Frank Zappa's term — "strange synchronization" — for combining recordings made at different times so they stay separate and dissonant yet sync up. In Dialogue 11 Bob applies it to his own public life: people point out where they "see" him in films and culture, a synchronization he distinguishes from ordinary synchronicity because he has named the concept publicly for years. Cameron glosses xenos as "the stranger," so xenochrony is times juxtaposed — the meeting of strangers.
Across the dialogues
Defined from Zappa and applied to Bob's media life — strange synchronization others point out
Cameron grounds the term etymologically — xenos, stranger — so xenochrony is times plural that are somehow singular, the meeting of strangers.
"Xenos in Greek means the stranger."Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 11 (21 Jan 2021), 1:38:28
Bob distinguishes ordinary synchronicity from xenochrony — the public, named version where others spot his "strange synchronizations" for him.
"you've got a lot of synchronicity, but you don't have xenochrony, strange synchronization, which I have because I've talked about it in public for years."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 11 (21 Jan 2021), 1:27:56
Carried out of the studio metaphor and into the series' own forward edge — the term stops describing how Bob is seen and starts naming the environment the reading is moving toward, the one word the pair leave standing as next session's starting point
The term returns forty-seven sessions on as a destination rather than a description — the post-tactile, xenochronous environment is handed forward as where the reading goes next, and Bob immediately marks it as his own vocabulary rather than McLuhan's.
"And now we're ending with the post-tactile, xenochronous environment."Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 58 (13 Oct 2022), 2:09:42
Stops being Bob's private label and acquires a derivation — pulled off Zappa and rebuilt from Greek, then tied to the exponent reading of "post," so a borrowed studio word becomes a term the pair can argue with and locate on the chart
Bob flags his own borrowing before using it, treating Zappa's studio term as owing the reader a derivation — the session then supplies one it has never had.
"Now, xenochronous is a Zappa word, so that has to be explained."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 59 (27 Oct 2022), 1:21:39
The term is taken off Zappa and rebuilt from Greek, so that what began as a splicing trick in a recording studio acquires a philosophical warrant the series can argue from.
"mean linear there it means squared or cubed and then xenochronous that has to do with two greek words xenos meaning stranger, and chronos meaning time. So, xenochrony has to do with strange time,"Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 59 (27 Oct 2022), 1:23:49
The decisive correction — strange time is not simultaneity defeating sequence but the two held in tension, which keeps xenochrony from collapsing into the "new orality" reading Cameron rejects everywhere else.
"but with linearity and simultaneity being in dynamic interplay."Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 59 (27 Oct 2022), 1:24:28
The prefix is rescued from its own linearity — "post" cannot mean after in a milieu with no sequence, so it is read as an exponent, and Bob's sentence stops contradicting itself.
"But let's not go too fast here. When you say something is post-tactile, I think what you mean is that it's tactile squared or tactile cubed."Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 59 (27 Oct 2022), 1:23:13
Cameron's reconstruction turns out to be already drawn — Bob finds the squaring on his own chart, so the term's derivation and its diagram meet for the first time.
"I do have tactile squared in the Tiny Note Chart. That's in the Kroker quadrant."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 59 (27 Oct 2022), 1:26:21
Its origin story told in full for the first time — the studio procedure it was borrowed from is finally described, so the term acquires a mechanism (unintended parts that cohere anyway) instead of only a derivation
The borrowing finally gets the explanation Bob promised it, and the procedure turns out to run against montage — the separated parts cohere on their own, over the editor's objection, so xenochrony names something the material does rather than something the editor achieves.
"Zappa would take a bass from one concert, and a guitar solo or a drummer, and he didn't want them to cohere. He was trying to create dissonance or fragmentation or something. So he would put them together in his editing console, and they always, most times, started to cohere."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 67 (30 Mar 2023), 1:18:13
The naming is presented as a consequence of a failed intention: the parts cohered when they were not meant to, and the word records the surprise rather than the technique.
"So it became xenochrony, strange synchrony."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 67 (30 Mar 2023), 1:18:41
Turns out to have a prehistory — Bob had been publishing under the word twenty-five years before the pair began reconstructing it, which recasts 59's Greek and 67's studio procedure as recovery rather than derivation; and it never stood alone there, bound from the start to the Android Meme it has travelled with ever since
Bob is dating the other coinage when this one falls out of the anecdote beside it — an aside that back-dates the word past every account of it the series has given, to a moment when it was a working title rather than a concept anyone could have explained.
"I was in this youth culture magazine called Flipside. I put my diary entries in there and I called it Android Meme's Xenochrony."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 69 (11 May 2023), 25:41
Finally gets read out rather than invoked — the Wikipedia definition is put on the record and the term stops being Bob's private label for how he is seen, becoming a method he claims to have practised against the media environment; and in the same breath Cameron turns it against him, since a technique of juxtaposing existing pieces cannot be an exit from anything
After five sessions of allusion the term is finally read out from its source, which fixes a public definition the pair can now both argue from rather than each glossing privately.
"Xenochrony is a studio-based musical technique developed at an unknown date by Zappa as possibly as early as the early 60s."Frank Zappa, read by Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 76 (2 Nov 2023), 2:04:18
The studio technique is annexed to the archive's own vocabulary — Zappa's method becomes an instance of tactility, which is what licenses its transfer from music to media environments.
"he wanted to create contrast, which is Tactility, one of the definitions of tactility is contrast."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 76 (2 Nov 2023), 2:05:05
The term turns from description to practice — xenochrony stops naming what happened to Bob and starts naming what he was doing, a deliberate refusal of the reflections the media offered him.
"I was avoiding identifying with markers that would make me think I'm in there. In other words, I was trying to avoid the AP."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 76 (2 Nov 2023), 2:06:45
Cameron isolates the structural fact under the technique — nothing in xenochrony is made, only placed, which is the premise of the objection he raises next.
"the heart of… xenochrony is that the the pieces already exist"Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 76 (2 Nov 2023), 2:07:58
The term is turned back on the man who imported it — if xenochrony only rearranges what exists, then using it against the AP still works entirely in AP material, and Bob's detachment is a juxtaposition rather than an escape.
"there's no such thing as removal from the AP because all there is is pieces of the AP. What's different is how they're put together."Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 76 (2 Nov 2023), 2:08:18
The borrowed word closes its loop — origin, appropriation and function are stated together for the first time, and the term stops being a label Bob carries and becomes a load-bearing part of the book's argument, the thing that grounds the Android Meme and titles the chart that pictures it
The term's personal origin is finally dated and sourced — Nelson Thall, who had met Belushi and Aykroyd during The Blues Brothers shoot, brings Bob the observation from outside, which is the condition Bob keeps insisting on: he never looked for the synchronization, it was pointed out to him.
"and he said, well, geez, they're dancing like Bob. He had seen me dance."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 79 (7 Dec 2023), 24:28
The appropriation is made explicit and defended by inversion — where his forum readers went looking for themselves in the media, Bob claims the opposite posture, and it is the refusal to tune in that produces the tuning.
"I'm taking xenochrony as something unique to me."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 79 (7 Dec 2023), 25:51
The term is promoted from personal label to structural term in the book itself — set against the "non-now," it becomes the thing that slows the passage from cloned ESP to the Tech Body, with Finnegans Wake as its instrument.
"Finnegans Wake will stay the course as the non-now echoes Frank Zappa's concept of xenochrony, which then leads to my concept of xenochrony."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 79 (7 Dec 2023), 28:28
Zappa's studio accident is installed as the Android Meme's ground rather than an analogy for it — which is what licenses the 1995 chart to be a picture of the meme instead of a picture of Bob.
"So I'm making Zappa's xenochrony a ground of the Android Meme, which my Tiny Note Chart is a picture of, made in 1995."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 79 (7 Dec 2023), 28:54
Connections
Zappa's studio term for splicing performances from different times into one dissonant-yet-synced track.
The chart is titled "Xenochronous Bob's Tiny Note" — xenochrony is the synchronization it maps.