Rethinking Music through Science and Technology Studies

Antoine Hennion is Professor at Mines ParisTech, and the former Director of the Centre for the Sociology of Innovation. He has written extensively on the sociology of music, media, and cultural industries. Christophe Levaux is a lecturer and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Liège, Belgium. His research focuses on approaches to 20th-century American music and Actor-Network Theory.

Foreword Howard S. Becker
Introduction Antoine Hennion and Christophe Levaux
I. Histories1. Rameau and Harmony: Can Theory Make Reason of Music?
Antoine Hennion
2. Sounding Standards: A History Concert Pitch, between Musicology and STS
Fanny Gribenski
3. Is DIY a Punk Invention?: Learning processes, Recording Devices, and Social Knowledge

François Ribac
4. Secure and Insecure Bases in the Performance of Western Classical Music
Daniel Leech-Wilkinson
5. Deep Structure: The Generative Subject in Actor-Network Theory and Musicology
Patrick Valiquet
II. Instruments
6. Sonic Imaginaries: How Hugh Davies and David Van Koevering Performed Electronic Music’s Future
James Mooney and Trevor Pinch7. Following the Instruments: The Designers and Users of the Fairlight CMI
Paul Harkins
8. The Interface and Instrumentality of Eurorack Modular Synthesis
Eliot BatesIII. Technologies
9. Human Sounds and the Obscenity of Information
David Trippett10. STS Confronts the Vocaloid: Assemblage Thinking with Hatsune Miku
Nick Prior
11. Similarity and Difference in Sound Studies (and elsewhere)
Basile Zimmermann
IV. Practices
12. Smartphones, Streaming Platforms, and the Infrastructuring of Digital Music Practices

Paolo Magaudda
13. Tracing the Music Actor-Network: Losing the Meaning of Musical Experience? The Limits of a Routinization of Science and Technology Studies Applied to Techniques and Knowledges of Music
François Debruyne
14. Musicalized Images: Composing, Playing, Remixing, and Performing Net Art
Jean-Paul Fourmentraux