http://protoschronos.pbwiki.com/FrontPage

Aristoxenus' fragment on rhythm does not say much about the pyknomata of the harmonikoi (he details the the practice of writing “compression algorithms” with pynknomata in the Elementa Harmonica), but it does propose the term protos chronos to describe "primary time-lengths" that "cannot be further subdivided by any rhythmizomenon" (Pearson trans., 1990, p. 10). Elsewhere, the protos chronos is "the time-length which is too short to contain even tow notes or two syallables or two signals." But rhythmizomena, it must be understood, "takes on different forms" but these differences are "conditioned not by the rhythmizomenon's own nature but by the nature of the rhythma it adopts." Rhythm is not previously determined goal or pre-set metrical count, rhythm must emerge in time. "The same spoken phrase or sentence (lexis), with different arrangements of its parts, each arrangement different from the other, takes on as many difference as there are differences in the nature of rhythm. The same argument applies to melody, and to any other medium which is capable of being rhythmized in the kind of rhythm that consists of time-lengths" (Aristoxenus, Pearson trans., p. 4). For performers in any of these media to find, establish, or follow a particular rhythm these time-lengths, for Aristoxenus, must establish protoi chronoi that do not pursue the matter further than time-lengths that cannot be made mutual in performance, that is made to be repeatable and sharable across performances and between performers in common. "Here is the way we should try to understand the meaning of 'primary.' One of the the appearences that presents itself very readily to our senses is that speeds of movement do 89 not increase to an infinite degree of intensity" (emphasis added) (Book II., p. 11). "There seems to be a limit, when the time-lengths into which fractions of a movement are to be fitted are not reduced any further." (Book II, p. 11). In other words, the performer must be able to "match" notes, syllables or gestural signals to the minimal time-lengths in a manner that will take on a particular rhythm. In the fragment "On the protos chronos" found and preserved by Porphyrius, Aristoxnenus repeats the claims made against the infinitism promoted by pursuing the limits and proposes instead a taxonomy of useful rhythmic forms for lexis (words), melos (notes) or any other rhythmizomena. As Lionel Pearson (1990) summarizes in his helpful commentary, “in theory, there are countless different ways of playing these notes. But not in practice, when a musician is performing” (p. 76). Here, we can see why musical practice has expanded today into diverse media, and indeed why writing on the web is a musical practice par exellence. Consider this: What can a computer do that our hands and voices cannot perform? The computers that saturate the field of higher education, if put to distributive use, allow writers to select, compare, and recombine large patterns of information to create new arguments and ideas. Wikis help turn computers into resonance technologies not unlike the phonograph or the multitrack cassette recorder, and as such can make computers, as instruments, distributed and rhythmic in their use for classroom purposes, just as they have functioned in open source programming communites. Wikis make this easy enough for any teacher to do—any one can use wiki to remix their pedogogy, whether they are upstart teachers, like the graduate students training to teach with wiki in the 602 Teaching Practicum or seasoned, wizened professors. Wikis can and should be treated and tuned as rhythmizomena precisely because they at once present us with similarly “countless” possibilities, but at the same time, provide all users with the ability to perform in and shape the rhythmizomena to arrange and compose the medium. Much of what we know of Aristoxenus we owe to Aristedes Quintilianus. As we've seen, when Aristides Quintilianus rejuvenated Aristoxenus' theories he presented us with one of the earliest Western formulations of the select, mix, and rendered formula for ordering or rhythmizing patterns of sound. In Book I Section 19 of his treatise, On Music, Aristedes seems to introduce the geometers point as a practical protoi chronoi for musical practice.