Making the show go on A study of sound engineers in French and Dutch fields of music production

While the collective nature of artistic creation has been long accounted for in works such as Howard Becker’s Art Worlds, very few insights and empirical accounts of the role of technical crews exist to this date. Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, this thesis provides an understanding of the specific contribution of sound technicians in music production, framed as technical intermediaries, and uses this case to include technicians in a revised theoretical framing of the collective production of symbolic goods.
Insights from Randall Collins’ interaction ritual chains and Jeffrey Alexander’s cultural performances are used to frame music performances as rituals intending to provide emotional outcomes and social bonding to their participants. The role of technical intermediaries in music performances is to create the material conditions necessary to achieve the emotional outcomes which are their purpose. They bring artistic contents, in their physical forms, to audiences, while preserving the systems of meaning conceived by artists and cultural intermediaries.
This thesis describes various implications of bringing technicians in the analysis of the collective mechanisms of cultural production. It questions the notion of generalized symmetry central to actor-network theory and science and technology studies. It proposes an alternative interpretation of Baumol’s law and the “cost disease” of performing arts. It argues that music genres might not be an analytic category best fitted to analyse social practices surrounding music. Finally, it brings insights on sound technicians’ careers and division of work in music production.