- Museum of Endangered Sounds
Well hey, this is a pretty great idea! Filling a need we never knew we had, a nerd king (that’s a compliment) named Brendan Chilcutt took it upon himself to create The Museum of Endangered Sounds, giving a voice to technologies that have fallen silent as they’ve been outmoded.
The piercing scree of dial-up internet? The ceaseless taunt of a Nokia cell phone? The gentle blowing sometimes required to coax a Nintendo cartridge into functionality? It’s all here, waiting for you to come back to it.
And, per his mission statement, Chilcutt is not fucking around:
“Imagine a world where we never again hear the symphonic startup of a Windows 95 machine. Imagine generations of children unacquainted with the chattering of angels lodged deep within the recesses of an old cathode ray tube TV. And when the entire world has adopted devices with sleek, silent touch interfaces, where will we turn for the sound of fingers striking QWERTY keypads? Tell me that. And tell me: Who will play my GameBoy when I’m gone?”
Who indeed.
It’s only been around since January, and while at present the Museum has the sonic hallmarks of the late ’80s to mid ’90s pretty solidly covered, we see room for expansion. Who doesn’t shed a wistful tear at say, the gentle clink of phrenology calipers or the whir of one of those old fashioned vibrators marketed as “exercise tools?”
In any case, check out the site. The design is wonderful, and it’s all worth it for the Tetris music alone.
Follow Virginia K. Smith on Twitter @vksmith.