WHITNEY SLATEN
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The Technological Mediation of Live Music Production As an ethnographer, Whitney studies the nexus of music, sound, and technology through the profession of sound engineering at live musical performances. Live sound engineers mediate the musical sound between musicians and listeners. Many engineers intend to work in ways that are “transparent,” or undetectable, to the audience during sound reinforcement. However, challenges within the live sound profession—constantly changing venues, working for different artists, amplifying music for different audiences—greatly challenge engineers’ transparency ideal and force the concept into a dynamic state that social actors regulate through complex negotiation. Whitney describes this negotiation of sonic transparency through a phenomenology of “signal flow”: a confluence of technological and social processes between the material realms of architecture and electronics, as well as the social construction of identity and hegemonic discourse among musicians and sound engineers.
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