Material systems: Kinetic sound art and STS

This chapter explores how sensibilities and approaches from science and technology studies (STS) can help to understand and identify the field of kinetic sound art, extracting specific concerns from a broader milieu of ‘dematerialised’ and ‘expanded’ art practice of the late 1960s and 1970s. This is approached by developing the idea of the ‘material system’ identified in the work of STS scholars Bruno Latour and John Law and relating it to the object- and material-based technological systems of kinetic sound art. Themes of technological interactions and translations and of complex behaviours are what tie the world of kinetic sound art to the broader field of systems art and systems thinking of the 1960s. Emerging from the scientific world of the early twentieth century the notion of systems thinking became a far reaching cultural and technical influence that made its way into diverse areas such as military defence, urban planning, technological design and computing, art and music.