Leaving unfilled space in art lets rare events gain significance

Evidence

Harold was one of the first people who got that right, I think. One of the very first to have sufficient courage to leave enough space in the music and not fill spaces unnecessarily. Not decorate. Takes an awful lot of quiet courage to do that. … When this is done, it allows an alternative ecology to emerge – one based on events that are much less frequent. And that, of course, affects their significance. You are drawn to them in a sort of smiling fascination, rather than the usual pop music method of lapel grabbing bombardment. — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 428

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s long-standing territory of attention, silence, and signal in soundscapes (One Square Inch of Silence, The Soundscape) — the idea that sparsity restores meaning echoes how keynote sounds become noticed only when they change. — connects to: Great art creates attentional situations, not just artifacts — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!: A Manifesto of the…, 383; Any moment that attracts attention can be reframed as an art experience — Pauline Oliveros, Deep Listening, 372; Art suspends ordinary operations and provokes productive puzzlement — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!: A Manifesto of the…, 384 (+1 more)
• ADDENDUM: Pairs naturally with the reader’s silence/absence-of-noise material; also feeds the trees-as-infrastructure worldbuilding via the pruning metaphor of leaving negative space.

Broader Connections

• Great art creates attentional situations, not just artifacts #corroborates (0.75) — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 383
• Any moment that attracts attention can be reframed as an art experience #complicates (0.75) — Pauline Oliveros, Deep Listening, 372
• Art suspends ordinary operations and provokes productive puzzlement #corroborates (0.72) — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 384