The duo had the symphony multiple times starting in 1998, and even recorded it for two separate CDs. After a few years of performances though, they packed away the printers, which remained in storage until this year.

"It's been several years since we had it all working. We plugged it in and everything is working fine," Madan said. "It's kind of amazing the longevity of the machines, especially considering we rescued them all out of the trash."

Nonetheless, the symphony is "very dependent on these particular printers," Madan said. As a result, performances can only continue for so long before too many of the key printers break and replacements can't be found.

"In 1997, if we broke a printer, we could go to the used computer dealer and buy another half-dozen. But these things just don't exist any more. They've been off the market for such a long time, no one still has any in the basement," Madan said. "These printers are unique in the world, so we have to be very, very careful with them."

The symphony can be heard as a form of electronic music, as well as an offshoot of industrial music, a form of pop fashionable in the early 1990s that attempted to turn "industrial production into an aesthetic," Madan said. It also harks back as far as 1913, to a manifesto written by futurist Luigi Russolo called "," which argued that music should incorporate the sounds of industrial machinery.