Stereo Artist – blog

Longplayer LIVE

I’m a keen follower of many twitter users, especially those that are quite embedded within the social media movement. One of the users I’ started following soon after the G20 protests was Christian going by the twitter username of @documentally. It was through his ‘tweets’ that I responded to:

Twitter is a great medium to promote technologies and events, so much so that @doumentally – as part of his promotion of the event, he had 10 tickets to offer bloggers and twitter users to cover/attend/participate in the Longplayer LIVE event.

The concept of time measured with sound and the mathematical detail required to bring a project like this to life was my main interest in Longplayer, not to mention the use of Tibetan Singing Bowls, which is an instrument I have great respect for.

Armed with my Stereo Data Maker Rig – I set out to capture some images, although I was planning on bringing more than the SDM digital rig, I got terribly paranoid about security, the event being held in the Roundhouse got me concerned that I would be refused entry fo an all day event and would miss out on it. So I opted to travel light. There was a nice surprise waiting for me in the form of a photographers wristband, courtesy of @documentally (thank you)

Longplayer is an ongoing 1000 year composition that is being played out in the UK for the past 9yrs (it was launched at the turn of the millenium) – broadcast all across the world through the power of the internet. It was conceived of by Jem Finer &  originally commissioned by Artangel

Longplayer LIVE at the Roundhouse

The image above shows you how the concentric arrangement of the bowls filled the space within the Roundhouse. What is most special about this arrangement is that it signified an instance, or a snapshot if you will of the entire 1000 year composition. The arcs where you see the musicians and tables represents the LIVE 100o minute performance exists within this epic ever changing soundscape.

Each musician had specific roles and tasks to play the bowls – to achieve a live performance, of something that was until now being controlled by a computer program (I think) required a slightly alternative approach to scoring, a very interesting notation system was developed by Jem Finer to instruct how the bowls were to be played and for how long, running through iterations, offset by time.

Longplayer Visual Score - soundwaves in a circular pattern, with waveforms

"The tables themselves had a time line system used by the musicians so they could keep time"

It was one of those events were you had to be there, saying that you can experience it for many years to come, I feel there will be more performances in the future. In the meantime, there are tons of resources out there on the project and ways you can explore, research and experience this.

The Longplayer Trust is set up to keep it playing until 2999!

For everything longplayer related – I would encourage you to visit the space, check the net for images / broadcasts and info.

All my flickr images from Longplayer LIVE event

Longplayers Posterous blog & the @documentally blog posts on Longplayer

Learn more about the Longplayer project from their website