Ron’s Right Arm: Tactility, Visualization, and the Synesthesia of Audio Engineering

Every widespread form of engineering developed until today has depended on the body for the manipulation of interfaces and on audition through headphone or loudspeaker audition systems. All computer-based audio engineering technologies depend upon the visualization of abstractions of sound and also a visualization of the interface for manipulating sound. However, scholarship on audio engineering has ignored the sensing body for the most part, focusing primarily on the products of audio engineering (i.e., commercially released recordings), on engineering-specific knowledge sets, and on engineering as an art form. This essay is part of broader project concerning sensory practices and recording occupations. As such, my findings are tentative and intended more to be provocative and exploratory than to stand as a finished research project.