Mechanical Music

I don’t know why, but I find machines making music where the machine is at least mostly pre-programmed facinating. For example; the below video shows a member of the band Wintergatan using his machine to play a song called “Marble Machine”.

Now while the music itself isnt that moving or inspirational, just watching the machine as it funnels marbles around captures my attention. Now with the above machine there is still a good amount of performance, especially during the breakdown (with its specifically named lever!), but even with this I would argue that the fact that it is a machine playing the music is what makes it interesting and artistic. However this affect seems to be primarily visual, as I doubt the same music played through an MP3 file would give the listener any reason to invest financialy or emotionally. But play the same music through a physical machine, something analogue, suddenly it becomes far more alluring. While I don’t think the average consumer would want to stump up for a replica of the marble amchine, watching it being played (operated?) would be enough. While I wonder if this has more to do with it being a different way to do music, anything out of the ordinary usually grabs people even if only briefly, I still find myself coming back to these videos to appreciate the fantastic machines making the sounds. The machines don’t even have to be real; Animusic seem to have a knack for creating music, and then inventing comuter gerneated machines to virtually ‘play’ them for the audience, and I find it has a similar affect.