Building and Becoming: DIY Music Technology in New York and Berlin Lauren Flood This dissertation addresses the convergence of ethics, labor, aesthetics, cultural citizenship, and the circulation of knowledge among experimental electronic instrument builders in New York City and Berlin. This loosely connected group of musicianinventors engages in what I call "DIY music technology" due to their shared do-ityourself ethos and their use of emerging and repurposed technologies, which allow for new

more »

... nderstandings of musical invention. My ethnography follows a constellation of selfdescribed hackers, "makers," sound and noise artists, circuit benders, avantgarde/experimental musicians, and underground rock bands through these two cities, exploring how they push the limits of what "music" and "instruments" can encompass, while forming local, transnational, and virtual networks based on shared interests in electronics tinkering and independent sound production. This fieldwork is supplemented with inquiries into the construction of "DIY" as a category of invention, labor, and citizenship, through which I trace the term's creative and commercial tensions from the emergence of hobbyism as a form of productive leisure to the prevailing discourse of punk rock to its adoption by the recent Maker Movement.