Today it is the technology we have for telling and structuring our time that seems to dominate our understanding of the world and how we live within it. The development of time-keeping and the invention of the clock have had an enormous influence on western culture. Within the Museum’s exhibition spaces and on the shelves in its storage facilities are a number of clocks and other time measurement and recording devices. Digital memory, while initially collected as a component of a digital computer, has taken over the role of the traditional information and storage media however, its fragility has caused concern in the museum and archive sectors. We also collect examples of media technologies, systems for storing and communicating information and ideas - extensions of our memories. The form of digital ‘memory’ has changed several times over the past 70 years. In the past 30 years, as MAAS strives to represent the technological changes that define our age, we have acquired into the collection a number of memory technologies. Each ultimately speaks of the period in which it was made and used. For some, there is almost no information available, but often by their substance and form alone, we can understand older processes and see how ideas have changed or persisted over time. The more than 500,000 objects held in the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences collection can all give us access to past events. In his introductory essay ‘The Shape of Time’, Principal Curator Matthew Connell places the Museum’s collection within the context of humanity’s understanding and experience of time, and our relationship with memory. The Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences has just launched a new publication, Time and Memory, the second in the MAAS collection series which is supported by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund. Share: Email this The new Time and Memory book, published October 2018.
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