SonicMemorial.org—The Virtual Memorial as a Vehicle for Rethinking Virtual Learning Environments

The initial response was overwhelming. People from around the world were contributing a wide range of material: Voicemail messages from those who worked in the towers that day, tapes of weddings a top the World Trade Center, police and fire radio communications immediately following the attack, recordings of the buildings’ elevators and revolving doors produced for a documentary film, home videos made by a lawyer in his 42nd floor office, sounds of the Hudson river front, recordings of late night Spanish radio drifting through the halls as Latino workers clean the offices, an interview with the piano player at Windows on the World, and so on.

Toward the end of that year, a series of meetings were convened in New York to discussways by which this material could be re-introduced to a broader public. Lost&Found Sound was already working on a series of radio programs to be aired on National Public Radio, but wanted to open the project up to other modes of distribution and access. Among the many ideas put forward, the idea of creating a website by which the public could access and contribute to an archive of these sound artifacts gained early support. The website offered an alternative to the linearity of a radio program, and provided an opportunity for a nuanced, meditative, non-linear experience as visitors browsed through sounds that piqued their interests.