Background
Background is a multifaceted term primarily denoting the portion of a visual scene, picture, or composition located behind the principal subject or foreground elements, providing context, depth, and setting to the overall representation.[1] In artistic and design contexts, it encompasses the rear ground or scenery against which main objects are depicted, often influencing the viewer's perception through elements like color, texture, and spatial recession.[2] Beyond visuals, background broadly refers to the underlying circumstances, events, origins, or experiences that precede and inform a person, situation, or phenomenon, such as an individual's educational or cultural history.[3] This concept is essential in fields ranging from painting and photography to narrative storytelling and social analysis, where it establishes foundational layers that enhance understanding of the primary focus.[4]Arts and Entertainment
Performing Arts and Stagecraft
In performing arts and stagecraft, background elements encompass non-principal components such as scenery, props, and supporting performers that establish setting, atmosphere, and context for the primary action on stage. These elements, including painted backdrops, cycloramas, and crowd extras, support immersion by suggesting environments like forests, cities, or crowds without overshadowing dialogue or principal actors.[5] In theater and dance, they function as subtle enhancers, allowing flexibility in scene transitions and focusing audience attention on performers.[6] The historical development of background elements traces back to ancient Greek theater around the 5th century BCE, where the skene—a low wooden structure behind the orchestra—served as a basic backdrop for changing costumes, storing props, and providing a neutral rear wall painted to suggest palaces or temples.[6] This evolved through Roman adaptations with more ornate scaenae frons facades, but remained minimal to accommodate outdoor amphitheaters. By the Elizabethan era, as in Shakespeare's plays at the Globe Theatre (built 1599), backgrounds were sparse, relying on the tiring-house facade, simple curtains (e.g., arras for inner rooms), and implied locations via dialogue rather than elaborate sets, enabling rapid scene changes in open-air venues.[5] The 19th century introduced painted drop cloths and rolled backdrops for perspective illusions, while the early 20th century saw the rise of cycloramas—curved, seamless fabric walls lit to simulate skies or horizons—pioneered in panoramic entertainments like the 1880s Chicago Fire Cyclorama.[7] Modern minimalist staging, emerging post-World War II and popularized in the 1960s–1970s by directors like Peter Brook, strips away excess to emphasize actor-audience connection, using bare stages or abstract projections over traditional scenery, as seen in Brook's 1970 A Midsummer Night's Dream with its white-box set.[8] Key techniques for creating backgrounds in stagecraft include cycloramas, which form a concave rear wall (often 40–50 feet high) diffused with even lighting to evoke infinite space or atmospheric gradients, a method refined since the 1890s for eliminating visible edges in proscenium stages.[7] Projections, integrated since the mid-20th century, use media servers and software like Isadora to cast dynamic images—such as animated skies or environmental textures—onto screens or cycloramas, offering cost-effective alternatives to painted drops and enabling real-time scene shifts, as in regional theater productions where 8–30 hours suffice for complex visuals.[9] Practical effects enhance these backdrops through mechanical means, like trapdoors for sudden appearances, wind machines for storms, or scrims (translucent fabrics) lit from behind to reveal hidden layers, creating illusions of depth or transformation without digital aids; examples include rolling cannonballs for thunder or confetti drops for celebrations in live shows.[10] Background actors, or extras, play a vital role in populating crowd scenes to foster realism and immersion, appearing in nonspeaking capacities to simulate bustling markets, battles, or assemblies that ground the narrative in a lived world. Under guidelines from the Actors' Equity Association (AEA), the primary union for professional stage actors in the United States, these performers maintain subtle movements—such as gesturing or milling about—to support the atmosphere without distracting from principals, often rehearsed to align with blocking for seamless integration.[11] Their contributions heighten emotional stakes, as in large-scale musicals where extras form reactive ensembles, enhancing the scale of events like royal processions. In notable productions, such as modern reconstructions at Shakespeare's Globe, projected backgrounds combined with practical elements like hanging banners or ground cloths evoke Elizabethan atmospheres, as explored in experimental stagings of The Tempest using light and shadow for ethereal settings.[9] Background music, as an auditory layer, briefly complements these visuals by underscoring mood transitions in live shows.[5]Visual and Literary Arts
In visual arts, the background constitutes the receding space in a composition that contextualizes and supports the primary subjects in the foreground, often employing techniques to simulate depth and spatial relationships. Linear perspective, reintroduced by the Italian architect Filippo Brunelleschi in the early 15th century, revolutionized this by using mathematical principles to depict recession through converging lines meeting at a vanishing point on the horizon, enabling realistic three-dimensional illusions on flat surfaces. Atmospheric perspective complements this method by adjusting color saturation, contrast, and clarity to mimic the haze of distance, with distant elements rendered in cooler, softer tones and reduced detail to evoke environmental depth. These techniques shifted backgrounds from mere ornamental fillers to integral components of spatial narrative. The historical evolution of backgrounds traces from the stylized, flat planes of medieval European art—where scenes often featured gold-leaf skies or patterned grounds lacking depth—to the immersive landscapes of the Renaissance, which integrated foreground figures with expansive environments. A seminal example is Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa (c. 1503–1506), where the background's serpentine river valley and hazy mountains, achieved through aerial (atmospheric) perspective and subtle sfumato blending, not only create recession but also infuse the portrait with a sense of ethereal continuity between subject and setting. This innovation marked one of the earliest uses of an imaginary landscape in portraiture, enhancing emotional and psychological resonance. In literature, background manifests as the descriptive setting or embedded backstory that frames characters, actions, and themes, providing contextual layers essential for narrative coherence and immersion. Settings often reflect social, temporal, or environmental influences on the plot, while backstory supplies historical or personal foundations that motivate events without dominating the foreground action. J.R.R. Tolkien exemplifies this in his Middle-earth saga, particularly The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955), where the world's ancient lore, diverse geographies, and linguistic histories form a vast, self-contained background that underscores themes of heroism and loss, allowing the central quest to unfold within a believable, evolving universe. Artistic principles governing backgrounds emphasize balance and symbolism, with color theory playing a key role in perceptual depth: advancing warm hues and high saturation in nearer elements contrast with receding cool blues and desaturated tones farther back, guiding the viewer's eye through the composition. In surrealism, backgrounds transcend realism to symbolize psychological states, as seen in Salvador Dalí's works like The Persistence of Memory (1931), where barren, melting dreamscapes juxtapose rigid forms to represent subconscious fluidity and temporal distortion, drawing from autobiographical motifs to evoke irrationality. Such symbolic layering invites interpretive depth, transforming the background into a narrative device akin to literary subtext. Modern applications in digital art and graphic novels extend these principles into interactive and sequential formats, where backgrounds facilitate world-building by conveying mood, culture, and scale through layered digital environments. In fantasy graphic novels, for instance, detailed backdrops—rendered via software like Adobe Photoshop or Clip Studio Paint—establish immersive realms, such as dystopian cityscapes that mirror character isolation or enchanted forests that hint at hidden lore, efficiently advancing plot without verbose explanation. This approach, rooted in traditional techniques but amplified by computational tools, underscores backgrounds' enduring role in supporting foreground narratives across media.Media and Recordings
Audio and Music Productions
Background vocals, often abbreviated as BVs, consist of layered harmonies or call-and-response elements that support the lead singer in music recordings, enhancing depth and emotional resonance.[12] This technique gained prominence in the 1950s through doo-wop groups, where African American teenagers in urban communities used four-part harmonies and nonsense syllables to simulate instrumentation and create rich vocal textures behind the lead tenor.[13] In modern pop productions, background vocals frequently incorporate auto-tune effects for pitch correction and stylistic robotic timbres, as popularized in tracks like Cher's 1998 hit "Believe," which marked a shift toward overt use of the technology for creative vocal layering.[14] Background music in albums and tracks encompasses ambient noises, samples, and loops designed to establish atmosphere without overpowering the foreground elements. British musician Brian Eno pioneered ambient music in the 1970s, creating unobtrusive soundscapes intended to reward attention while functioning as environmental enhancement, as exemplified by his 1975 album Discreet Music and the 1978 release Ambient 1: Music for Airports, which layered tape loops to produce serene, looping textures.[15] These elements, including subtle field recordings or synthesized drones, contribute to the overall mood in recordings across genres. Production techniques such as multitracking and reverb are essential for seamlessly integrating background elements into audio mixes. Guitarist Les Paul developed multitracking in the late 1940s through experiments with sound-on-sound recording on modified Ampex tape machines, allowing him to layer multiple vocal and instrumental tracks for his 1947-1948 hits like "Lover" and "Brazil," which demonstrated overdubbing's potential for complex harmonies.[16] Concurrently, engineers in the 1940s began experimenting with artificial reverb by repurposing spaces like bathrooms to simulate natural acoustics, enabling background sounds to blend spatially with leads and creating a sense of depth in studio recordings.[17] Genre-specific applications highlight the versatility of background elements; for instance, orchestral swells in film scores build dramatic tension through gradual crescendos of strings and brass, as heard in Howard Shore's sweeping motifs for The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-2003).[18] In contrast, electronic music often employs subtle synth pads—sustained, chord-based tones generated by synthesizers—to provide harmonic filler and atmospheric warmth, such as the lush, evolving textures in 1990s trance tracks by artists like Gouryella.[19] Legal considerations in audio productions uniquely address background elements through sampling clearances, requiring permission from both the sound recording copyright holder and the musical composition's publisher to avoid infringement when incorporating loops or ambient snippets.[20] This process ensures that even incidental background uses, like recycled drum loops or environmental samples, are licensed for commercial distribution.[21]Film, Television, and Digital Media
In film production, backgrounds serve as essential constructed sets or green-screen composites to establish visual settings without overshadowing the narrative foreground. During the silent era, filmmakers like D.W. Griffith relied on painted backdrops and theatrical flats to simulate environments, creating depth on limited soundstages.[22] This approach evolved through the mid-20th century, with optical printing techniques becoming prominent by the 1970s for compositing multiple film elements, enabling more complex illusions like layered landscapes.[23] Modern visual effects, pioneered by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) in Star Wars (1977), integrated matte paintings, miniatures, and motion-control cameras to craft expansive space backgrounds, revolutionizing immersive world-building.[24] In television, backgrounds balance practical locations for authenticity against studio backings for efficiency and control over lighting and sound. Practical exteriors provide realistic geography but introduce variables like weather, while studio sets with painted or projected backings allow repeatable shots within tight schedules.[25] Chroma key techniques, developed in the 1940s by RKO Studios for films like The Thief of Bagdad (1940), were adapted for television to replace uniform-colored backings with digital composites, facilitating cost-effective scene transitions.[26] Digital media extends backgrounds into interactive realms, as seen in video games and streaming content. Parallax scrolling, introduced in early 1980s arcade titles like Konami's Scramble (1981), layers 2D backgrounds moving at varying speeds to simulate depth in side-scrolling games.[27] In open-world titles, procedural generation creates vast, dynamic environments; No Man's Sky (2016) uses algorithms to generate planetary landscapes and skies on-the-fly, ensuring unique backdrops across billions of worlds. These techniques enhance immersion in streaming visuals, where backgrounds support narrative flow in episodic formats. Backgrounds play a crucial role in storytelling by establishing era, mood, or geography, often carrying symbolic weight—as in Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954), where apartment backdrops evoke voyeuristic tension and urban isolation.[28] However, creating them involves technical challenges like maintaining continuity across shots to avoid visual discrepancies, particularly in multi-day reshoots. Budget constraints further complicate production, forcing designers to prioritize scalable sets or digital assets over elaborate builds to achieve immersive results without exceeding financial limits.[29]Science and Technology
Physical Sciences and Engineering
In the physical sciences and engineering, background refers to unavoidable extraneous signals, radiation, or environmental influences that can interfere with measurements, experiments, or system performance, often requiring careful characterization and subtraction to isolate true signals. These backgrounds arise from natural phenomena like cosmic rays or terrestrial sources, as well as inherent system limitations such as thermal fluctuations, complicating the detection of subtle effects in fields ranging from particle physics to structural analysis. Quantifying and mitigating background is essential for achieving high precision, as even low-level interferences can mask rare events or degrade signal integrity. Background radiation encompasses both cosmic ionizing radiation from extraterrestrial sources and terrestrial contributions from radioactive decay in the Earth's crust and atmosphere. It was first identified in the context of natural radioactivity by Henri Becquerel in 1896, who observed uranium salts emitting penetrating rays that fogged photographic plates, marking the discovery of radioactivity independent of external stimulation. This radiation is typically quantified using Geiger-Müller counters, which detect ionizing events and report counts per minute; typical natural background levels range from 5 to 60 counts per minute depending on location and detector sensitivity. In modern physics, ultra-low background detectors, such as high-purity germanium diodes operated in underground laboratories, achieve sensitivities below 1 count per day per keV, enabling searches for rare weak interactions like neutrinoless double beta decay. A prominent form of background noise in engineering is thermal noise, generated by the random thermal motion of charge carriers in resistors and other components, fundamentally limiting the sensitivity of electronic circuits. Known as Johnson-Nyquist noise, its root-mean-square voltage is given by the formula V = \sqrt{4 [k](/page/K) T R \Delta f}, where k is Boltzmann's constant, T is the absolute temperature, R is the resistance, and \Delta f is the bandwidth; this relation was derived by Harry Nyquist in 1928 based on earlier observations by John B. Johnson. This noise is white and unavoidable at any finite temperature, contributing to the noise floor in amplifiers, sensors, and communication systems. In astronomy, background radiation manifests as the cosmic microwave background (CMB), a uniform 2.7 K blackbody radiation field discovered serendipitously in 1965 by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson using a horn antenna at Bell Labs, providing key evidence for the Big Bang theory. In particle physics, background events at facilities like the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) include processes such as quantum chromodynamics interactions or instrumental noise that mimic signals of interest, like Higgs boson decays, necessitating advanced simulation and data analysis to distinguish them from the billion proton-proton collisions per second. Mitigation of background in physical sciences and engineering involves multiple strategies, including physical shielding with lead, water, or underground facilities to attenuate cosmic and terrestrial radiation; electronic filtering techniques, such as bandpass filters or anti-coincidence circuits, to suppress noise in specific frequency ranges; and statistical methods like background subtraction, where off-source measurements are scaled and subtracted from signal regions to isolate true events. These approaches are tailored to the context, for instance using veto detectors in particle experiments to reject events correlated with background triggers. Engineering applications highlight background challenges in practical designs, such as vibration backgrounds in structural testing, where ambient seismic noise or machinery-induced oscillations must be isolated from the response of test specimens to applied loads, often using accelerometers and Fourier analysis. Similarly, electromagnetic interference acts as background noise in electronic circuits, arising from nearby power lines or switching devices, which can induce unwanted currents; mitigation typically employs grounded shielding and twisted-pair wiring to maintain signal integrity in sensitive systems like radar or medical imaging equipment. In computing, background processes can analogously introduce system noise, though physical phenomena like those described here form the underlying hardware constraints.Computing and Information Technology
In computing and information technology, the term "background" denotes processes, tasks, or data operations that execute without direct user interaction, thereby supporting and enabling the primary foreground activities of applications and systems. This distinction facilitates efficient resource allocation and multitasking, allowing systems to handle ancillary functions seamlessly while users focus on interactive tasks. Background operations have been integral to operating systems since the advent of time-sharing in the 1960s, exemplified by the Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS) developed at MIT in 1961, which permitted multiple users to run programs concurrently by rapidly switching CPU allocation.[30] Similarly, IBM's OS/360 time-sharing option, introduced in the mid-1960s, extended these capabilities to commercial environments, laying the foundation for modern multitasking.[31] In Unix-like operating systems, background processes are commonly implemented as daemons—persistent programs that manage system services autonomously. The concept of daemons traces back to MIT's Project MAC in the early 1960s, where it was adopted to describe background entities inspired by Maxwell's demon from thermodynamics, denoting invisible agents performing maintenance tasks.[32] A prominent example is the cron daemon, created by Ken Thompson at Bell Labs for Version 7 Unix in 1979, which automates scheduled tasks like log rotation or backups by executing user-defined jobs at specified intervals without foreground intervention.[33] In Microsoft Windows, equivalent functionality is provided through services, which are background processes hosted by the Service Control Manager and introduced with Windows NT in 1993 to support non-interactive operations such as network authentication or print spooling. These mechanisms ensure system reliability by decoupling essential tasks from user sessions. Background data synchronization in applications further illustrates this paradigm, where data is updated automatically in the background, such as cloud backups in services like Google Drive or periodic email fetching in clients like Microsoft Outlook, maintaining consistency across devices without user prompts. However, such operations implicate user privacy, as they involve transmitting personal data; the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), effective from May 2018, mandates explicit consent and data minimization for these sync processes to safeguard against unauthorized processing.[34] In web development, background elements are stylistic features defined via CSS properties likebackground-color and background-image, which apply colors or images to HTML elements; these were formalized in the W3C's CSS Level 1 specification released on December 17, 1996, enabling declarative control over page visuals.[35]
Within IT security, background checks leverage automated tools for vulnerability assessments, scanning networks and applications continuously to detect weaknesses like outdated software or misconfigurations. Tools such as Tenable Nessus or Qualys perform these scans in the background, generating reports on potential exploits without disrupting operations, thereby enabling proactive risk mitigation.[36] The evolution of mobile computing has intensified focus on background management; Android introduced stringent restrictions in 2016 with Android 7.0 Nougat, building on the 2015 Doze mode by further limiting background app execution during idle periods to conserve battery life, deferring network access and job scheduling unless whitelisted.