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Friday, June 29, 2007

Symphony for old IBM mainframe

In 1964, an Icelandic IBM 1401 mainframe engineer figured out how to get the machine to emit beautiful, bassy notes, and composed ~~a symphony~~ music for it. Now his son has composed a symphony with interpretive dance based on his father's work and is touring with it.

Fast-forward four decades, and recently discovered tape recordings of Gunnarson's works form the basis of a touring song-and-dance performance, IBM 1401: A User's Manual. The show was composed by Gunnarson's son Jóhann Jóhannsson, with interpretive dance choreographed by Erna Omarsdotti, whose father is another IBM alum.
The work, named in part for a companion recording of a voice reciting the manual for an IBM 1403 printer, was performed in Wales, Tokyo, Copenhagen and Belgium this summer.

Link

(Image thumbnail ganked from a larger pic by Laurent Zigler)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:15:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

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Support Bloggers' Rights! HOWTO: Get a link posted to Boing Boing Boing Boing Mobile powered by Winksite Fark rules! This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution. Boing Boing is a trademark of Happy Mutants LLC in the United States [and other countries]. Stats (About our stats) defeat censorware Policies Our first five years' worth of posts in one file	View a recent day: August 20 \| August 19 \| August 18 \| previous days \| by month and year Friday, June 29, 2007 Symphony for old IBM mainframe In 1964, an Icelandic IBM 1401 mainframe engineer figured out how to get the machine to emit beautiful, bassy notes, and composed ~~a symphony~~ music for it. Now his son has composed a symphony with interpretive dance based on his father's work and is touring with it. Fast-forward four decades, and recently discovered tape recordings of Gunnarson's works form the basis of a touring song-and-dance performance, IBM 1401: A User's Manual. The show was composed by Gunnarson's son Jóhann Jóhannsson, with interpretive dance choreographed by Erna Omarsdotti, whose father is another IBM alum. The work, named in part for a companion recording of a voice reciting the manual for an IBM 1403 printer, was performed in Wales, Tokyo, Copenhagen and Belgium this summer. Link (Image thumbnail ganked from a larger pic by Laurent Zigler) posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:15:17 AM permalink \| Other blogs' comments View a recent day: August 20, 2007 \| August 19, 2007 \| August 18, 2007 \| August 17, 2007 \| August 16, 2007 \| August 15, 2007 \| August 14, 2007 \| previous days \| all BB archives by month and year Email this entry to: Your email address: Message (optional):	Boing Boing Sponsored by: Your Text Ad Here Get BB by email: