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."
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."
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."
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."
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,"
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."
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'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."
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."
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."
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."
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.