Trevor Pinch, Cornell University

"Sound Studies and Technology Studies: Revisiting the Early History of Electronic Music Synthesizers"

Abstract: The new interdisciplinary field of sound studies is fast emerging. Sound Studies examines the cultural, social, material, and technological aspects of sound and silence. Scholars in this area examine the production, transmission, and consumption of musical and non-musical sound, as well as the natural or mediated soundscapes of historical and contemporary cultures.Sound Studies scholarship has appeared in dialogue with practitioners in sound art, electronic music, and performance. The role of sound in science, technology and medicine is part of the broad purview of the field as has recently been argued in the Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies (Pinch and Bijsterveld 2012). In this talk I will revisit my own history of the electronic music synthesizer with a renewed emphasis upon sound. As well as historical material, I will draw upon my own phenomenological experiences of sound in using these old instruments in recent musical performances.