Longplayer article on the Quietus

An article in the Quietus yesterday about Longplayer:

What becomes clear as we talk is that Longplayer is not a passive work but rather a challenge, a sort of quest in time and space. In Zoroastrian culture, they keep Fire Temples where the flames have not gone out for hundreds of years. Successive generations must tend to them and in doing so the culture survives. In Japan, the Ise Shrine is torn down periodically and rebuilt. This is an act of seeming madness to the capitalist utilitarian worldview, but genius as it forces people to retain the knowledge of how to build wooden temples as well as embodying ideas of transience and the cyclical nature of life. It has done so for at least 1000 years. Longplayer possesses a similar spirit, “There is this social side, with people taking responsibility for looking after it,” Finer says. “It goes back to the Hackney Empire in a way. The embodiment of tradition and responsibility, and how it replenishes itself.”  Future custodians will be keeping something alive then that is both tangible and intangible – a piece of music, or music itself, an idea, a way of life, a lifeform, or a form of communion. 

Darran Anderson, The Quietus
3 April 2025


To support and hear Longplayer you can purchase the app available here.

For more about the project please visit the Longplayer website.

 

Longplayer Installation at Trinity Buoy Wharf
Photograph: James Whitaker

 

Sound system update at Longplayer's London listening post

For the past twenty five years, Longplayer has been heard resonating in the Trinity Buoy Wharf lighthouse in East London. To celebrate reaching this milestone, at the end of 2024 we updated the entire sound system for an optimal acoustic experience. You can now hear Longplayer immediately upon entering the 19th century lighthouse, resonating in the centre of the Longplayer Live bowl installation, and in the circular lantern room at the very top of this historical building, with views across the Thames.

The updates were generously sponsored by EM Acoustics, who donated the speakers, and the Trinity Buoy Wharf Trust who enabled the purchase of a DSP and control by Yamaha and amplification by Power Soft audio. The new six channel speaker implementation was developed by Daniel Jones, and the system and sound designed by Simon Hendry, supported by James Bulley, a Longplayer Trustee. Installation support was provided by Richard Hards, Jake Tyler, and Dickie Cripps, with production support from Imogen Free.

If you haven’t visited our London listening post yet this year, come down and have a listen!

Tex: https://longplayer.org/news/2025/01/17/sound-system-update-at-longplayers-london-listening-post/

 

Longplayer Long Afternoon with Ansuman Biswas, Sunday 9 June, 9-5

 

On Sunday 9th June, Longplayer invites you to spend a Long Afternoon with Ansuman Biswas at London’s only lighthouse. This special event will take the form of a particularly long afternoon, with Ansuman offering a durational performance from 9am-5pm.

Escaping the 9 to 5 is a work of imagination. It’s hard to see what’s there until you imagine it not. Longplayer is measuring out a thousand years. One thousandth of a year is 8.76 hours. One millionth of the length of Longplayer is 8.76 hours. That’s roughly 9am to 5pm. 

On June 9th, rather than taking the Sunday off work, Ansuman Biswas will start playing. He will dip into the stream of Longplayer for one working day, clocking on at 9am and clocking off at 5.46pm. Ansuman invites you to come and join him and Longplayer for as long as you like.

Longplayer Trust Chair Ella Finer and Producer Imogen Free will also offer a reflective conversation at the Armadillo, CLT Sound Pavilion at Trinity Buoy Wharf - as part for the London Festival of Architecture - from 4-5pm, and a young person’s facilitator will be present in the ground floor stairwell of the Lighthouse 12-3.30pm. 

 Link for further information & to book tickets: 

https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/longplayer-trust/a-very-long-afternoon-with-longplayer-and-ansuman-biswas-performing-9-to-5/e-mbaxbv

 
 

Longplayer Conversation at the British Library: Sada Mire and Richard Sabin

Each year, as a way of celebrating the vision behind Longplayer’s long term aspirations, the trustees of Longplayer invite leading cultural thinkers to conduct a public conversation inspired by the philosophical premise of Longplayer, a project which unfolds, in real time, over the course of a millennium.

This year’s speakers are Dr Sada Mire (Archaeology Professor at UCL) and Richard Sabin (Principal Curator of Mammals at the Natural History Museum).

28 September at the British Library, London.

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'Sonic Ray' by Jem Finer

Sonic Ray – a new installation produced by Artangel, celebrating the 1,000 year-long musical composition Longplayer, created by artist Jem Finer. Originally scheduled for 2020, Sonic Ray was commissioned to mark the 20th anniversary of Longplayer, which began playing from the lighthouse at Trinity Buoy Wharf at midday on 31 December 1999 and will continue to play until 2,999 when it completes its cycle as the longest piece of music in history.

From the lighthouse, a bridge of light is beamed across the river to North Greenwich, encoding and transmitting the sound of Longplayer to a new temporary listening post aboard Richard Wilson’s nautical sculpture Slice of Reality. A short ferry ride will connect the two locations, allowing visitors to experience Longplayer as a bridge of light across the river at both locations.

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'Longplayer' partnership with Goldsmiths, University of London

Over recent months, I've been fortunate to have been involved in the creation of a partnership between Goldsmiths, University of London (where I am currently completing my PhD) and 'Longplayer', a 1000-year-long work by Jem Finer that currently finds physical presence at Trinity Buoy Wharf in London. 

A memorandum of understanding has recently been publicly announced, which will be the start of many exploratory projects surrounding the ideas that underpin the piece, and its longterm preservation.