Jem Finer’s Longplayer is a one thousand year long musical composition that started on the first moment of the year 2000 and will end on the first second of the year 3000. It is composed with 234 singing bowls and is designed to stay relevant for every period of time it is playing.
When listening to Jem talking about the piece, he talked about his reasoning for creating this 1000 year old composition, as a child he was always interested in time, and this interest continued throughout his adult life. I think it was more a lack of understanding we have for time and this structured concept we have made to understand it better as to why Jem had an interest in it. Approaching the millennium, Jem wanted to create a piece of art that was relevant for the years we were about to approach. He talked about other arts who were focusing on creating artwork for the millennium but noticed that nobody was making work relevant to a thousand years. Therefore, Longplayer was created. He chose to incorporate singing bowls as his instrument as he wanted to create a composition that wouldn’t be outdated in 20 years or so. Music comes in and out of fashion and constantly changes every decade, and so Jem used the more traditional sound of a singing bowl that can’t really be linked to a certain point in time.
Gem found it hard to get funding for this piece, and was rejected for it by most people, however in the end was given funding from the people of the millennium dome, which too was opening relevant to the new millennium. Because of this, Longplayer was shown inside the millennium dome for its first period of time. Just opposite the river lies Trinity Buoy Wharf Lighthouse, which is where Longplayer is currently living, which I think is a much better suited location for the piece. The space of the lighthouse has a much older, more original feeling, although the millennium dome (the o2) is very different now to what it was when it first opened, I still find it hard to picture Longplayer fitting in there. Being inside the lighthouse, you feel quite separated from London, it is in a very quiet, isolated area and being directly next to the river makes it feel as if it’s on its own. The space Longplayer is in affects the work massively as because it is constantly playing, your surroundings are extremely important. You are going to interpret the piece very differently depending on your environment and so I think for this period of time, the lighthouse is a good place for it. It makes you feel separated from the fast pace of the city and because the music produced by Longplayer is quite slow paced, it enhances this feeling a lot.
Longplayer consists of 6 loops, all being played at different paces, simultaneously, at all times. Longplayer chooses and combines these sections in such a way that no combination is repeated until exactly one thousand years has passed. The loops involve singing bowls of all different sizes, being hit and played together to create a kind of orchestral sound. Currently it is being performed by mostly computers, using code that has been written in supercollider. However, being aware of the changes that are to come throughout 1000 years, Jem has made Longplayer to not solely rely on technology and is prepared to work without the use of technology.
Jem describes Longplayer as “a living, 1000-year-long process – an artificial life form programmed to seek its own survival strategies. More than a piece of music, Longplayer is a social organism, depending on people – and the communication between people – for its continuation, and existing as a community of listeners across centuries.” And so from this I can understand the theme of the work, if you had to give it one, is to create this kind of life form that is to be observed and looked after for generations to come, creating this relationship with people throughout this long period of time. A relationship that might not have been formed without Longplayer.
Overall, I would describe Longplayer as a piece of artwork that can be viewed as both open and closed. There is so much room for interpretation from each person’s point of view when listening to Longplayer, and many aspects that can completely change the effect Longplayer has, like its location, the weather around you, the time of day, the point of loop it is on and more. And so in that way it is a completely open piece of artwork. However the reason I say it is closed is due to knowing Jem’s reasoning for creating Longplayer, these social aspects that Jem intended for Longplayer are happening, it is creating a communication between people who want to continue caring for it. However, as a whole this is an open piece of work, it doest tell you a direct message when just listening to it, each listen is a different experience for each person.
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