Museum of Random Memory

The up-front purpose is to playfully engage citizens to think about how they might like to better control how they contribute data as they walk around in Smart Cities. The behind-the-scenes purpose is to generate data and ideas about how municipalities, buildings, or institutions are currently collecting and archiving citizen data and how we can encourage citizen engagement in these discussions. We prompt citizens to think about everyday scraps of stuff they’d like to remember or forget to spark critical reflections about what is, or could be, relevant to the city. What do cities do with the data they collect on people? Where is it stored? How does the ‘stuff’ we produce as we move around in the city play into larger city histories? What playful alternatives might allow citizens to be more engaged as active participants in what counts as cultural memory? What future heritage might we create if we all paid closer attention to the traces of ourselves that might eventually become part of some larger pool of cultural memory?

Behind-the-scenes, our purpose is to bridge the gap between data use and data literacy. Working primarily in a European context, MoRM encourages citizens to critically examine the processes of memory-making and more broadly, history making in the digital and datafied era. MoRM asks tough questions in playful ways, bringing together art, social science, data science, technology, and activism.

Exhibitions and Workshops

Museum of Random Memory is a series of workshops and interventions to highlight the challenge of preserving as well as forgetting cultural memory in a digital era. The Museum of Random Memory has been exhibited in festivals, conferences and other venues, across multiple countries.

Theoretical and Conceptual Background

The project employs a variety of research methods and theoretical framings, such as critical pedagogy, data literacy and arts-based technology critique.

People and Partners

The Museum of Random Memory is built by a transnational group of artists, researchers and activists, supported by multiple sponsors and partners.

This page is part of Creating Future Memories, an Aarhus University funded research project exploring speculative, future-oriented, and participatory methods for citizens to understand and better control the data being produced through and around the everyday use of digital media.

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