Super 8 film projectors, floppy disk drives and video recorders – the sounds of these and other devices are unlikely to be heard again. Unless, that is, you search for them online, where they are archived on a few websites. For most users, however, such noises were nothing more than unwanted by-products. Dot matrix printers were particularly unpopular with their operators because they were loud and obtrusive. But if you listen to them more closely, you can discover the musical potential of these machines. Architect Thomas McIntosh and composer Emmanuel Madan did just that and wrote the Symphony #1 For Dot Matrix Printers in 1998.
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