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

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.