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Ron’S Right Arm: Tactility, Visualization, And The Synesthesia Of Audio Engineering, Eliot Bates

Publications and Research

Most scholarship on audio engineering analyzes practices and practitioners in terms of musical and technical knowledges. The few references to sensory perception typically center on critical listening practices (“golden ears” engineers), audiophilia, and technologies of audition. However, particularly in light of computer-based workflows, the practice of audio engineering features carefully developed synesthesias of critical listening, visualization of digital audio, and tactile manipulations of interfaces, which can’t adequately be explained as cognitive processes or as conscious knowledge.

I draw on literature in the emerging field of sensory scholarship, in particular Brian Massumi’s theorization of synesthesia and affect and Charles Hirschkind’s analyses …