MIMI has a new wing: a book. The Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments, by Deirdre Loughridge and Thomas Patteson, is available April 13 in the UK, July 6 in the US.
It’s a history of fictional, fantastical, and speculative musical instruments, from ancient myth to science fiction to contemporary art. Many of your favorites from this website are in its pages, joined by instruments you haven’t encountered yet. Come visit, and you may find that the line between what humans have dreamed up and what they’ve actually built is thinner and stranger than it appears.
Available for pre-order:
or wherever you purchase books
What people are saying about the book
Hugely enjoyable and endlessly stimulating, The Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments takes readers on a captivating journey through centuries of musical invention, both real and imagined. Every page is infused with deep scholarship and a palpable sense of wonder… – Alexander Rehding, Fanny Peabody Professor of Music at Harvard University
Visiting (and revisiting) Loughridge and Patteson’s The Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments immerses you in the sonic, visual and philosophical delights of “fictophones” from across space, time and astral planes. This slim encyclopedia is brilliant, hilarious and erudite… –John Tresch, Professor of History of Art, Science, and Folk Practice at the Warburg Institute, University of London
The Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments makes tangible – and page-by-page, more fantastical and curious – the elusive question of what music is, and what we wish it could be. –Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis, Professor and Director of the Music Cognition Lab at Princeton University
In this fascinating book, Deirdre Loughridge and Thomas Patteson…demonstrate conclusively that, despite the dazzling range of existent instruments, there is in human culture an appetite for musical forms that cannot be heard. –David Toop, musician, writer and Emeritus Professor
The museum in the world
MIMI the website has been finding its audience and turning into other things since 2013. A few places it’s turned up:
“This is more like how the Internet used to be, weird and cool.” –Johnsense (2023)
Wired: Bruce Sterling, “Who Can’t Like It?” (2015)
Talk + Q&A, Rhythmic Music Conservatory, Denmark (2021)
A radio dramatization on Soundproof, ABC Radio National (2016)