Pedal Culture

Pedal Culture is a themed exploration of guitar effects pedals as cultural artifacts, derived from a 2017 design exhibition at San Francisco State University curated by the writer. This colorful and artfully designed volume contains curatorial text describing eight different object displays along with photographs of each of the sixty-three individual pedals, richly illustrated in approximately one hundred original photographs. The anthropological quest into understanding how effects stompboxes allow for quasi-supernatural power transference from on high to working guitarists is just one of the many themes explored in this volume. Other exhibits explore symbolic associations in the branding of sonic effects with notable cultural touchstones from popular arts and culture: As material manifestations of noir literature, retro-futuristic cinema, and Japanese anime; as explicit graphic metaphors for female pudenda; in explicit reference to gruesome tabloid tales of murder and mayhem; in