Due to the global pandemic, we found ourselves spending more time living in a single environment than ever before. This provided us with an opportunity to listen more closely to the ambient sounds around us. Sounds from the environment outside where we live, the noises of our own homes and the echoes of the sounds we make ourselves become our background ambience.

The Ambient Machine provides us with a variety of sounds and music that we can use to design our own background ambience. White noise can mask unpleasant sounds around us and give us a sense of relief, Natural sounds can provide the feeling of relocating to a new environment, providing a break from the environments we have been confined to, and musical rhythms can provide patterns for us to find stability with.

The idea of using sound and music as part of the background environmental noise, instead of highlighting it in the foreground, has a history that began with the works of Erik Satie, and more recently with the ambient music of Brian Eno.

By toggling the various switches on the device, The Ambient Machine lets us design our own background music that best suits our current mood. The Ambient Machine was featured in E&Y’s ‘Thirty Six Views’ Exhibition that took place in Roppongi, Japan, where it quickly sold out its initial 20 model limited run.