Publications and Research
Document Type
Book Chapter or Section
Publication Date
2024
Abstract
In this essay, we provide our initial ethnographic research about lines, which at a superficial level can be considered a platform, but which is also synonymous with a community of 8800 users, and with 606k unique posts authored by these users that in aggregate constitute a discourse network (Aufschreibesysteme, see Kittler 1990). lines—as platform, community, and discourse network—is primarily designed to support the development, documentation and user-generated code efforts specific to a set of hardware synthesis-related objects (the two we will focus on are called Norns and Grid; we’ll discuss what they are and what they do through the subsequent sections). Extending from the value/valuation questions, how do the vibrant materialities and the interface/design/reconfiguration aspects of these objects relate to the sociocultural norms and values found within lines? How does the concept of “grid culture” emerge out of this particular imagined community in response to pre-existing and competing places of exchange and connection, and what are its various distributed meanings to the numerous lines users?
Included in
Electronic Devices and Semiconductor Manufacturing Commons, Ethnomusicology Commons, Other Music Commons, Science and Technology Studies Commons
Comments
This chapter was originally published in Modular Synthesis: Patching Machines and People, edited by Ezra J. Teboul, Andreas Kitzmann, and Einar Engström.