Coincidence Engines is a series of works conceived in homage to the Poème Symphonique of 20th-century Hungarian composer György Ligeti, who used metronomes not for their intended utilitarian purpose of keeping musical time, but as musical instruments in their own right. Extending and developing this approach, Coincidence Engines employs a multitude of dynamically modulated time-keeping devices to explore themes of regimentation, multiplicity, (im)perfection and entropy.

The project reinterprets the clock as a machine that has the capacity to transcend the workaday function of keeping time. Coincidence Engines treats the seemingly mundane event of a clock's tick as a building block for the construction of rich and complex acoustic structures. Massed clock ticks, both freely drifting and rigorously synchronized, fill a series of environments configured to focus, stimulate and challenge the visitor's visual and auditory perception. Alternately mesmerizing, contemplative and thought-provoking, Coincidence Engines opens a space wherein the passage of time can be considered simultaneously as an abstract concept and as a sensuous, aesthetic experience.



[The User] is a contemporary art collective comprised of architect and installation artist Thomas McIntosh, and composer and sound artist Emmanuel Madan. This Montréal-based duo has attained wide international recognition for their ground-breaking projects Silophone and Symphony for Dot Matrix Printers, which re-imagine relationships between technological systems, culture and human experience in striking ways.

Commissioned by PAVED Arts with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, le Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and le Conseil des arts de Montréal.

Project Curator: Tim Dallett This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

To learn more about the circulation of Coincidence Engines, please contact [The User] at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it