Monday, December 12, 2011

Altered Presences

Light and sound change perpetually and subtly over the course of time.


To a very young child, the immobile beam of a streetlight is starkly different from the daylight, or the lighting of home at night, because it is fixed, and not seemingly omnipresent.  The environment of the child's neighborhood is unchanged, but rendered mysterious by the depth of shadows and the stir of moths in the clear shafts of light that cast a pool of brightness down upon the sidewalk. 

Like moonlight on the ocean, there is a plainly visible source, but the the effects created in the atmosphere-- and the imagination--  are strikingly different from those of the day.

This is the appeal of ambient lighting, of pleasing sounds encountered unexpectedly in the natural world and in the human spheres of influence, and of the tone poem or stylized ambient music composition.  These things afford a change in atmosphere, a different perspective, and altered perceptions.

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