REMOTE MEMORY

2011 | Sound Art | Installation | 30 channels | Bloomington, Indiana | English | 00:16:00
Remote Memory is a narrative collaboration between Rachel Lin Weaver and Lesley Duffield, and is both a site-specific sound art installation and piece for radio broadcast about storytelling, the processes of memory-making, and the emotional weight of forgetfulness, specifically regarding the loss of loved ones. Consisting of 30 unique audio tracks played on an equal number of mono speakers, the room featuring this soundscape is metamorphosed into an immersive environment in which voices breathe, swell, merge, scatter, and travel, synapse-like, throughout the space during the telling of the two-part narrative. Initially straightforward, over time the narratives degrade, fall apart, and become impossible to decipher or understand-- a parallel to the biological process of forgetting, and the effect that time has on the stories we tell ourselves about people no longer with us.

SPECIFICS
The work is a two-part loop, 16 minutes long in total, consisting of recordings of interviews and various field recordings and music. The piece can be exhibited for radio broadcast or internet streaming as a stereo .wav file.
If in its full installation format, the piece requires 30-mono speaker, over 1,000 feet of speaker wire, and digital interfacing for all 30 mono signals from the computer core. The piece can also be displayed in more analog terms with a minimum of 15 stereo amplifiers. Speakers are ideally hung from ceiling or walls at varying levels using wire. The copper cables are not all hidden, and the audience is invited to consider synaptic and neural circuitry.