The Routledge Companion to Research in the Arts

thinking about art after the media

he had already developed a hydraulic- pneumatic mechanism of such complexity that his
anthropomorphic figure could play the flute endlessly – as long as it was provided with a
constant flow of water. owing to a type of circular construction, whereby a second water
container filled up while the first was emptying and pressing out air for the flautist, the
automaton had a constant inflow of energy in the most direct sense (Wiedemann 1915).
The three princes from the house of Wisdom in Baghdad not only improved and
developed the hydraulic and pneumatic mechanisms, but they also described and
constructed a complete music automaton, which could vary the rhythm of the music
and it was even possible to feed it with different melodies. in his english translation of
parts of the manuscript Farmer quotes the intention of the Banu musa:

We wish to explain how an instrument ... is made which plays by itself

continuously in whatever melody ... we wish, sometimes in a slow rhythm ...

and sometimes in a quick rhythm, and also that we may change from melody

to melody when we so desire.

(Farmer 1931: 88)

The mechanical heart of the automaton is a hydraulically driven cylinder. on the
surface of the cylinder are bands made of wood or metal, which carry small protruding
pins of different lengths. depending on how these pins are positioned on the bands
and how the bands are arranged in relation to one another, a mechanical link opens
or closes the valve of the flute, a single pipe of an organ, or moves another sound-
producing element. Prographein means to prescribe. The way the pins are arranged
on the cylinder formulate the musical prescriptions or instructions, the programme of
the instrument; the pins and bands are notation translated into hard material. The
hardware is virtually identical to the revolving cylinders with pins that were used
500 years later in the european glockenspiel of the late middle ages, and again even
later in the mechanical organs of the Renaissance, as well as for writing automata and
automatic music instruments in the age of enlightenment.
The three sons of musa bin shakir from ninth- century Baghdad represented a creative
collective, from concept to construction, that today would be called a research group.
They carried out research in various disciplines – mathematics, geometry, astronomy,
natural philosophy, medicine, music, applied engineering – each on their own according
to their individual priorities, and at the same time they worked together very closely on
certain projects. They shared with each other all the new knowledge about the world,
which in giovanni Battista della porta’s Secret Academy in pre- modern naples was the
prerequisite for anyone wishing to work in it.^7 The Banu musa built on the knowledge of
the ancient greek tradition, which they held in high esteem, and at decisive points they
ventured beyond it and created something else, something new. The idea of a universal,
programmable control unit for playing musical instruments was one such bold impetus
that even many centuries later would have been classed as modern.

a black square

Robert Fludd, who kept up a lively correspondence with Johannes Kepler for several
years on the relationship between the exact sciences and the imagination, published