Language Memory started out as a project digitizing the skolt sámi dictionary for an art in public spaces – installation built in the foajé of the Skolt sámi museum in Neiden, north-east Norway.

Language Memory started out as a project digitizing the skolt sámi dictionary for an “art in public spaces” installation built in the foajé of the Skolt sámi museum in Neiden, north-east Norway. Basically the artwork consists of a screen and a button. When the visitors press the button a video of a local Skolt sámi representative is shown (from the Finish side of the border, since the language is no longer spoken in Norway and is currently an endangered language). He or she reads one word from the dictionary back to the visitor. Approximately 6000 words have been recorded and sorted in a database combined with dictionary data. One reader per letter of the alphabet.

Espen Sommer Eide (b.1972) is a musician and artist from Tromsø, currently based in Bergen. With the projects Alog and Phonophani he is a representative of experimental electronic music from Norway, with a string of releases on the label Rune Grammofon. He has also produced a series of site-specific pieces and artworks. As an artist his works investigates subjects ranging from the linguistic, the historical and archival to the invention of new scientific and musical instruments for performative fieldwork.