A one-thousand year composition in the lighthouse at Trinity Buoy Wharf in London. Composed by singing bowls, an ancient type of standing bell. Started playing on the 31st of Dec 1999 and will continue to play W/O REPITITION until the last moment of 2999, at which point it will complete it's cycle and begin again. ![[Pasted image 20220904232556.png]] Conceived and composed by [Jem Finer](http://jemfiner.net/bio.html) together with [Artangel](https://www.artangel.org.uk/) ![[Pasted image 20220904232321.png]] ## Rates of Change In the diagram below, the six simultaneous transpositions are represented by the six circles, whose circumference represents the length of the transposed source music. The solid rectangles represent the two minute sections presently playing. The unique increments by which these six sections advance determine their respective rates of change. These reflect different flows of time, from a glacial crawl to the almost perceptible sweep of an hour hand. The incremental advance of the third circle, is so small that it will take the full thousand years for it to pass once through the source music. Conversely the increment for the second circle is such that it makes its way through the music every 3.7 days. The diagram updates every 2 minutes. ![[Pasted image 20220904231154.png]] In today's society, there is **a problem with understanding the fluidity and expansiveness of time.** Longplayer can be understood as a living, 1000-year long process, an artificial life from programmed to seek it's own survival strategies. It's more than a piece of music, a social organism that depending on people and the communication between people for its continuation and existing as a community of listeners across centuries. ![[Pasted image 20220904233014.png]] ### Composition in Time Longplayer is composed in such a way that the character of the music changes from day to day, thought it is beyond the reach of any one person's experience - from century to century. It works in a way akin to a system of planets, which are aligned only once every thousand years, and whose orbits meanwhile move in and out of phase with each other in constantly shifting configurations. In a similar way, Long-player is pre-determined from beginning to end - it's movements are calculable, but are occurring on a scale so vast as to be all but unknowable. It's composition uses a minimum amount of information and material to create the maximum amount of variety, in terms of both sound and form. While it is a system-based composition, it is made out of very expansive and resonant musical material, which in itself is not ‘systematic’ sounding. This material (the ‘source music’) is played on **Tibetan singing bowls,** which possess a simple but harmonically rich sound, and a quality which is at once both physical and ethereal. A simple form of synthesis arises from the interactions of these instruments’ waveforms, with the consequence that while Longplayer’s score is **deterministic, its music at any given time is unpredictable.** ### Technology - [Code](https://longplayer.org/code.html) in a language called [supercollider](https://supercollider.github.io/) - Alternative methods of it's performance that are not digital are essential eg. non-electrical, mechanical and human operated. - The composition of Longplayer results from the application of simple and precise rules to six short pieces of music. Six sections from these pieces – one from each – are playing 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. At this point the composition arrives back at the point at which it first started. In effect Longplayer is an infinite piece of music repeating every thousand years – a millennial loop. The six short pieces of music are transpositions of a 20’20” score for Tibetan Singing Bowls, the ‘source music’.[[1]](https://longplayer.org/about/how-does-longplayer-work/#notes) These transpositions vary from the original not only in pitch but also, proportionally, in duration.[[2]](https://longplayer.org/about/how-does-longplayer-work/#notes) Every two minutes a starting point in each of the six pieces is calculated, from which they then play for the next two minutes. Each starting point is calculated by adding a specific length of time to its previous starting point.[[3]](https://longplayer.org/about/how-does-longplayer-work/#notes) For each of the six pieces of music this length of time is unique and unvarying. The relationships between these six precisely calculated increments are what gives Longplayer its exact one thousand year long duration.