Date: July 13, 2026 Time: 3:30 PM Venue: Aula Beta, Building 24, Campus Leonardo

Abstract: Sound healing is a rapidly growing field within the New Age and wellness industries. In their most popular service offering, the “sound bath”, sound healers typically employ a set of crystal singing bowls, the vibrations of which are said to have beneficial mental, physical, and spiritual effects. Like their metal “Himalayan” counterparts, which are widely, if mistakenly, thought to have deep roots in Tibetan Buddhist spiritual practices, crystal singing bowls have often been marketed as ancient, mysterious, and possibly even alien inventions. In fact, they are waste products from the computing industry: discarded quartz crucibles used in semiconductor manufacturing. Drawing on oral historical interviews with vendors and users of crystal singing bowls, I trace how, beginning in the mid-1980s, quartz crucibles were first repurposed as crystal singing bowls. I employ the biological term “detrivore,” meaning an organism that feeds on the waste of others, to describe how the nascent sound healing profession initially exploited the detritus of the computing industry and adapted in response to its development over the past 50 years. I conclude by analyzing an ongoing legal controversy concerning crystal singing bowls as embodiments of various forms of intellectual property.

Owen Marshall is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Cornell University’s department of Science and Technology Studies. He was previously a lecturer and U.S. National Science Foundation Postdoctoral associate at the University of California, Davis. He studies the history and sociology of science and technology, especially in relation to sound, signal, and voice.