MESS at Federation Square: Priceless collection of synths on display, and to play, at Melbourne Electronic Sound Studio’s new home

There are more than 1000 electronic music instruments in the MESS collection, many of them priceless, but none is quite the match for the roll of paper Robin Fox, co-founder with Byron Scullin of this “living museum”, is holding.

“This is the actual piece of punch-card tape that produced the first ever computer music,” he says excitedly. “Not in Australia – in the world. This is like the Holy Grail.”

Robin Fox, co-founder of MESS, with a 1979 Fairlight CMI. Credit: Simon Schluter

The tune was The Colonel Bogey March (think “Hitler has only got one ball” and you’ve got it), and it was rendered in electronic form by CSIRAC, Australia’s first computer (the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Automatic Computer), in 1951.

There’s no known audio recording, but that strip o