‘Gear’ Book Launch with Professor Samantha Bennett

The ANU School of Music is an elite and progressive tertiary music school with a proud and rich history. It was the first purpose-built music school facility in Australia and for more than 45 years the school has played a central role in the cultural life of Canberra.As a School of the Australian National University, the ANU School of Music seeks to be the national leader in research-led teaching in music performance, musicianship, and musicology. Its curriculum strives to be ethically informed, independent-minded, intellectually rigorous, outward-looking, responsible, accountable, and receptive to new ideas. Through its teaching, research, and outreach the School aims to meet the needs of the local and national community as well as established and emerging creative industries, and promote and sustain a musically aware and critically informed citizenry.Ticketing PolicyRefunds, exchanges and transfersWe do not refund, exchange or substitute tickets after purchase nor do We replace tickets that may have been stolen lost or destroyed, other than as set out in these terms and conditions. Please treat your tickets like cash as we cannot replace lost tickets.Refund information for any cancelled or rescheduledevent will be emailed to ticketholders.EntryYou will be required to present your ticket for entry to the event.ConcessionPlease ensure you have your Proof of Concession with you when you attend an event. Concessions include;Australian pensioners and Senior card holders,Current members of Friends of the School of Music.Curent full-time Student, Australian and International

ANU School of Music

Join Professor Bronwyn Parry for the launch of Professor Samantha Bennett’s latest book, ‘Gear: Cultures of Audio and Music Technologies’.

ANU Research School of Social Sciences (RSSS)

Gear is a critical examination of the twenty-first century fetishization of professional audio technologies, and how it led to a new social formation: gear cultures. Co-authored with Associate Professor Eliot Bates (CUNY), Gear is published in the Technology &amp; Engineering Series of The MIT Press. Gear: mixing consoles, outboard effects processors, microphones. These are professional studio recording-related technological objects—the tools of the recording industry—yet their omnipresence in the broader music industries and prosumer markets transcends the entrenched pro audio engineer guild. In Gear: Cultures of Audio and Music Technologies, authors Eliot Bates and Samantha Bennett ask: How does gear become gear? Why is it fetishized? And how is it even relevant in the predominantly digital twenty-first-century music technology landscape? This multisited, multicountry, multiplatform, and multiscalar study focuses on gear in the present day. The authors trace the life of gear from its underlying materialities, components, and interfaces to its manufacturing processes, its staging in sites including trade shows and message fora, and its reception through (gear) canons, heritage, and obdurance. This book implements a meticulous multimode methodology drawing upon more than twenty-five firsthand long-form interviews with audio industry professionals—including gear designers, users, and publishers—as well as new findings drawn from multisited fieldwork, online discourse analysis, and visual ethnography. Gear examines the present-day prevalence of gear and the existence of its surrounding passionate, competitive, and sometimes bizarre gear cultures. “A smart and adventurous journey into the material and cultural forces that shape music today by two of the field’s most insightful critics, Gear is a must-read for tinkerers and theorists alike."—— Professor Kyle Devine, University of Winnipeg; author of Decomposed: The Political Ecology of Music Date &amp; Time 4:30 PM, Monday 26 May 2025Location Lectorial 1, ANU Research School of Social Sciences (RSSS)

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