Halsey Rodman's exploration of the metronome began with a chance encounter at MoMA with Matisse's 1916 painting The Piano Lesson, in which a metronome is painted in a layered form, implicating the simultaneous possibilities of time.

In Rodman's words, this glazed ceramic Metronome belongs to "an ongoing series of trapezoidal ceramic and cast iron metronomes with doubled arms: one at either extent of the sweep, describing a pie-slice between them, prying apart the time between the ticks of the metronome. In this image two moments held in reserve and the undivided space between them exist simultaneously."

On the occasion of Strawberry Moon, Rodman paired a series of Metronomes and Listening Objects with bronze commas. This "sentence" of objects was immediately recognizable and impossible to understand, underscoring the contradictions inherent in visual perception, communication, and artistic practice.