The inspiration for this piece comes from two sources: Aleksandr Luria's The Mind of Mnemonist, which is based on a case study of the Russian mnemonist Solomon V. Shereshevskii (1886-1958).
The text used in this piece centres around a recollection of the memory system he used in a performance in 1936 where he had to recall a large series of syllable permutations, VA NA MA SA, which were read to him only once. The text gives us a glimpse of the narratives he created in his mind to recall an abstract and seemingly random series of symbols. The other source and the inspiration for the 4 –tone melodic character of the music is 'Simon', a cult electronic memory game from the 80's. This was a game unit with four large buttons, in red, blue, green and yellow, each connected to a musical tone. The player must follow an accumulating sequence of these buttons. Gameplay ends when the player makes a mistake.
This piece was originally writtem for ASKO and the group Palinckx for their project Bovenkamermuziek. In the current version the live narration is replaced with projected texts.
