Month: November 2023

Longplayer is a 1000-year-long musical composition curated by founding member of The Pogues, Jem Finer. It has been playing continuously since the start of the year 2000, and is designed to play without any interruption or repetition until the final moments of the year 2999.

I found the experience of Longplayer to be quite entrancing as I was constantly being pulled into a dream like state every time I closed my eyes and focused on the piece. An interesting aspect of this installation is that the score will always live on as through 6 ‘simple’ algorithms, the whole piece has already been calculated. Unless the score is somehow destroyed. I’m definitely interested to keep note of Longplayers existence throughout my life as over time I expect my hearing to change.

Something that came as a surprise to me was the cost of upkeep inside of the Trinity Buoy Wharf lighthouse. It costs about £100 a day resulting in a cost of £36,544 a year. This is surprising as this instalment is only for visual and educational purposes. The score is in fact stored in various forms, such as oral, digital and paper.

Full quote:

“The understanding that art brings with it the possibility to address the world, beyond an abstract or elusive category, can be seen to gain significance throughout the latter part of the twentieth century in the form of “site-specific practice” of the late 1960s and 1970s and subsequent forms of contextual practice.”

Paraphrased version:

LaBelle notes (2006, p.xi) that in the late 20th century, the idea that art has the power to engage with the world became more explicit. This is shown in the emergence of “site-specific practise” during the late 1960s and 1970s and following forms of contextual practices. LaBelle, 2006. Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art. New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc.