Ambient describes something that imperceptibly pervades the environment to the point of barely existing. It affects us, but we might not know it. It controls what we regard as the most basic qualities of our lives, so basic that we consider them inconsequential, everyday, and normal. The earliest ambient music was likened to furniture.

This is not ambient music. But there are the qualities of ambient music here. The sounds surround and envelop. Groundwork is laid for assumptions and choices to be made. C. Spencer Yeh claims he works with music, defining his practice as experimentation rather than craftsmanship; organization is the principle mode of engagement. Ambient music implies a treatment as opposed to a performance ­ an intervention in space. Robert Piotrowicz works to dominate and reorder space through music. The listener experiences the music through the space: the physical image of music. Ambient implies a light structure - music as transient architecture.

These two ideas come together: architecture and intervention. They do not blend or melt together. There is little harmony. Harmony does not matter. What matters is organization and arrangement, placement and coexistence. Events alongside one another, sounds moving, pieces become distinct, moments fall into each other. We hear time describing space.