Material Culture and Electronic Sounds

This eighth volume of the Artefacts series explores how material culture has affected music and sound. Presented are a collection of essays exploring technological innovations and their effects on musical culture. Contributors include composers, performers, musicologists, and scientists, providing diverse insights into the nature of music. With a foreword by renowned British producer Brian Eno, Material Culture and Electronic Sound examines what has happened as a result of technology and music crossing paths.

Frode Weium is a curator at the Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology in Osloand PhD candidate at the Department of History and Classical Studies, Norwegian Universityof Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim. His permanent exhibitionsinclude A Sound Mind in a Sound Body (2003), Music Machines (2009), and Instrument:Stories of Science (2011). He has also contributed to temporary exhibitions on music andacoustics. He was editor of the museum book series Volund from 2000 to 2003. Over thelast few years, he has written several articles on music technology, focusing on the historyof early electronic musical instruments (such as the Theremin, the Ondes Martenot,and the Trautonium) and investigating broader questions about the relationship betweentechnology and culture. His PhD project concerns the introduction and reception ofelectronic musical instruments in Norway. In 2007 he organized the twelfth Artefactsmeeting in Oslo. Contact Frode Weium at the Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology,Kjelsasveien 143, 0491 Oslo, Norway, frode.weium@tekniskmuseum.no.

Tim Boon is head of research and public history at the Science Museum, London.His exhibitions include Health Matters (1994), Making the Modern World (2000), andOramics to Electronica (2011). He was curator of the Icebreaker concert performancesof Brian Eno’s Apollo in 2009 to mark the fortieth anniversary of the moon landings.He has a long-standing personal interest in music—he even built his own synthesizer inthe 1980s—and has recently begun to develop academic interests in this area. His firstbook, Films of Fact: A History of Science in Documentary Films and Television (WallflowerPress) was published in 2008. He is currently running the Science Museum’s PublicHistory project, which is experimenting with participatory exhibitions with the aim ofdeveloping more effective displays on the history of science and technology. ContactTim Boon at the Science Museum, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2DD, tim.boon@sciencemuseum.ac.uk.