Jem Finer: Longplayer

1 January 2000 - 31 December 2999
Various locations, including Trinity Buoy Wharf Lighthouse, 64 Orchard Place, London E14

The Artangel Longplayer Conversation 2011: John Gray and James Lovelock took place on 18 April at RIBA, London W1. Click here to listen to the audio recording or here to read a response by futurist Mark Stevenson

Listening post at Trinity Buoy Wharf Lighthouse

Longplayer is a one thousand year long musical composition. It began playing at midnight on 31 December 1999, and will continue to play without repetition until the last moment of 2999, at which point it will complete its cycle and begin again. Conceived and composed by Jem Finer, it was originally produced as an Artangel commission, and is now in the care of the Longplayer Trust. Longplayer can be heard in the lighthouse at Trinity Buoy Wharf, London, where it has been playing since it began. It can also be heard at several other listening posts around the world, and globally via a live stream on the Internet.

Longplayer is composed for singing bowls – an ancient type of standing bell – which can be played by both humans and machines, and whose resonances can be very accurately reproduced in recorded form. It is designed to be adaptable to unforeseeable changes in its technological and social environments, and to endure in the long-term as a self-sustaining institution.

At the end of 2000, The Longplayer Trust was established to take responsibility for Longplayer's upkeep for at least its first 1000 year cycle. This involves researching and implementing the means to keep Longplayer playing, in ensuring its sustainability, and making it available to as larger number of people as possible. The trustees are: broadcaster and entrepreneur Paul Bennun; John Burton, Project Manager for Urban Space Management; Siân Ede, Arts Director for the UK branch of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation; artist, musician and Longplayer composer Jem Finer; writer, performer and academic Jack Klaff; lawyer Guy Martin; arts and entertainment producer Michael Morris; urban developer Eric Reynolds; Anne Robbins; arts business consultant Julia Rowntree; Jenny Waldman (chair).

A live performance of a 1000 minute section of Longplayer took place at The Roundhouse in Chalk Farm, London, on 12 September 2009, alongside an epic 12-hour relay conversation inspired by the philosophical implications of long time. The first Artangel Podcast, uploaded on 21 January 2010, marked the beginning of a new decade with Jem Finer reflecting on ten years of the composition.

This project is supported by Arts Council England, Special Angels and The Company of Angels.