Sonic computing time

Music in itself is a symbolic order of time, but when it is effectively – that is, physically – implemented in operative media, a sonification of time itself takes place, a temporal affect as sonic sensation. Ancient Greek poetic articulation was already ‘musical’ (mousiké) in that temporal sense of ‘computing’. Speech itself was not primarily alphabet, but time-based, a kind of variable clocking: ‘In contrast to modern times, Greek rhythm measured syllables not according to their significance in the word, but simply to their acoustic length or shortness.’

In early computing (especially for program process controlling), the auditory display of data cycling units was used. This was because algorithmic patterns unfolding in time are accessible to the ear in higher temporal resolution than occurs with visual representation. Alan Turing pointed out that the mercury-based acoustic delay line – an efficient device for intermediary storage of data in the electronic high speed computer – required clocking in order to allow a sufficient synchronization of memory with the processing unit. The imperative to treat computing time as discrete conditions the rhythmic bias of digital computation. Computer memory thereby embodies a sonic time machine in its manifest (sonic delay) and implicit (algorithmic) sense.

The privileged affinity between music, human brain and machine

The ‘musical’ interlacing of time and machine was essential for George Antheil's Ballet Mécanique, performed in Paris and New York in 1926/27. The performance involved automatic pianos that used punched cards and aeroplane engines. Ballet Mécanique was a genuine composition with and by time as matter: