A Deep Forest Creek is a 19 hour 36 minute continuous audio recording taken in 2 stereo channels near Mamori Lake in Amazonas, Brasil. The recording is housed and played back from a wooden box (a memento), with outputs for headphone listening or connection to loudspeakers. Playback begins when the box is turned on, and ends with the completion of the recording, or when the box is turned off. The exact duration of the recording reflects an attempt at capturing a full 24 hours of the sound environment, limited by the logistical factors of deployment and retrieval as well as the weather.

While the events recorded at the creek were overwhelmingly public (though without human audience), the presentation as a memento suggests to a listener that the experience of A Deep Forest Creek is a private one. This is perhaps true of all mementos. There are two outputs for headphones so that the memento can be shared, but only so much. Each output contains the stereo field of a separate set of microphones. Many of the events happen simultaneously in both headphones, but the stereo fields are are different.

A Deep Forest Creek reflects two forms of memory devices. The recording is a device in the technological sense, fixing and playing back events from an electromagnetic memory, in this case a CompactFlash EEPROM. The embodiment of the recording suggests a memento, which is a memory device in the sense that "device" refers to a technique - a memory helper. While traditionally mementos evoke memories of past experience, here the memento itself contains the entire experience. A tiny world captured in a box.