Artist Martin Beck has transformed a forgotten series of 1960s ambient sound recordings into a compelling new art exhibition that questions the intersection of wellness culture and capitalism. His show at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut, running through October 5, draws inspiration from "Environments," an influential but obscure collection of nature sounds and audio abstractions that helped define ambient music and New Age culture.
The original "Environments" series, debuting in 1969, consisted of 11 vinyl albums featuring extended recordings of natural soundscapes like seashores and bird calls, alongside computer-generated bell tones and other audio abstractions. Created by entrepreneur Irv Teibel, these recordings promised listeners they could "replace aspirin, tranquilizers, other drugs" and improve everything from reading speed to sexual performance. The series gained significant attention, with Newsweek calling the first volume a "sonic tonic," and secured distribution through Atlantic Records.
Beck first discovered the series through a friend at Columbia University who was researching psychedelics and space in the 1970s. "The records were a footnote, and after I looked them up and started reading the liner notes and finding more information, it became clear that they were a treasure," Beck explained. When he began collecting the albums, they cost only $1.50 to $2 each, though prices have since increased, possibly due to his own extensive purchasing.
The exhibition, titled "for hours, days, or weeks at a time," features multiple artistic interpretations of the "Environments" concept. The first gallery presents cropped album cover imagery – including sensuous faces, swamps, and lightning – displayed in white overmats within frames. Large, intricate pencil drawings of ferns overlaid with text fragments like "relaxation spas, hypnotism clinics, mental institutions" dominate another section, representing months of painstaking hand-drawn work that Beck created at his kitchen table.
A separate room houses Beck's video installation, soundtracked by original "Environments" recordings, which captures subtle interior and exterior scenes over the course of a day in Joshua Tree, California, where the Austrian-born, New York and Vienna-based artist spends time. The work explores how recorded natural sounds can transform architectural spaces, creating what Beck describes as "almost like a conflict of existence: Where are you? Are you at home? Or are you out in nature?"
Beck approached the project with dual concerns about spatial transformation and the problematic nature of wellness commodification. "One was how they literally provide a tool to map one space on top of another, to turn architectural space into a natural space," he said. He also questioned the underlying purpose of such wellness products: "You feel better, which is good. But you feel better for a purpose, which is exploitative. It's a measure of control while you give a measure of well-being."
The artist sees "Environments" as a precursor to today's massive wellness industry, noting that "back in the late 60s and early 70s, these were the first products of a kind." The series has experienced renewed scholarly interest, appearing in recent academic works including Mack Hagood's "Hush: Media and Sonic Self-Control" and Victor Szabo's "Turn On, Tune In, Drift Off: Ambient Music's Psychedelic Past." An Australian artist-research collective called Machine Listening even created a conceptual 12th volume in June 2024.
The project marked a significant departure for Beck, whose previous conceptual work rarely involved handmade elements. "Around when he first delved into the series, I started thinking that almost everything I've done as an artist over the last 20 years didn't involve my hand," he reflected. The detailed fern drawings, which give the exhibition its title, required three to four hours of daily work over months, limited only by finger fatigue from the intensive pencil work.
Through his exploration of "Environments," Beck reveals how the promises of 1960s New Age culture anticipated contemporary wellness capitalism, where personal improvement serves productivity rather than genuine well-being. His exhibition transforms forgotten audio artifacts into a meditation on space, control, and the commercialization of comfort in American consumer culture.
