousness, neural plasticity, and sensorial awareness, by way of discussing soundscapes produced in the ambient music genre. I will discuss the ways in which the ambient music framework provides potentialities of psychologically entering multimedia realms, (non)physical realms, and realms of altered states of consciousness, which creates creatives spaces of/for increased possibilities of/for the mind(s). I will examine the producer, visual (light) artist, and musician Brian Eno. I will argue that Eno’s artistic philosophy and approach to the ambient music genre consists of a generative cybernetic scaffolding, within which he builds his ambient worlds and soundscapes, providing expanded non-physical spatialities that often explore possibilities of sensorial affect and perceptions of the self, increase potentialities for individual neural plasticity, and heighten cybernetic ecoconsciousness. I will thus explore the ways in which Eno’s ambient audiovisual media, abstract aural architectures or soundscapes, and meditations on cybernetic environmentalism allow for non-narrative psychological emancipation from the formalism imposed on the ‘self’ in everyday lifestyle and technoculture. Consequently, Eno’s ambient, subconscious awareness confronts viewers with contemporary and future usages and values linked to a) expanded edges and/or boundaries of synaesthesia; b) neural plasticity and notions of ‘self;’ and c) cybernetic questions concerning the human-machine relationship to collectivity, shared environments, and eco-consciousness.

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