The duo -- composer Emmanuel Madan and architect/installation artist Thomas McIntosh, who collectively go by the name of -- will coordinate the operation of a variety of rapidly clacking dot matrix printers so that they make musically intriguing sounds.

In addition, video cameras will be seeded throughout the ranks of the printers, capturing their frenetic internal operations for a series of screens on the stage.

Although well-received a decade ago, the symphony has not been performed lately. Given the aging nature of the equipment and the obsolescence of dot matrix printers in general, this could certainly be one of the last times it will be played.

Madan first thought of the in the early 1990s when he worked at a university computer lab, which then had a lot of dot matrix printers. Especially during the end of the school term, when students were busily printing out term papers, he mused over coordinating such machines "in such a way that the result would be more rhythmic and more organized and somehow approaching music," he said.

For the project, Madan and McIntosh gathered as many used dot matrix printers as they could find. At the time, such printers were plentiful and cheap. But by the late 1990s dot matrix printers were largely superseded by the technologically superior laser and ink jet printers. A nearby school system donated some that were going to be thrown away, and, as word went around, friends and acquaintances began donating their Epsons, Panasonics and Brothers as well.