POWER TOOLS/TONES

 “Each machine has a signature repertoire of tones, and hearing the wrong sounds alerts people in the room to potential danger.

This piece is composed from field recordings made over the course of a semester in the Fabrication Lab at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design. “The Fab Lab” is a large, sunny space on the fourth floor of the Design School building in the center of campus. Students and staff use the tools and machines there for woodworking, metalworking, laser cutting, and 3D printing. The environment is often one of sheer sonic intensity. Machine users protect themselves from listening by wearing earmuffs. But people also protect themselves by listening. Each machine has a signature repertoire of tones, and hearing the wrong sounds alerts people in the room to potential danger. These modes of relating to sound and listening led me to think about three elements of music composition in creating this piece: volume, duration, and tone (or timbre, in the sense of a collection of overtones).

CREATOR:
Juliet Glazer

AFFILIATION
PhD Student in Anthropology & Music (Ethnomusicology)
University of Pennsylvania
    
PRACTICE
Juliet Glazer is interested in using a range of methodologies and frameworks from Cultural and Linguistic Anthropology to understand the social worlds surrounding musical instruments and other ‘material’ aspects of musical traditions. Or, how value accrues to sound-making objects—and to making sounding objects—in and through time. She graduated from Yale University in 2016 with a B.A. in Anthropology. She is also a violinist and old time fiddler.

Background Photograph: Fabrication Lab at the University of Pennsylvania. (Fabrication Laboratory UPENN)

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