While working on the image material in the digital archive, we listened to an audio recording of a lecture where Kurenniemi described the “associative memory” model of some of his early instruments where, in contrast with more conventional addressable memory, data are stored according to content-specific critieria (like the step position in a musical sequence) to allow a layering of musical attributes in time in a highly compact and efficient manner.
Wikipedia on “Content-addressable” memory
