Archive of Weird Memories: Listening to The Stones
is an interactive installation that seeks to evoke untold, forgotten, or imagined stories through sound and the tactile experience of touching and playing with stones. The installation features stones collected by the artist and her two-year-old toddler along the Thames’ riverbank in Limehouse and Canary Wharf, an area in London where the cityscapes of financial globalisation are built upon the rich maritime histories of the British Empire and the historical communities of overseas seamen. The project subtly explores our agency amidst the financialisation of urban spaces and the erasure of memories, communities, and possibilities for alternative futures.
When placed on an archival box under the camera, the stones will trigger sounds. The audience can arrange and move them around to generate various compositions and changes in the soundscapes. The interaction is powered by a custom-trained model that recognises the six stones displayed. The identification of the stones and their positional data varies the soundscape, creating a dynamic auditory experience.
The title of the work was inspired by a 1934 article in the British tabloid newspaper Daily Sketch which portrayed the old Limehouse Causeway as the “Street with Weird Memories”. Reflecting the mainstream views of its time, the article caricatured Limehouse’s old Chinatown as a den of vice, stating it was “to go in the interest of a better London.” The project, however, is not solely interested in the area’s historical pasts and the demonisation and erasure of its old communities; rather, it also seeks to open up space for the present and encourages reflections on what are rendered “weird” in various cultural contexts, and how “weirdness” reflects its time. Mostly importantly, the project hopes to invite the visitors to reconnect with the past, with nature, and to imagine different futures through acts of play, discovery and preservation.
