Longtime Sigur Rós pal and fellow Icelandic native Jóhann Jóhannsson has a new album out this month, starring the venerable IBM 1401 computer of yore.
Jóhannsson's also been doing live performances of "IBM 1401, a User's Manual," as shown above. Adam Farrell from music label 4AD tells BoingBoing:
The story goes that Johannsson's dad was the technician on Iceland's first 1401. Johann found the machine in his dad's house, and sampled it for this album — which is more of a classical / electronic album. He's experimented like this before — he used ham radios and morse code transceivers on his Kitchen Motors CD. He figured sampling the world's first small business computer was the next step. Back in 1960, these devices weren't cheap: $2,500 a month to lease one.
Image at left: Photo of Basic IBM 1401 system from BRL 1961, courtesy of Wikipedia.
The artist explains how the project came together in his own words here.
Link to project site, here's a video clip of the modern dance piece he scored for IBM 1401 (with someone narrating from the manual). Here are the machines you'll hear, and an audio file is here: MP3 Link.
Reader comment: Tore Sinding Bekkedal says,
You and your readers might be interested in knowing that there's
actually a working 1401 in the Computer History Museum, in Mountain
View. (In 1401 Shoreline Blvd!). It's under restoration, but the CPU is
mostly working. There's a project page here which features video and interesting commentary by Ed Thelen.There is also one working in Sindelfingen in Germany, but there does not
seem to be any webpage about it.
