Join us on Thursday, October 10, 2024 at the REACH Museum in Richland, WA from 5:30-7:30pm to hear rare recordings from the 1940s. The presentation will start promptly at 6pm.

Register here.

Jay Needham will be sharing selections from his personal collection of archival recordings made by his grandfather as a hobby while working at Hanford in the 1940s. His grandfather, Lt. Colonel William Sapper—a Manhattan Project engineer—used his Soundscriber dictation machine to document original jazz music, limericks, and labor poems, as well as to conduct interviews and record regional radio broadcasts. Jay’s mother, Lynn Needham, grew up in Richland during the Second World War. Jay will discuss the making and restoration of the recordings and how the war-era history of Richland played a defining role in the paths he would take in life and in his artistic career.

Jay Needham is an artist, writer/editor and educator whose works have appeared at museums, festivals and on the airwaves, worldwide. As a multi-instrumentalist and visual artist, he creates sound art, music, productions for radio, visual art, performances, and installations that activate listening as a vital component of artistic perception. Through his works, he explores themes of militarism, surveillance, family archives, ecology, and autoethnography that are often informed by his life-long relationship to hearing loss. He is a Professor in the School of Media Arts at Southern Illinois University.

This event is free and open to the public; however, you must be registered for the event to attend. Light refreshments will be provided.

This event is funded through a Public Participation Grant from the Washington State Department of Ecology.