In collaboration with Camilla Vatne Barrat-Due and nyMusikk, Notam is now launching 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. The reading circle will follow a reading guide by musician and philosopher Patrick Valiquet, exploring how these works work in dialogue with each other and how they relate to the different practices of instrument building that will be presented at the symposium. 

The first session will be on March 17th, 2025. The reading circle is open to everyone, and you can choose whether you want to participate in all sessions, or just a selection. 

We will begin by focusing on socio-technical perspectives, and start reading in the middle of both books. If you have the opportunity, it is nice if you take a closer look at Franklin, chapters 5 & 6, and Simondon, part II, chapters 1 & 2 before the first session, but this is not a requirement. Take the trip anyway.

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.

Introduction from Patrick Valiquet:

Toward Reparative Organology
"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."

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.