*33 hand-numbered copies* \|\/|\ is a sonification of the poetic "History of Machines", written in the last years of his life by the Siberian mathematician Valery Yakorev (1927-1999). The poem consists of eight parts, connected by the principle of the circulation of technics, starting from the first machines that worked on the fuel of pain, passing through their cooling in faded anesthetic machines and hardening in machines of neutrality, and ending with a phantom oracle (prophecy), returning the beginning in a circle. "In order to go on a journey through the history of machines," we read in Yakorev's notebooks, "you need a time machine [a body for the oracle -- author's note], working like a drilling rig, opening up pain in time all the way down".

"History of Machines" gives poetic outlines of such a rig, and \|\/|\ listens to the hum of its work and the surrounding noises.