ABSTRACT
This chapter puts the fields of sound art and Science and Technology Studies (STS) into the methodological and theoretical conversation. Specifically, it argues that the gesture of “infrastructural inversion” developed by STS scholars Geoffrey Bowker and Susan Leigh Star describes a common topic and tactic across the worlds of STS and sound art, as demonstrated through an analysis of works by composers Annea Lockwood and Alvin Lucier. This shared critical sensibility can be traced in part to the intertwined historical roots of STS and sound art’s respective topics, i.e., experimental science and music understood as a sound-based art form distinct from the musica universalis of the classical liberal arts curriculum. Contemporary use of non-speech sound to convey scientific findings, known as “data sonification”, represents a continuation of this relationship between science and sound art, albeit in an inverted and occasionally absurd way. While work at the intersection of STS and the interdisciplinary field of Sound Studies has explored this relationship empirically, the combination of STS and sound art practices in a “making and doing” context remains promising but unexplored.
