SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
Elizabeth Moran brings together her mother, aunt and uncle to record stories about their growing up as children in a haunted house outside Memphis Tennessee in the early sixties. Elizabeth has heard the stories many, many times and was fascinated by how the three would help each other remember and embellish the tales. The recording and sound installation was part of the exhibit Generation to Generation: Inherited Memory and Contemporary Art presented by The Contemporary Jewish Museum from from November 25, 2016 to April 2, 2017.
The work is presented as a three speaker sound installation with each speaker containing the voice of a relative. The audience sits on an ottoman centered between the speakers and listens close-up inside their intimate conversation. Elizabeth artistic demands required some interesting technical challenges. Three voices, in high resolution audio playing back wasn’t something readily available with current media players. The solution to the problem came with some help from Christopher Paddock of SFAI, and a small Raspberry PI computer that looped the audio faithfully for six months.