Instruments and Instrumentalities

Catalog description

What is an instrument? Today, in a variety of fields, the definitions of instrument and instrumentality are transforming. While retaining its older connotations of delegation, means to ends, and tool-use, the "instrument" now also implies bigger, messier complexes of technologies, bodies, and rationalities. In this seminar, we will think transversally across categories and contexts to consider the form and meaning of musical instruments, technical instruments, and ideas of instrumentality. Readings will draw from music, media studies, science and technology studies, sound studies, cultural studies, and related fields. This is a distributed seminar, collaboratively taught between Brown and McGill Universities.