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Ambient Quotes

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Ambient Quotes

“Ambient awareness is the experience of knowing what's going on in the lives of other people - what they're thinking about, what they're doing, what they're looking at - by paying attention to the small stray status messages that people are putting online. We're now able to stitch together these fantastic details and mental maps of what is going on in other people's lives.”

PeopleThinkingAbleTogetherAttentionKnowingAwarenessMessagesDetailsFantasticPay AttentionOnlineMapsLives Of OthersStitchesAmbient
Author:Clive Thompson
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“I am obsessed by the idea of silence. I went through an entire library studying art, artists and their critics, philosophers, too, on the meaning and significance of the color white. I dreamed of white birds and white bears. I thought about the white pages of my mother's journals. I became enthralled with John Cage and his work, 4'33”, his masterpiece of ambient sound. Rauschenberg, too. And then at some point I let go. What sticks to the soul is what gets placed on the page. Maybe that's the unknown part, the mystery, the power of the empty page.”

ArtIdeasSoulMotherArtistSoundWhiteSilenceStudyMysteryColorBearsLetting GoPagesBirdEmptySticksCriticsLibraryPhilosopherObsessedSignificanceJournalCagesMasterpieceAmbientColor WhiteStudying ArtWhite Birds
Author:Terry Tempest Williams
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“Ambient means the natural center or atmosphere of a space. All music has that in it- a space or center. I think it just means the atmosphere or what defines the environment of sound and maybe removing the more destructive, harsh elements and harder rhythmic elements and you get down to the stillness that's inherent. There's an ambient quality in every sound. You may have to enhance that to hear it or bring it out in a different way but there is that in every environmental sound.”

ThinkingWayMayMeanDifferentSoundNaturalSpaceQualityEnvironmentElementsHarderEnvironmentalAtmosphereDifferent WaysDestructiveStillnessInherentHarshAmbient
Author:Bill Laswell
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“Obviously, it's had a huge effect on repetitive music or dance music or house music. Ambient in the last ten years has infiltrated into all those repetitive musics. I don't know what part it plays in pop necessarily but I'm sure there's some connection. But in all the music that deals with experimental repetition, drum and bass, dub, various kinds of house music, there's always been a quality of atmosphere and ambience. I think it's infiltrated that pretty heavily.”

ThinkingKnowsYearsKindPlayLastsHouseDealsQualityEffectsHugeTenConnectionsVariousPopsAtmosphereRepetitionBassRepetitiveDance MusicAmbientHouse MusicAmbienceDrum And Bass
Author:Bill Laswell
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“There's some ambient music that doesn't do anything. I wouldn't say that that's narrative. It is narrative in that it creates a sort of world where nothing happens, where really nothing happens, so you become a different person after hearing eight minutes of exactly the same thing. Yes, I hear music all the time in which one idea is strung together to another idea, and I feel that such music is non-narrative.”

WorldFeelsPersonsIdeasDifferentHappensTogetherMinutesMusic IsEightHearingThings HappenNarrativeAmbientAmbient Music
Author:Missy Mazzoli
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“It simply isn't true, for example, that being big is in general better for fitness than being small except when there are effects of interacting variables; or that flying slow and high is in general better for fitness than flying fast and low except when there are effects of interacting variables; or that being monogamous is in general better for fitness than being polygamous... except when there are effects of interacting variables... It's not that the underlying generalizations are there but imperceptible in the ambient noise.”

BigsEffectsExampleLowsFlyingNoiseVariablesInteractingGeneralizationAmbient
Author:Jerry Fodor
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“You stayed around your children as long as you could, inhaling the ambient gold shavings of their childhood, and at the last minute you tried to see them off into life and hoped that the little piece of time you’d given them was enough to prevent them from one day feeling lonely and afraid and hopeless. You wouldn’t know the outcome for a long time.”

KnowsChildrenLittlesLongEnoughFeelingsLastsGivenPiecesChildhoodMinutesOne DayLong TimeLonelyGoldYour ChildrenOutcomesHopelessFeeling LonelyLast MinuteShavingAmbient
Book:The Ten-Year Nap
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“It was the Faith which gradually and indirectly transformed the slave into the serf, and the serf into the free peasant... You will not be able to set up in a pagan or an heretical or a wholly indifferent society the institutions characteristic of economic freedom; you will not be able to curb competition which alone would be sufficient to destroy such freedom, nor pursue permanently and consecutively any one part of the program. The thing must be done as a whole, and it can be done as a whole only by the ambient influence of Catholicism.”

DoneWholeWould BeAbleInfluenceEconomicProgramInstitutionsCompetitionSlavePursueSufficientCharacteristicsCatholicismTransformedIndifferentPeasantsPaganCurbEconomic FreedomSerfsAmbient
Author:Hilaire Belloc
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“Germans grew reluctant to stay in communal ski lodges, fearing they might talk in their sleep. They postponed surgeries because of the lip-loosening effects of anesthetic. Dreams reflected the ambient anxiety. One German dreamed that an SA man came to his home and opened the door to his oven, which then repeated every negative remark the household had made against the government.”

MenMadeHomeDreamGovernmentMightFearSleepDoorsEffectsGrewAnxietyNegativeLipsHouseholdSurgeryRemarksReluctantSkisOvensLodgesAmbientAnesthetics
Author:Erik Larson
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“COIL would very much like to see the creation of a newsgroup for minimal musics. We enjoy a wide spectrum of such musics, from La Monte Young, Alvin Lucier, Arvo Part, Nurse With Wound's Solilique For Lilith,The Dream Syndicate (orig.concept not the newer group who plundered the name) to Synus, Earth and so on.and on and on. Some new so called ambient musics fall between genres and so between newsgroups: some of our own music has certainly been deeply inspired by and informed by such musics,from Partch to Subotnic.”

DreamEarthYoungFallNamesEnjoyGroupsCreationConceptsInspiredWideWoundsGenreNurseSpectrumLilithAmbientSyndicateAmbient Music
Author:John Balance
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“Lithium tweaks many mood-altering chemicals in the brain, and its effects are complicated. Most interesting, lithium seems to reset the body’s circadian rhythm, its inner clock. In normal people, ambient conditions, especially the sun, dictate their humors and determine when they are tuckered out for the day. They’re on a twenty-four-hour cycle. Bipolar people run on cycles independent of the sun. And run and run.”

PeopleBodySeemsRunningHoursInterestingBrainSunFourConditionsEffectsNormalTwentiesIndependentDetermineComplicatedMoodRhythmClockCyclesChemicalsMost InterestingBipolarResetTweakAmbientLithiumCircadian Rhythm
Book:The Disappearing Spoon...and other true tales from the Periodic Table
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“Air travel reminds us who we are. It's the means by which we recognize ourselves as modern. The process removes us from the world and sets us apart from each other. We wander in the ambient noise, checking one more time for the flight coupon, the boarding pass, the visa. The process convinces us that at any moment we may have to submit to the force that is implied in all this, the unknown authority behind it, behind the categories, the languages we don't understand. This vast terminal has been erected to examine souls.”

WorldMayMeanHas BeensSoulMomentsLanguageForceProcessBehindsAirModernAuthorityNoiseFlightWanderWho We AreConvinceRemoveMore TimeCategoriesSubmitVisaTerminalImpliedAir TravelConvince UsAmbient
Book:The Names
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