In collaboration with Camilla Vatne Barratt-Due and nyMusikk, Notam has launched a reading group for technology, music, art and philosophy. 

During a time frame of about eight months, we will jointly read and discuss the books The Real World of Technology by Ursula Franklin, and On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects by Gilbert Simondon. We will follow a reading guide set up by music philosopher Patrick Valiquet, and explore how these works are in dialogue with each other.

 The reading circle is open to everyone, and you can choose whether you want to attend all the sessions or just a selection.

Find pdf of The Real World of Technology of Ursula Franklin here, and On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects by Gilbert Simondon here.

Programme spring 2025

First gathering: 17.03.2025 
During the first session, we focused on socio-technical perspectives

We started reading in the middle of both books:
Franklin, chapters 5 & 6, and Simondon, part II, chapters 1 & 2.  

Introduction to the reading from Patrick Valiquet:

"In the face of the emerging threat of authoritarian technocracy with rising environmental, social and psychological costs, how can instrument-builders and instrumentalists change their practices to protect just relations in music production, consumption, distribution and research technologies? How can this task dovetail with recent calls for reparation by the survivors of global industrialisation, or for a 'right to repair' in the regulation of consumer devices? My goal is to define a reparative organology by staging a conversation between Quaker metallurgist Ursula Franklin's 1989 book The Real World of Technology, and French phenomenologist of technology Gilbert Simondon's 1958 book On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects. Franklin argues for a principled focus on the design of 'redemptive technologies' that attend to environmental and social concerns before proceeding in 'small, reversible steps' to allow 'revision and learning'. Simondon outlines the case for equal social and psychological relations between the human and the technical, redefining tradition, progress and alienation to take better care of the essential limits separating the domains of technics, ethics and aesthetics."

Second gathering: 22.04.2025
For our second session, we will focus on Gilbert Simondons. 

For our second session, we are scheduled to read: 
Introduction and first chapter (Genesis of the Technical Object: The Process of Concretization) in On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects by Simondon.

Introduction to the reading from Patrick Valiquet:
"This week we focus on Simondon to understand the engineer's view of standardisation and specialisation and to inform our response to Franklin's critiques of prescription and control. Why do instruments and tools seem to evolve or progress over time without planning? How does this progress relate to other forms of progress in nature and the sciences? How do internal functions relate to external uses?"

Third gathering: 20.05.25
Fourth gathering: 16.06.25

Patrick Valiquet is a researcher in music and music technology at the University of Huddersfield and acting editor of Divergence Press, the online journal of the Centre for Research in New Music. His writing explores the history of experimental music through cinematic, literary, pedagogical, political, philosophical, scientific and sonic expressions in contemporary France and Quebec. His first monograph, Pierre Schaeffer and the Ethics of Experimental Music Research, is forthcoming from Edinburgh University Press.

The reading group is initiated in connection with Symposium for instrument buildingwhich will take place at Notam in November 2025.