UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations
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.
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