The Critical Organology of Gear Cultures
Event details
Modular synthesizers, a family of technological objects that when assembled constitute bespoke musical instruments, have existed since the 1950s but gained widespread popularity in the 2000s. Obsolete, expensive, bulky, temperamental, difficult to use, and often struggling to produce a compelling musical sound, it would seem to be a mystery why today there would be any interest in modular synthesizers.
A critical organology of these objects aims to situate them as sociocultural actors, and to understand the differential ways that they serve in social formations. Departing from prior critical organology studies, as I will show, the “music” produced with modular synthesizers is a far less significant factor in producing social effects than their status as gear: as a particular class of fetishized objects that mediate power relations within networks of conspicuous consumption.
Attend this seminar online
- You can attend this seminar online via Zoom.
- Meeting ID: 974 1147 1887
- Passcode: 030134)
About the speaker
Eliot Bates
Eliot Bates (they/them), Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology at The Graduate Center (City University of New York), is an ethnographer who researches the interface between people and sound/music technologies - including their design, materiality, instrumentality, and cultural milieus.
An ethnomusicologist by training (Ph.D., UC Berkeley), from 2004-2016 they researched these within Istanbul’s recording studios, instrument-building factories and music industries. Since 2013, their work has geographically broadened to consider European and North American gear cultures. Gear: Cultures of Music and Audio Technologies, co-authored with Samantha Bennett, will come out next year on MIT Press, and Eliot is currently writing a book on post-1995 modular synthesis gear cultures.
In parallel to this textual ethnographic work, Eliot continues to be active in studio-based creative work, whether collaborative recordings featuring the oud, or microtonal makam-based electronic music productions as the artist Makamqore and as half of the duo Manifestoon Platoon. They have contributed, as either performer, composer, or recordist/engineer, to more than 90 albums produced in the US, UK, Turkey and Italy, as well as several TV series and feature films.
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Federico Reuben
Senior Lecturer
Contemporary practice research cluster lead