Sound Studies: New Technologies and Music

Author(s): Trevor Pinch and Karin Bijsterveld

Source: Social Studies of Science, Vol. 34, No. 5, Special Issue on Sound Studies: New
Technologies and Music (Oct., 2004), pp. 635-648
Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.
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SSS
Sound Studies:
New Technologies and Music
TrevorPinch and Karin Bijsterveld

Developments in sound technologies over the last 50 years have dramat-

ically changed the way that music is produced and consumed. In the 19th
century most music was experienced as live performance. Today most
music is listened to individually through technologically mediated devices,
such as a personal stereo or a personal computer that enables the down-
loading of MP3 files over the Internet, and in the past few decades music
has been produced with new electronic instruments such as the Theremin,
the Hammond Organ, the electric guitar, the synthesizer, and the digital
sampler. Technologies such as the phonograph, tape-recorder, and com-
pact disk have enabled 'sound' to be produced, controlled, and manipu-
lated independently from musicians. In today's recording studios the
sound engineers can be as important in the production of 'the sound' as
are the musicians themselves. But how can such changes be understood
and what do they mean for listeners and for science and technology studies
(S&TS)?
The papers in this special issue address such issues. The papers were
first presented at an international workshop, 'Sound Matters: New Tech-
nology in Music', held at the University of Maastricht, the Netherlands, in
November 2002. The scholars at the workshop were drawn from such
diverse fields as ethnomusicology, history, anthropology, cultural studies,
sociology, and S&TS. All were working on some aspect of what we might
call 'auditory culture'. For such scholars, sound matters.
The topic of the workshop was new technologies and music. The
papers covered a range of technological innovations in the way in which
music was produced and consumed. These included new instruments,
such as new varieties of electric guitars and violas; new means of manip-
ulating and controlling sound in the studio, such as microphones, rever-
beration units, mixing consoles, and new forms of networking software;
new forms of technologically mediated listening, such as audiophilia,

Social Studies of Science 34/5(October 2004) 635-648

? SSS and SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks CA, New Delhi)
ISSN 0306-3127 DOI: 10.1177/0306312704047615
www.sagepublications.com

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636 Social Studies of Science 34/5

mobile listening in cars and via personal stereos; and the emergence of new
genres such as sampling-based world music. There was agreement that
none of the standard disciplinary approaches were alone adequate. In the
spirit of interdisciplinary learning, scholars set aside their own perspectives
to see what other approaches could bring to bear. This was sometimes
frustrating, but often rewarding. At moments it seemed that the topic was
impossibly large and complex with very little known. Whole areas of music
technology and vast areas of listener experience remain completely un-
charted. Occasionally we experienced that giddy feeling of seeing how the
different parts might fit together - glimpses into the new vista that awaited
us. There was agreement that we had stumbled upon a new and rich area,
and this collection represents the first tentative advances into the
territory.
This territory can be thought of as part of the wider field of what we
shall call 'Sound Studies'. Sound Studies is an emerging interdisciplinary
area that studies the material production and consumption of music,
sound, noise, and silence, and how these have changed throughout history
and within different societies, but does so from a much broader perspective
than standard disciplines such as ethnomusicology, history of music, and
sociology of music. Exemplary work in sound studies would include:
Murray Schafer's pioneering notion of soundscape (see later); James
Johnson's study of how audiences learned to listen to opera in a new way in
Paris after the French Revolution and thereby produced the bourgeois
listening audience (Johnson, 1995); and Christopher Small's notion of
'musicking' to capture how any form of music demands its own set of
material performance and listening practices (Small, 1977).' What S&TS
can contribute is a focus on the materiality of sound, its embeddedness not
only in history, society, and culture, but also in science and technology and
its machines and ways of knowing and interacting.2 As Jonathan Sterne
correctly claims in his recently published The Audible Past, there 'is a vast
literature on the history and philosophy of sound; yet it remains con-
ceptually fragmented' (Sterne, 2003: 4). But with this collection we hope
to show that S&TS has a contribution to offer, over and above the more
mainstream disciplines that investigate musical culture.
The papers in this special issue do not claim to provide a complete
overview or to represent all of the current perspectives towards sound,
music, and new technology. We believe the collection as a whole shows how
this topic is relevant to S&TS, and we hope to encourage others to take
advantage of the new research opportunities. Although there has been
some previous interest in the area, there has been little sustained scholar-
ship. For several of the participants at the workshop it was their first
encounter with S&TS. In preparing the papers for this collection we have
pushed scholars unfamiliar with relevant work on S&TS to read into the
field and try and enter into a dialogue with S&TS approaches. Similarly
those scholars working from within S&TS have tried to push their frame-
works to learn from the other disciplines.

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Introduction: Pinch & Bijsterveld: Sound Studies 637

Sound Practices
S&TS's engagement with the auditory dimension can be thought of as an
extension of the field's continued examination of the detailed material
practices that constitute technoscience. Over the last two decades some of
the most exciting work has focused on the minutiae of the visual practices
and techniques of scientists (Lynch & Woolgar, 1990). Diagrams, draw-
ings, graphs, photographs, and pictures are at the heart of the techno-
science enterprise. The world of the scientist and the technologist and
indeed the world of those who consume its ideas, products, and innova-
tions can be treated as a visual world. Scientific instruments, for which
Latour & Woolgar (1979) used the felicitous term, 'inscription devices', are
often designed to render the world visually, to provide what Lynch (1990)
has called the 'externalized retina' that guides scientific inquiry. What gets
visually represented in what form and by what means, and how such
visuals are read and transformed are key questions. What we might call the
'visual paradigm' has come to dominate S&TS and the humanities and
social sciences in general.
But if the scientific laboratory is a visual world it is also a place where
other senses play a role. Here we are concerned with sound. Scientists talk
to each other and to other people in the laboratory (for example, tech-
nicians, administrators, and students); scientific instruments make noises
(vacuum pumps and centrifuges whir); fax machines, computers, printers,
and photocopiers hum and beep; solutions gurgle; tea and coffee bubbles;
radios play in the background; and ambient noise is everywhere (Mody,
2001). If the visual dimension is part of material practice then so too is the
world of sound. We who enter the laboratories to observe must also be
prepared to listen.
In doing sound studies, however, it is nearly impossible to escape from
the visual. Visual metaphors dominate our language - as we said earlier in
this introduction we see the new vista of sound studies but don't hear it!
The visual is the known - we have ways of dealing with it, talking about
it and studying it. The auditory is the unknown, the unfamiliar, the new -
it is the stranger knocking at the door threatening to disrupt the world. It is
perhaps inevitable that, at least to begin with, we will see this new world
rather than listen to it. More significantly, the world of scholarly publication
is a world where visual technologies and modes of representation still
predominate. Books and academic papers can easily reproduce visual
images but not sounds. If the sounds themselves cannot be reproduced,
then an even greater premium is placed upon the language used to describe
and represent auditory phenomena. How does one describe the sound of a
Steinway piano or a Moog synthesizer? Part of the difficulty that surfaced
at the workshop was that different disciplines have evolved their own
specialist languages for describing sound. Musicologists have evolved a
highly technical language to describe music, working musicians use yet
another language as do listeners and studio engineers. Then there are the
social sciences parasitic upon this auditory culture: a conversational analyst

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638 Social Studies of Science 34/5

will transcribe a tape of the same auditory phenomenon in a different way

from a socio-linguist - other analysts will focus upon yet other aspects.
There are many overlaps to be found with the auditory dimension in
the history of science. There is a long and intimate connection between
mathematics and music - it was Pythagoras who first realized that musical
overtones occurred in ratios of rational numbers (Hankins & Silverman,
1995). Helmholtz, perhaps more than any other scientist, saw the deep
insight that could be gained by studying sound and music as a means to
understanding other physical phenomena (von Helmholtz, 1895). Musical
instruments have been significant for the development of scientific instru-
ments and scientists have made important contributions towards under-
standing and building better musical instruments and have contributed to
projects such as the standardization of pitch (Jackson, 2003). But it is not
just in the physical sciences - in fields as diverse as animal behavior and
seismology, sound has been a key means to study the world. As we move
into the 21st century the connections get ever more deep. Whole areas of
instrumentation and parts of science depend on sound. For instance, sonar
has revolutionized oceanography. Indeed sonification as a means of pre-
senting results through sound rather than viewing results is a hot new topic
in science. As Emily Thompson (2002) has powerfully shown, the develop-
ment of acoustics in the 20th century took place hand-in-glove with
architecture and new technologies, such as loudspeakers, which trans-
formed the public spaces in which sound was experienced.
It is the study of technology that provides probably the most direct link
between sound and music and the concerns of S&TS. Musical instruments
can be thought of as technological artifacts. As Bob Moog the veteran
synthesizer designer has commented, 'Musical instrument design is one of
the most sophisticated and specialized technologies that we humans have
developed' (Pinch &Trocco, 2002: v). The musicians who perform on such
instruments are, in effect, the users of the technology. Many instrument-
makers, such as Moog, see fine-tuning the interface between users and the
technology as the key to an instrument's success. Musical interfaces indeed
have been influential on the design of other human-machine interfaces.
Both the typewriter and the computer mouse have been shaped by the
musical keyboards that formed their earliest templates (Bardini, 2000).

Musical Instruments as Technological Artifacts

Thinking of musical instruments as technological artifacts with unique
user communities brings sound studies within the domain of technology
studies. In technology studies the call has been made to open up the black
box of technology; to study how specific designs are shaped by amalgams
of social, cultural, and economic factors, and how society, culture, and
economics are in turn shaped by technology. There are now many studies
that show the co-construction or co-production of technology and society.
Users of technology have also gained increasing attention (Oudshoorn &
Pinch, 2003). Woolgar (1991) has argued that users are 'configured' by

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Introduction: Pinch & Bijsterveld: Sound Studies 639

technologies and Akrich (1992) has suggested that technologies, like texts,
have users' scripts embedded within them. Taking a cue from Wittgenstein,
who famously argued that the way to understand language is from its use,
Pinch and Trocco, in one of the most comprehensive studies from the
perspective of S&TS of the evolution of a musical instrument (the synthe-
sizer), have suggested that, 'the way to understand the meaning of an
instrument is in its use by real musicians - in state of the art recording
studios and home basements, on the stage and on the road' (Pinch &
Trocco, 2002: 10). This means we must 'follow the instruments' in the
same way that in the early days of S&TS we learnt to 'follow the actors'. It
is the strategy adopted by Steve Waksman in his paper in the special issue,
where he describes how tinkering with guitar designs can be tied to the
special sound of two very different genres of music in the Los Angeles area
- hard core punk and heavy metal (Waksman, 2004). The importance of
tinkering by young men is a theme familiar from the story of radio and the
synthesizer. Waksman shows the intimate links between use, design and
manufacture as guitarist Eddie Van Halen moves from 'user as tinkerer' to
become a guitar designer who eventually manufactures and sells his own
customized instruments. Such guitars and their special sounds are mar-
keted to still capture the mystique of the inveterate tinkerer and guitar
virtuoso embodied in the persona of Eddie Van Halen.
Studying the evolution of musical instruments can tell us much about
music as a form of culture. Musical instruments are used within highly
developed and circumscribed social and cultural environments. Rock
genres such as hardcore punk and heavy metal require performers, audi-
ences, and listeners alike to partake in a highly ritualized form of cultural
production and reproduction. Cultural conventions within a genre often
hamper innovation, but on occasions the introduction of a new instrument
or adaptation of an old instrument can be an opportunity to transform
musical culture. One only has to think of Jimi Hendrix's use of feedback
and how it transformed the genre of rock music by turning the guitar from
an electrified acoustic instrument into a new source of pure electronic
sound (Waksman, 1999; McSwain, 2002). What is often at stake in such
cultural transformations is the very demarcation between noise, sound,
and music (and indeed silence). The works of experimental composers like
John Cage, the earlier introduction of the noise machines by the Futurists
(Bijsterveld, 2002), and the introduction of new instruments such as the
player piano and the synthesizer provided many such instances of such
contestations (Pinch & Bijsterveld, 2003).
Perhaps the most circumscribed genre of all is the world of classical
music that Karin Bijsterveld and Marten Schulp write about in their paper
in this issue (Bijsterveld & Schulp, 2004). On the face of it the instruments
of the classical orchestra have evolved hardly at all. The actors involved
have well-defined roles whether as teachers, composers, players, instru-
ment makers, or engineers. Moreover, institutions like orchestras, con-
ductors, concerts, and the conservatories that train musicians have
changed little over time. The classical repertoire also displays a remarkable

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640 Social Studies of Science 34/5

stability - certainly compared with anything in the rock genre studied by

Waksman. How do innovations in instruments then come about in this
conservative and stable world: are they accepted and for what sorts of uses?
Bijsterveld and Schulp conduct interviews with instrument-makers to
answer these questions. Their paper draws attention to how successful
innovators rephrase or repackage tradition in a new way. They also draw
upon an idea that is gaining some currency in S&TS - the importance of
intermediaries or as they call it 'the go betweens'. It was people at the
crossroads of their profession who most stimulated the instrument-makers
to innovate. The world of musical instruments is full of such intermediaries
or 'boundary shifters' (Pinch & Trocco, 2002: 313-14). In Pinch and
Trocco's study of the synthesizer they found it was engineers' and musi-
cians' abilities to morph between or 'shift' boundaries that enabled the
worlds of design and use to be bridged.
As well as telling us something about musical innovation, these studies
on the introduction of new instruments also contribute to the wider field of
sound studies. The introduction of new technologies and instruments
provides a way of probing and breaching the often taken for granted
norms, values, and conventions of musical culture (Pinch & Bijsterveld,
2003). Issues such as virtuosity and creativity become contested: is it the
performer or is it 'merely' the instrument that makes the innovation? The
shifts back and forth between attributions of human and non-human
agency and the debates they have garnered are familiar grist to the mill of
S&TS scholars. The introduction of new instruments also makes visible the
specific innovation strategies adopted and the roles of key actors like users
and intermediaries.

The Studio: Tacit Knowledge and the Materiality of Sound

Sound technologies, of course, involve far more than musical instruments.
Indeed the significance of any individual instrument has been dwarfed in
the 20th century by the dramatic changes in the way that music is
recorded, stored, and consumed. Detailed histories of the recording studio
- including the many technologies involved, ranging from mixer consoles
to reverb chambers and the role played by key personnel like recording
engineers and record producers - are only just beginning to emerge (Day,
2000; Morton, 2000; Chanan, 1995). Susan Schmidt Horning has carried
out one of the first such histories, and in her paper she documents how the
studio effectively became a musical instrument in its own right as audio
engineers managed to get ever better control of the ability to manipulate
sound (Horning, 2004). Horning's paper focuses upon the neglected
group of studio engineers and through her oral histories she describes what
their skills and training were, how they worked with the new recording
technologies, and how they emerged as a professional group. One science
studies theme of her paper is tacit knowledge. The first studio engineers
learnt on the job by trial and error, but soon they developed specific tacit
skills like miking - the placement of microphone. Studio engineers have

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Introduction:Pinch & Bijsterveld: Sound Studies 641

always depended on their ears but with more and more technology at their
disposal their listening skills became mediated via the vast array of new
sound equipment. It provided them with as it were 'externalized ears', an
aural field analogous to Lynch's externalized retina in the world of
visualization.
Another relevant theme for S&TS is the role of space in the construc-
tion of specific sorts of sound in the studio and the evolution of standard-
ized sound. Studio engineers, whether through miking, reverb, or mixing,
are engaged in reconfiguring the sonic space of the studio. To do this
effectively engineers build up not only tacit skills, but also a vocabulary to
describe sound. As Tom Porcello shows in his paper in this issue on how
neophytes acquire studio skills, the language of sound has become highly
nuanced, often mixing up technical terms with local knowledge (Porcello,
2004). His transcriptions of live studio sessions show how the language of
studio sound can reinforce hierarchies between 'insiders' and those who
are still learning.
As studio engineers became more adept at manipulating sound, cer-
tain sounds started to become standardized. Sometimes these sounds were
associated with one place or one studio, such as the famous Nashville
sound; sometimes with a particular producer, such as Phil Spector's 'wall
of sound', and sometimes with particular musicians, groups, or instru-
ments. How sounds get recognized and reproduced and thereby standard-
ized is a complex topic and depends not only on local configurations of
technology and skills within studios (and in record cutting and pressing),
but also upon a global recording industry which enables certain kinds of
sound to travel and become the 'standards'. Both Porcello's and Horning's
papers point to elements in this complex process of standardization.
The theme of reconfiguring sonic space is pursued in Paul Th6berge's
paper, as he follows the studio into its futuristic guise as the 'network
studio' (Theberge, 2004). Theberge traces the history of the studio and
shows how it becomes a particular sort of 'non-place'. The latest network
technology promises to remove all aspects of local space from recording as
musicians anywhere in the world in any time zone can in theory network
together to record music. Th6berge shows how this ideology of a non-space
has emerged over time. He argues that the notion of a non-space actually
arises from very specific configurations of technology and skill. He shows
how studio devices like mixing consoles were important as means for
reconfiguring the spatiality of sound. The introduction of the computer
into the studio was another key moment as the process of recording
became digitized. He follows software companies as they vie for control of
the future direction of recording.

Listening
The remaining paper in this special issue, by Marc Perlman, deals with
how new audio technologies have contributed to shifts in modes of
listening (Perlman, 2004). Since his paper on the face of it seems far away

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642 Social Studies of Science 34/5

from the concerns of S&TS we need to delve a little more deeply into the
field of sound studies to show how it relates to those concerns.
The notion of a 'soundscape' is a key concept in sound studies. The
Canadian composer and environmentalist Raymond Murray Schafer
coined the term in the 1970s (Murray Schafer, 1994 [1977]). It refers to
our sonic environment and includes not only the 'natural' environment of
sounds, such as waves breaking on a beach, but also compositions and
sound sculptures which fill spaces such as gardens with sounds that invite
people to listen. 'Soundscape' is perhaps an unfortunate term, because its
resonance with visual landscapes suggests a static perspective rather than
the moving and surrounding characteristic of most sounds (Rodaway,
1994: 86-87). Yet Jonathan Sterne is right in stressing that ephemerality is
not 'a special quality of sound': both visual and auditory experiences are
ephemeral (Sterne, 2003: 18).
Murray Schafer's goal was to 'map' historical and contemporary
soundscapes. His famous World Soundscape Project had an environmental
focus, drawing attention to new sounds as well as those that had vanished.
Just as whole classes of animals and plants had become extinct, Murray
Schafer and his colleagues claimed that 'man' had lost a pre-industrial 'hi-
fi' sonic environment, in which signals had been clearly audible. In
contrast, in today's industrial 'low-fi' soundscape individual sounds are
masked and overcrowded. One of the problems of the modern soundscape
is 'schizophonia': 'the split between an original sound and its electro-
acoustic reproduction'. Echoing Walter Benjamin's famous argument that
works of art in the age of mechnical reproduction become detached from
their 'aura', Murray Schafer argued that: 'Original sounds are tied to the
mechanisms that produce them. Electroacoustically reproduced sounds are
copies and they may be restated at other times or places. I employ this
"nervous" word in order to dramatize the aberrational effect of this
twentieth-century development' (Murray Schafer, 1994 [1977]: 273).
Whereas Murray Schafer, true to the critical and gloomy atmosphere
of the 1970s, underlined the alienating effect of the separation of original
sounds from their reproduction, recent contributions to sound studies
offer a more optimistic view in which there is the possibility of control over
one's sonic accompaniment to daily life. In this historiography, the story
starts at home. As Susan Douglas has stated in her influential book on the
history of radio culture, ListeningIn, radio, because it made music available
to people at all hours of the day or night, helped to make, 'music one of the
most significant, meaningful, sought after, and defining elements of day-
to-day life, of generational identity, and of personal and public memory
...' (Douglas, 1999: 83).
In the 1920s, for instance, radio enabled the middle classes to escape
the 'crowding and shoving, the unwanted advances, the noise, the often
foul smells of small theater' and sustained their increasing desire for
'security, ease, and privacy of the home during leisure hours' (Douglas,
1999: 65). Over time, radio cultivated amongst Americans different reper-
toires of listening - distinguished from hearing by the activity involved. The

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Introduction: Pinch & Bisterveld: Sound Studies 643

key to understanding the significance of radio was, according to Douglas

(1999: 65), that most 'people listen to music to enhance, or travel to, a
particular mood. . . . . This is one reason why the development of "formats"
in radio became so successful - when people turn to the "country and
western" or "modern rock" or "sports" station, they know exactly what
moods and feelings will be evoked and stroked'. This suggests that unlike
Murray Schafer's passive consumer of soundscapes, listeners are 'active' in
seeking out particular sonic experiences.
The advent of home recording in the 1960s continued to encourage
active listening. The open-reel recorder was first introduced in the late
1940s (Morton, 2000: 11). But this was a cumbersome and expensive
device and it was not until the development of cheap transistorized tape-
recorders (particularly the Philips compact cassette recorder introduced in
1962) that the culture of re-recording music albums and singles for
personal use took off. The rise of rock-and-roll youth culture and 'patterns
of mobile music listening' (Morton, 2000: 12), which had, in turn, been
enabled by suburbs and the automobile, provided an added stimulus. The
gramophone, the radio, the tape-recorder, the compact cassette recorder
and the miniaturized personal stereos such as the Sony Walkman have all
contributed, to quote Tia DeNora (echoing Foucault), to music 'as a
technology of self'. According to her the 'ostensibly "private" sphere of
music use is part and parcel of the cultural constitution of subjectivity, part
of how individuals are involved in constituting themselves as social agents'
(DeNora, 2000: 47). DeNora (1999, 2000) gives many examples of people
using music as a resource to change or sustain their mood, to heighten
energy levels, to keep themselves going, to relive past events, or to
concentrate.
Michael Bull (2000) has carried out one of the first extensive ethno-
graphies of listening practices with his studies of personal stereo use. He
shows how people listening to music while on the move can aim to block
out external sounds, pretend to be outside crowded urban space, choose
their sound accompaniment, and create a 'filmic' experience, thus aesthet-
izing their environment. They may become absorbed with the flow of their
memory, order their thoughts, have a sense of companionship, exercise
control over their contact with others ('do not disturb'), make time pass
more quickly, and make daily routines bearable. In all cases, they create
'their own personal soundscape placed directly between their ears' and
'reimpose control over the environment' (Bull, 2000: 186). Bull's con-
tribution to the recently published anthology The Auditory Culture Reader
(Bull & Back, 2003) deepens this line of research by studying the use of
personal stereos and audio players while on the move (walking, biking, and
driving, in streets, trains, subways, and cars). He shows the multifold way
in which users actively reorganize public and private realms through these
technologies. One overall message from his work is that music technologies
are tools for choice and control in the management of daily life. This
blends well with S&TS ideas as users as active consumers of technology.

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644 Social Studies of Science 34/5

Users of these mobile sound technologies can, in effect, reconfigure the

social geography of cities.
The theme of listeners is developed in Marc Perlman's paper, which
reports on an ethnography of audiophiles (Perlman, 2004). These are
listeners (mainly white, middle-class men) who invest large sums of money
in purchasing dedicated audio equipment for extreme hi-fi listening to
recorded music. Often these audio 'set ups' have their own special spaces
in homes - typically the basement. Perlman differentiates between two
different groups of listeners: the 'golden ears' and the 'meter readers'. The
former eschew science and audio engineering in favor of their ears and will
often invest in equipment which they claim boosts fidelity, but which from
the strict audio engineering viewpoint appears to work by black magic. The
meter readers on the other hand are obsessed with scientific and technical
criteria for measuring and understanding sound. Perlman describes the
listening practices of audiophiles as carried out in the construction of what
they call 'absolute sound'. He shows the different ways in which the two
main groups of audiophiles legitimize their preferences for certain sorts of
sounds. Intriguingly these listeners negotiate the boundary between what
counts as legitimate science and pseudo science as part of their pursuit of
different routes to absolute sound. Perhaps the larger point to be gained
from Perlman's paper is that by embedding sound in a highly controlled
sonic environment, listeners reassert their own control over sound.
Audio and recording technologies can be seen as adding a new chapter
to the history of technology, thereby returning us to the long-standing
S&TS tradition of studying 'cultures of control'. The history of technology
can be presented as a struggle over control. Technology was initially used
to control nature, and later this control was extended to machines and
large technological systems. The post-1945 years were dominated by the
idea that technology was 'out of control' - that is, until command, control,
and information systems created a new culture of layered control (Hughes,
2000: 6). New audio and recording technologies, however, have enabled
people to reestablish some control over their direct sonic environment
(though not necessarily over the music made) and thereby other aspects of
daily life, in a crowded, urban world dominated by technologies usually
not within the control of the ordinary citizen.
At the very same time, we should like to stress that such a possibility of
control over private auditory space with help of audio and recording
technologies is far from self-evident. Jonathan Sterne, for instance, claims
that the practice of listening in private auditory space was not so much the
result of the capitalization and commodification of sound by sound-media
industries, but of earlier audile techniques developed by doctors employing
their stethoscopes and telegraphers using 'sounders'. Sound-reproduction
technologies only 'disseminated and expanded these new technical notions
of listening through their own institutionalization' (Sterne, 2003: 98).
Moreover, the very idea that recording technologies produce a copy of the
original sound had to be constructed through so-called tone tests and
other means (see also Siefert, 1995; Thompson, 1995). Furthermore,

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Introduction: Pinch & Bijsterveld: Sound Studies 645

musicians had to behave differently for the microphone so as to create

fidelity (see also Chanan, 1995). Yet this resulted in a practice through
which consumers can listen to their personal set of sound 'copies' at almost
any time and any place.
The world since the industrial revolution has become more and more
noisy. Social movements such as noise abatement societies (Bijsterveld,
2001; Thompson, 2002) form an important part of the landscape of
modernity. How noise is experienced, measured, and responded to and
what 'silence' means and how it is produced are key parts of the terrain for
'sound studies'. Today's noisy world is even more complex as mobile sound
technologies such as the personal stereo and car stereo enable people to
regain some control over their sound environments and at the same time
provide an unwanted source of noise nuisance for others. The problematic
of noise with which Murray Schafer began takes a new form when we pay
attention to the introduction of audio and recording technologies at home
and elsewhere (Bijsterveld, 2003).
Overall, the papers in this special issue contribute to our under-
standing of the dominant place of music in contemporary life and of
technology's role in it. They show that sound studies and S&TS share some
problematics and that each can be enriched by the other in what we hope
will be a continued dialogue. Sound and listening matter!

Notes
1. Other examples are Corbin (1999), Folkerth (2002), Kahn (1992, 1999), Smith (1999),
and Sterne (2003). See also Bull & Back (2003).
2. See, for instance, Braun (2002), Douglas (1999), Jones (1992), Hennion (1989), Kraft
(1996), Pinch & Trocco (2002), Siefert (1995), Taylor (2001), Th6berge (1997),
Thompson (1995, 2002), Waksman (1999), and Sudnow (2001 [1978]).

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TrevorPinch is Professor and Chairof the Department of Science and

Technology Studies, Cornell University.He has published extensively on the
sociology of science and technology. His most recent books are Analog
Days: The Invention and Impact of the Moog Synthesizer (with Frank
Trocco;HarvardUniversityPress, 2002) and How Users Matter: The Co-
Constructionof Users and Technologies (with Nelly Oudshoorn; MITPress,
2003).

Address: Science and Technology Studies Department, 307 Rockefeller Hall,

Cornell University,Ithaca, NY 14853 USA;fax: +1 607 2556044; email:
[email protected];[email protected]

KarinBijsterveld is Associate Professor at the Technology and Society

Studies Department, Universityof Maastricht,The Netherlands. She has
published in Journal of FamilyHistory (January2000), Technology and

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648 Social Studies of Science 34/5

Culture (with Wiebe Bijker,July 2000, and with TrevorPinch, July 2003),
Social Studies of Science (January2001), and Osiris(July2003).

Address: Department of Technology and Society Studies, Facultyof Arts and

Culture, Universityof Maastricht,P.O.Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht,The
Netherlands; fax: +31 43 3883346/3476, email: [email protected]

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