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The Machine

The Machine · Presentation

Metronome to metronome

Performance

In development

A technician starts a single metronome swinging. Instruments are brought on one by one and build to a crescendo, then the stage is stripped back to just the metronome.

UnitsThe Metronome

The arc

The arc of a staged performanceThe stage starts with the Metronome alone. Units arrive one by one, each keeping its own time. At the lock, every unit falls onto the same beat. More units join to a peak, then technicians remove them until only the Metronome is left.90UNITS ON STAGEBEATSPEAKTHE LOCKevery unit falls onto one beatSTARTARRIVALBUILD TO THE PEAKREMOVALRETURNTIME →

Above, the units on stage. Below, every unit’s beats: scattered while each keeps its own time, on one grid after the lock. Timings are illustrative.

  1. Start. A technician starts the Metronome swinging, alone on stage.
  2. Arrival. Technicians bring on units one by one. At first they play out of time and out of tune: cacophony.
  3. The lock. At a given mark, all units lock into sync on a beat. That is the moment.
  4. Crescendo. More units join, and the ensemble builds to a peak.
  5. The return. Technicians take units off until the stage is back to just the metronome.

How the lock lands

Instruments that strike, such as pluckers and mallets, snap to the grid instantly. Instruments that move, such as a windmill or a pendulum, can’t change phase instantly. They converge silently during a lead-in, pick retracted and strings damped, and become audible exactly on the beat.

The teardown

During the teardown the ensemble can fall apart into cacophony before it empties, or stay locked and thin out.

Writing it down

Standard notation can’t work across failures, since every one has different instruments. One idea is a graphic score: the arc written as images and drawings that communicate what each section should feel like, with no instrumentation or sound specified. Each artist realizes it with whatever they have built.