Longplayer was commissioned by Artangel and is in the care of The Longplayer Trust
Longplayer is now available on the itunes Store £3.99
Longplayer, the legendary 1000-year-long composition by Jem Finer, is now available as an iOS app
1000 years of music in your pocket!
Longplayer is a musical composition that has been playing since the beginning of the year 2000, and will play on, never repeating, until it reaches the point at which it first started, exactly 1000 years later.
Until now it has been possible to hear Longplayer on-line, at selected listening posts worldwide and at one-off live performances.
The Longplayer iOS app introduces a new way to listen to Longplayer, anywhere, at any time and without the need for a data connection. It literally performs the music, creating it from instant to instant. It will always play in time with all other instances of Longplayer – one point in a community of listeners stretching through time and space, across many lifetimes.
The app displays a real-time graphic score and includes exhaustive information about Longplayer and its history, its composition and performance.
Implicit in Longplayer’s composition is the ability for it to be performed by any technology, a necessity given its duration and the future’s unpredictability. Inspired by the longevity of computers designed for deep space missions, one of the original strategies for sustaining Longplayer was to make large numbers of small and cheap chips whose sole function would be its performance. Though the lifespan of an iOS device is limited to a few years, in a very real sense this is a first realisation of such a small independent computational device, piggy-backing on the iPhone and iPad’s ubiquity, portability and computational power.
This app was designed by Joe Hales, Jem Finer and Daniel Jones. Development by Daniel Jones.
Jem Finer is an artist, musician and composer. Since studying computer science in the 1970s, he has worked in a variety of fields, including photography, film, experimental and popular music and installation. He was a founding member of The Pogues with whom he has played, written and recorded music since 1982. Longplayer represents a convergence of many of his concerns, particularly those relating to systems, long-durational processes and extremes of scale in both time and space.
Daniel Jones is a artist and software engineer whose work explores new ways in which sound and technology can illuminate our understanding of the world, translating patterns and data into living musical forms. His BAFTA-nominated practice spans topics from bacterial communication to forest ecosystems, shown at venues including the Barbican, the Museum of Science and Industry, IRCAM, the Southbank Centre, and the Royal Institution of Great Britain. erase.net / @ideoforms
Joe Hales is a London-based graphic designer. He studied at Camberwell College of Arts before going on to establish his own practice. He is a tutor at the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture at Kingston University. joehales.co.uk
Thanks to Mike Davis whose generous donation has made the development of this app possible.
If you would like further information on Longplayer and the app, or to schedule an interview with Jem Finer, please email admin@longplayer.org
