Atmospheric Memory

In 1837, Charles Babbage, the inventor of the first computer, had a profoundly intriguing idea.  He proposed that every word ever spoken by a human being leaves a permanent trace in the air in a 'vast library'.  Babbage imagined a sufficiently advanced computer that could calculate the movement of all air molecules: rewinding these paths would allow us to recreate the voices hidden in the atmosphere.  He wanted to hear long-lost loved ones, vows unredeemed, promises unfulfilled and even the evidence of criminal acts.

Atmospheric Memory celebrates the turbulence and tumult of the medium that holds us all together: invisible but precious, filled with voices and history.  It is also a call for the restoration of the air we breathe and for the transformation of the digital atmosphere into a shared public resource.

From oil drums containing the video of vocal chords during speech, interactive weather vanes that respond to different languages, a wall that produced any word you spoke in dry ice to a mechanical respirator circulating the breath of composer Pauline Oliveros in a biometric portrait - it is exactly what I expected from the Manchester International Festival - bizarre and downright weird!

I must admit that I preferred last year's Cosmic Matter event.

Quote for today:
It is better to have your head in the clouds and know where you are than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them and think that you are in paradise.
- Henry David Thoreau