Sound supplies: raw materials and the political economy of instrument building
This exchange questions the tangible history of sound and musical cultures at the turn of the twentieth century. At a time when a cult of precision was emerging in the field of musical instrument making, and at a time when new sound technologies were appearing, where did the materials used to make these objects come from (wood, sand, iron, copper, wax, plastic, ivory, animal skins, rubber)? How did sound shape the supply chains of these raw materials? What infrastructures, and what political and economic systems have enabled the distribution of the founding resources of our sound modernity? And what was the ethical and environmental impact of these circuits?
Organization Fanny Gribenski (CNRS-STMS), David Pantalony (Ingenium - Canada's Museum of Science and Innovation) et Viktoria Tkaczyk (Humboldt Universität)