JBS Haldane Lecture: Trevor Pinch - The Moog Synthesiser as a Technological and Sound Object

Published on Jul 2, 2018 STSUCL

"For the 2018 JBS Haldane Lecture, The Department of Science and Technology Studies at UCL is proud to present Prof. Trevor Pinch (Cornell) discussing The Moog Synthesiser as a Technological and Sound Object.

Sound Studies is a newly emergent interdisciplinary field which studies the material production, transmission, storage, and consumption of music, sound, noise, and silence and how these have changed throughout history and within different societies. In this lecture Trevor examines how a new electronic soundscape came into being with a new instrument, the Moog Electronic Music Synthesizer. He tells the story of this invention in upstate New York in 1964-9 and places it within the context of wider developments in electronic music and the counter-cultural sixties. His approach uses work in Science and Technology Studies to better understand the history of musical instruments as sounding objects, documenting how certain sounds stabilized as part of a new electronic soundscape and how other sounds failed to do so.

Professor Trevor Pinch's main research centres on three areas: the sociology of technology and how users engage with technology, sound studies and music and in particular the development of musical instruments and sound objects, markets and the economy with specific attention to the study of selling and persuasion."