Publications and Research
Document Type
Book Chapter or Section
Publication Date
2023
Abstract
When Harald Bode nominally invented the modular synthesiser in 1960, it was not yet clear whether it was a musical instrument or a less-defined form of studio-sited audio technology (Subotnik 1970). Much of the technology, from the interface design to the specific parts, was shared with nonmusical test and measurement equipment. Sixty years later, hardware modular synthesis is used not just for musical creation but for noise, sound art and data sonification/visualization. Through an ethnographic study of the design and use of the Eurorack modular synthesis format, and of modular synthesis maker and user communities spread through North America, Europe and Australia, this chapter investigates both the ontology of ‘the musical instrument’ and the way we conceptualize synthesis as a musical and cultural practice.
I propose a framework for understanding what is distinctive about modular synthesis that attends to the design (topological, aesthetic, interfacial, operational) of modules, and to the user’s multisensory and synthesthetic experience of module interfaces (which includes haptics, kinesthetics, tactility, look and sound). My concern is not just with describing the properties of technological objects, but with understanding why interfacial concerns and circuit layouts are so important that they can be constitutive of different modular synthesis gear cultures (Bates and Bennett 2022), or productive of social distinctions within them. Extending recent work in critical organology (Sonevytsky 2008; Bates 2012; Tucker 2016) and feminist and queer theorization of synthesis (Rodgers 2015; Kheshti 2019), I examine interfaces as sites of intra-action (Barad 2003). I show that the ‘analog feel’ of modular synthesis, in addition to resulting from a broader history of technological interface development, is constitutive both of the technologies and of the social lives of synthesiser users/designers—especially when social interaction around synthesis transpires online.
Included in
Ethnomusicology Commons, Industrial and Product Design Commons, Other Music Commons, Science and Technology Studies Commons
Comments
This chapter was originally published in Shaping Sound and Society: The Cultural Study of Musical Instruments, edited by Stephen Cottrell.