Imaginary instruments are a special kind of technological phenomenon. Such instruments never fully make the passage from the imagination into the world. They remain unconsummated objects, indifferent to the chaotic forces at play outside the test-tube of pure conceptuality. Ranging from the physically impossible to the simply impractical, from the “never” to the “not yet,” imaginary instruments rattle suggestively at the windowpane separating our comfortable sense of reality from that nebulous space beyond. In the words of Ernst Cassirer, such instruments are “concerned in the final analysis not with what is, but with what could be.”

A few words about the contents of our collection. We use the term “instrument” in a deliberately broad sense to mean any device used to perform, compose, listen to, or otherwise engage with musical sound. Thus, a radio or a piece of music software is an instrument no less than a piano or guitar…

Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments

Vía: KulturTechno