UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Atmosphere as Culture: Ambient Media and Postindustrial Japan Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4cm3z3rj Author Roquet, Paul Publication Date 2012 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Atmosphere as Culture: Ambient Media and Postindustrial Japan by Paul Roquet A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Japanese Language and the Designated Emphasis in Film Studies in the Gradute Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Alan Tansman, Chair Professor Daniel Cuong O’Neill Professor Miryam Sas Spring 2012 Abstract Atmosphere as Culture: Ambient Media and Postindustrial Japan by Paul Roquet Doctor of Philosophy in Japanese Language Designated Emphasis in Film Studies University of California, Berkeley Professor Alan Tansman, Chair Ambient media are oriented towards tinting the space around them with a particular mood or emotional tone, which their users can then attune to. Atmosphere as Culture begins by tracing how this use of media as a mood regulator emerges in postindustrial Japan, drawing from the longer histories of background music, environmental art, and therapy culture. The dissertation then theorizes this aesthetics of atmosphere in music, animation, literature, and video art. The analysis explores the relationship between ambient media and landscape, dreams, the cosmos, domesticity and gender, the rhythms of urban life, cosubjectivity, and information overload. In each case, discussion focuses on how the aesthetics of atmosphere reimagines subjectivity vis-à-vis the surrounding environment, shifting the postindustrial self away from a social identity based in interpersonal relations and towards a more abstract sensing body developed with and through the moods afforded by mediated space. Each section documents how the aesthetics of ambient media serve to erase other people from the sensible horizons of postindustrial life, while at the same time expanding the environmental affordances of the human body in new directions. The dissertation follows the dynamics of this ambient subjectivity to reveal how the aesthetics of atmosphere are both radical and regressive, offering an aesthetic solution to the coexistence of diverse objects in space, yet at the same time denying the possibility of any direct encounter with difference. 1 [ Atmosphere as Culture ] ambient media and postindustrial japan Paul Roquet i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation grows from a long-term fascination with the aesthetics of environmental design. For this, I credit life in northern California, with its (often totally unwarranted) belief in the power of self-reinvention through lifestyle engineering, and life in Tokyo, with its endless maze of carefully curated microcultures. I admire the pragmatism and efficacy of this willingness to experiment with new forms of living, at the same time as I remain haunted by so much of what these designs cover over. A similarly ambivalent fascination surfaces here in regards to the aesthetics of therapy culture. For this I am particularly indebted to ongoing conversations with my mother, Deborah Roquet, who brought to her time working as a massage therapist and laughter yoga instructor both an admirable enthusiasm for helping people and a smiling skepticism towards practitioners’ more exaggerated claims. This dissertation also flows from an abiding love of ambient music and video, particularly in its more experimental forms. Thanks to all those creators working to develop and deepen the genre. KSPC radio at Pomona College gave me a chance to explore these ambient fascinations on the air, while a year of travelling soundscape research on a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship let me to deepen my understanding of the links between urban life and background sound. Special thanks to Katherine Hagedorn for her support for this latter project. At UC Berkeley I have been exceedingly fortunate to work with a group of thinkers sharing both a strong commitment to cultural-aesthetic analysis, and a ready openness to new ideas and ii approaches. Alan Tansman’s generosity and humor as an advisor have been unstinting, and this project would have been impossible without his support and mentorship. Miryam Sas provided excellent feedback at several stages, and more than a few of the ideas herein came together in her wonderful Japanese Aesthetic Theory seminars. Dan O’Neill’s attention to urban space in modern Japanese literature proved an early impetus for my approach here, and his commitment to close reading continues to be an inspiration. Beyond Japanese Studies, both Lalitha Gopalan and Jeffrey Skoller further strengthened my dedication to experimental film and video, while Andrew Jones helped demonstrate how Sound Studies and Asian Studies belong together. UC Berkeley’s Townsend Center and Arts Research Center provided further opportunities to work across disciplines and engage with a wonderfully far-ranging and imaginative community of fellow researchers while working on the early stages of this project. The Center for Japanese Studies provided further research support. Part of my research in Tokyo was funded by a Fulbright IIE Doctoral Dissertation Research Fellowship, excellently administered by Toyama Keiko. Uno Kuniichi hosted me at Rikkyo University and helped lead the project in unexpected yet rewarding directions. Hasegawa Hitomi of the Moving Image Archive of Contemporary Art graciously ushered me into the Japanese video art community, and I continue to find her enthusiasm for the contemporary art world highly contagious. A wide range of artists and musicians provided support to this project either through interviews, providing study copies, or helping point towards other materials I was unaware existed. Particular thanks to Ise Sh ōko, Shiho Kano, Goshima Kazuhiro, Inoue Tetsu, Sat ō Minoru, and Idemitsu Mako. Online, Benjamin Ettinger provided some crucial Ginga leads. This project developed on a more day-to-day level through conversation with fellow travelers over tea and coffee in Berkeley, Tokyo, and elsewhere. The following have directly bettered the story to follow: Marië Abe, Michael Craig, David Humphrey, Kim Icreverzi, Miki Kaneda, Nick Kaufman, Yumi Kim, Namiko Kunimoto, Diane Lewis, Liu Xiao, Patrick Luhan, Patrick Noonan, Ken Shima, Momoko Shimizu, Robert Szeliga, Tim Yang, Jeremy Yellen, Ken Yoshida, and Alexander Zahlten. Earlier versions of the some chapters have appeared in the following: Chapter 3 in “Ambient Landscapes from Brian Eno to Tetsu Inoue,” Journal of Popular Music Studies 21.4 (2009): 364-383; Chapter 6 in “The Domestication of the Cool Cat,” in Coolness , Ulla Haselstein and Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit, eds. (Lexington Books, 2012); Chapters 7 and 8 in “Ambient Literature and the Aesthetics of Calm: Mood Regulation in Contemporary Japanese Fiction,” Journal of Japanese Studies 35.1 (Winter 2009): 87-111. Thank you to John Treat, Robert Fink, and the anonymous readers for their feedback on these earlier essays, and to the publishers of each for permission to include them here. Finally, thank you for reading. Do put on some good music before you begin, preferably at low volume. iii ATMOSPHERE AS CULTURE Fade In: Jellyfish in the City 1 PART ONE: MOOD MUSICS 1. Background Music of the Avant-garde 19 2. The Quiet Boom of Erik Satie 34 3. Ambient Horizons 42 PART TWO: PANORAMIC INTERIORS 4. On the Pliocene Coast 55 5. A Blue Cat on the Galactic Railroad 66 PART THREE: RESTORATIVE FICTIONS 6. Cloudiness as a Way of Life 89 7. Healing Style 107 8. The Aesthetics of Calm 114 PART FOUR: URBAN ATTUNEMENTS 9. Companion Media 129 10. The Aesthetics of Less 144 11. In Shallow Depth 156 Fade Out: Enough Media 171 Bibliography 177 iv [ Fade In: Jellyfish in the City ] Jellyfish are drifting through the city. This summer evening as I write this the Sumida River in Tokyo is full of these small transparent creatures, each floating along with the current, steering itself gently while bobbing slowly out to sea. Returning home to my apartment on the other side of the city, I put on a DVD I picked up recently from the background video (BGV) section of a nearby record store. The television glows blue, and various types of jellyfish bob into view. They pulsate languidly, gradually pushing their translucent bodies across the screen. The jellies appear in soft focus and bathed in saturated colors and light. Occasionally a more distant shot of a jellyfish appears composited with a semi-transparent close up, and a syncopated rhythm emerges between the larger and smaller of the two jellies' parallel convulsions. At moments an electrical current sparkles forth from a jellyfish and soon subsides, while at other times an overlaid color or postproduction visual effect intensifies and ripples across the jelly's porous skin. Distinctions between a jellyfish's own glistening and the ripples added through video software blur, combining to cast a shimmering light from the television out across the room. Electronic music slowly pulses from the television speakers, adding a slow aural rhythmic counterpoint to the visual shimmer and drift. The music loops and loops, concerned with neither beginning nor end, rolling onwards with the current as long as the DVD continues to spin. 1 Jellyfish in the City I let the DVD continue to cycle, and the album-length sequence carries on without me. I lay down on the tatami in the middle of the room, exhausted from the summer heat. I look over once in awhile at the cool shades emanating from the screen, gazing absently at the translucence of the jellies floating inside. Even without my direct attention, the blue light bathes the room, while the music pushes quietly into every corner of my consciousness. My own rhythms slowly but steadily attune to the pulse and flows of the gliding jellyfish, and to the relaxed pace and soft textures of the sound and images the television casts into the room.