the memory machine

the memory machine: sound and memory at the british museum


The Memory Machine is a context-, people- and site-specific interactive sound installation. It has been developed as a collaboration between two composers, Cathy Lane and Nye Parry, who share an interest in sound, oral history, and memory. The Memory Machine is an ongoing project which, most recently, was part of the British Museum's 250th anniversary exhibition entitled The Museum of the Mind; Art and Memory in World Cultures.This paper discusses the background and ideas behind the Memory Machine within the context of the composers' work. The development of the project in collaboration with the British Museum is described and an evaluation of some of the issues around the public exhibition of the piece is given as well as a full technical description of the different elements of the installation.


The Memory Machine developed from the compositional ideas that informed earlier works including Hidden Lives 2: The House of Memory, a site specific work commissioned by the 2001 Stoke Newington Festival, Hackney and Hidden Lives commissioned by Institut International de Musique Electroacoustique de Bourges in 1999.

Each of these works use spoken word or oral history as their main compositional material and are informed by individual and collective memory. Few composers are working so extensively with either spoken word or with memory.

The Memory Machine differs from the works above in that it is an interactive installation. It collects spoken memory contributions from gallery visitors who are stimulated to remember through hearing the output of the Memory Machine which is an ever - changing sonic collage of the personal reminiscence and shared history contributions. The material is fragmented, layered, mixed up and transformed providing an aural metaphor for the workings of human memory.


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