Performance – Longplayer Live at the Roundhouse

I’m hugely looking forward to performing as part of Longplayer Live at the Roundhouse, London on 5 April 2025. The performance of 1000 minutes of Longplayer’s score is 0720–midnight and celebrates the 25th birthday of Longplayer.

You can find tickets and further information here, and a lot more about Longplayer itself here.

“Spend one unique day with Longplayer, live at the Roundhouse.

A 1000-year-long piece of music, Longplayer has been playing continuously since the first moments of this millennium and is composed to continue until the final moments of the next.

On 5th April 2025, Longplayer will return to the Roundhouse for a performance of the 1000-minute section of its score, as written for that particular time and date, from 7.20am to midnight.

Longplayer’s duration means that, given the unknowability of the future, its score was written so as to be independent of any one technology. For most of its life it has been performed by computers, while its caretakers, the Longplayer Trust, explore alternatives which have included the use of the human voice, vinyl records, code, a beam of light and, as first heard at the Roundhouse in 2009, live performance by musicians.

Akin to what Longplayer’s composer, Jem Finer, calls a ‘vast, Bronze Age synthesiser’, Longplayer Live is performed on a large orchestral instrument comprised of 234 singing bowls, arranged in six concentric rings and played by shifts of six to twelve people at any one time, reading from a graphic score.

Audiences can spend as long as they wish listening and watching, and are invited to move around or find a space to rest, with the possibility to leave and return to the venue throughout the performance’s duration.

Longplayer hopes to enrich intergenerational conversations about how we can imagine the future. For this 25th anniversary performance, 18 young people from the Roundhouse’s creative community will join the orchestra of musicians and artists: a meeting of present and future custodians who will shape Longplayer’s next 25 years.

Longplayer Live is generously supported by the Trinity Buoy Wharf Trust and Urban Space Management. Thanks is also due to Universal Works for their generosity in supporting, designing and making the performers’ clothing.”

Longplayer Live. Photograph: © Jem Finer

Longplayer Live. Photograph: © Bruce Atherton and Jana Chiellino

Exhibition – Lily Greenham at Kunsthalle Wien: 'Radical Software: Women, Art & Computing 1960-1991'

Lily Greenham’s computing works, first exhibited as part of the Badischer Kunstverein exhibition in Karlsruhe (March–May 2024) that I co-curated with Andrew Walsh-Lister, Anja Casser and Alex Balgiu, are now travelling to Vienna, where they will be exhibited in the excellent travelling show ‘Radical Software: Women, Art & Computing 1960-1991.’ The exhibition runs in Vienna from 2025-02-28 to 2025-05-25 and is well worth a visit.

More information about the exhibition and how to visit can be found here.

Event – 'Still the Hours' at Hampton Court Palace

Very pleased to announce that tickets are now on sale for Still the Hours, a new piece I’ve been working on over the last six months with the excellent writer and director Claire Doherty. It’s an extraordinary and beautifully wrought piece, that encompasses an in depth exploration of binaural sound recording techniques, spatial site-specific sound and promenade art.

The piece runs from 19 March to Sunday 30 March 2025 and takes place after dark at Hampton Court Palace, London.

Tickets are very limited, and available here.

Still The Hours is an audio-led journey through Hampton Court Palace after hours. Conceived from the stories of women who lived or worked in the palace from 1541 to 1925, the promenade experience blends binaural audio with site-specific spatial sound across the palace’s rooms.

Produced in the centenary year of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, Still The Hours is inspired by the novel’s exploration of time as both linear and circular. It is said that though the palace’s astronomical clock has functioned to mark the passage of time over 500 years, on certain occasions the clock has paused or stuttered, as if within the palace gates, time is unreliable.

Featuring the voices of Kathryn Hunter (Black Doves, Harry Potter, Poor Things), Miranda Richardson (Good Omens, The Hours), and Ayesha Dharker (The Father), alongside an ensemble cast of established and emerging actors, students from the Rose Youth Theatre and staff at Hampton Court Palace, Still The Hours listens in to women’s lives at the palace, their struggles for survival, their triumphs and losses over five centuries.

Event – 'Breathing with the Forest' at Compton Verney

Marshmallow Laser Feast’s Breathing with the Forest, for which I created the spatial sound score has just opened at Compton Verney in Warwickshire. The exhibition runs until April 2025, and you can find tickets and visiting information here. More about the piece here.

‘Breathing with the Forest’ at Oxo Exhibition, 2024 (Image courtesy: Marshmallow Laser Feast)

Curation – An Individual Note: Works by Daphne Oram, Contrechamps, Ansermet, Geneva

I’m really pleased to be co-curating (with the inimitable Ian Stonehouse) a concert of works by the composer Daphne Oram, as part of the Contrechamps series at Auditorium Ansermet, Geneva on 6 February 2025. Oram’s tape works will be spatialised over a D&B Soundscape system within the Auditorium Ansermet. Further information on the Contrechamps website here.

Event – 'Time Loops' at the Science Museum, London: 6 Feburary 2025

Over the last few months, I’ve been working with Ian Stonehouse and Jake Tyler on building copies of Hugh Davies’ Shozygs for a forthcoming piece by Gavin Bryars. Gavin’s piece will premier at the Science Museum, London on 6 February 2025 alongside new pieces performed with Icebreaker Ensemble by the excellent Shiva Feshareki and Sarah Angliss.

Tickets and further information about the project here.

Figure 6 : Shozyg I (1968) © Science Museum/Science & Society Picture Library

Event – 'Evolver' UK premiere at Oxford University

Evolver the collective virtual reality experience by Marshmallow Laser Feast, which I directed the sound and created the sound design for is premiering in the UK at Oxford University in October 2024. The piece is an ambisonic sound composition and features music from Meredith Monk, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Howard Skempton and Jonny Greenwood as well as a voiceover by Cate Blanchett written by the poet Daisy Lafarge.

Evolver drops audiences deep inside the landscape of the body, following the flow of oxygen through our branching ecosystem, to a single ‘breathing’ cell. Through this transcendental narrative, it becomes clear that breath not only sparks life, but also connects us to the natural world through the cycle of respiration.”

For tickets and visiting information for the Oxford University exhibition please see here.

For further information about Evolver please see here.

Event – 'Breathing With The Forest' – Emergence Magazine: Online Launch

Breathing With The Forest, an immersive work that I worked on with Marshmallow Laser Feast exploring the interrelation of beings and focused around a Ceiba Pentandra tree in the Araras district of the Colombian Amazon has just launched as an online experience with Emergence Magazine, with a new voiceover by the wonderful British Actor, Colin Salmon.

You can access the piece here.

At our Shifting Landscapes exhibition in London last December, we premiered the large-scale immersive experience “Breathing with the Forest” from celebrated art collective Marshmallow Laser Feast. Conceived as an open-eyed meditation, the installation invited people to feel into the ways we are intimately linked with forests through the greater respiration of the Earth. While not always tangible, this connection is ever-present—trees inhale our breath and use sunlight to exhale oxygen. In this eternal cycle of reciprocity, the world flows into us and we flow into the world.

Over the last few months we’ve been working on creating an online adaptation of this boundary-pushing installation that draws you into an exchange with the Amazon rainforest. In this new interactive multimedia experience, narrated by acclaimed British actor Colin Salmon, explore layers of molecular exchange and synchronize the rhythm of your own breath with the cycles and currents of air and water flowing between the trees and mycelial networks. Within a soundscape of birdsong, moving water, and insect chirr, open your senses to the invisible continuities between the forest, the ecosystem beneath it, and the wider living world.

(Emergence Magazine)

News – 'Maria' by Nina Danino - interview on Lux

Over the last few years, I’ve had the pleasure on working on the film Maria by director Nina Danino. Part of the process has involved working with a number of incredible musicians to improvise and respond in recording sessions for the soundscore the underlies the piece. LUX have recently published an interview by Jo Blair with Nina where some of this gets discussed:

THE MYTH AND THE CULT OF MARIA CALLAS An Interview with Nina Danino

Event – 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

Symposium: Tune in to Reality! at the Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe, 2/3 May 2024

Coming up on 2/3 May 2024 is the symposium Tune in to Reality! exploring the life and work of the artist Lily Greenham. Part of the exhibition Lily Greenham: An Art of Living that I have been fortunate enough to co-curate with Anja Casser, Andrew Walsh-Lister and Alex Balgiu, the symposium is going to feature a number of performance responses to Greenham’s work, as well as an incredible array of talks exploring different parts of Greenham’s practice and life. The event, co-hosted by Bricks from the Kiln and the Kunsteverein, also marks the launch of a new publication of Tendentious Neo-Semantics, a record by Greenham originally released by Edition Hoffman. Full information below, the event is free to access.

Tune in to Reality! A symposium on the life and work of Lily Greenham at the Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe, Germany. 2/3 May 2024.

The cover of Tendentious Neo-Semantics (1970) by Lily Greenham

Talk – Lucerne University: Practice Research Keynote

On the 2nd of May at Lucerne University, Switzerland at the School of Music, I’ll be giving a keynote on practice research as part of an excellent program that explores artistic and art education research. Details of the symposium, which is free to attend, can be found here.

Photograph of toaster as part of The Toaster Project by Thomas Thwaites. © Daniel Alexander 2009.

Interview – radio interview with SWR Germany on 'Lily Greenham: An Art of Living' at the Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe

An interview on the German radio station SWR discussing the recently opened exhibition ‘Lily Greenham: An Art of Living’ at the Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe.

Event – 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 extraordinary speakers are Dr Sada Mire (Archaeology Professor at UCL) and Richard Sabin (Principal Curator of Mammals at the Natural History Museum)

28 Sept at the British Library, London

Tickets available here

longplayer.org

Dr Sada Mire

Richard Sabin

Event – 'Other Rooms, Other Voices' exhibition opening

For further information about attending the private view on Friday January 13, or the public exhibition of Other Rooms, Other Voices please see here.

James Lovelock (1919–2022)

I was sad last week to be told of the passing of James Lovelock, who died on the 26 July, his 103rd birthday. His was a monumental mind housed in an extraordinary person, and he continues to be a huge inspiration and influence on both myself and many of those I work and collaborate with. Jim recorded a Longplayer Conversation with John Gray back in 2011, which is linked to below. What follows is a short statement from the Longplayer Trust, of which I am a trustee:

As a scientist, James Lovelock’s far-reaching, cross-disciplinary work was often innovative and sometimes controversial. This included the Gaia theory of the Earth as a self-regulating system, which he proposed in the 1960s and developed with the US biologist Lynn Margulis. The Gaia theory also points towards Lovelock’s interest in the long-term sustainability and development of our planet, which included (sometimes critical) engagement with the green movement and the corporate sector.

Each year, as a way of celebrating the vision behind Longplayer’s long term aspirations, we 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. In 2011, the Artangel Longplayer Conversation was between James Lovelock and John Gray, which can be viewed below.

The Guardian’s obituary of James Lovelock can be read here.

You can view the complete set of Conversations here.

For more about Longplayer, see longplayer.org

Publication – 'Tune in to Reality!' by Lily Greenham: Distance No Object

Lily Greenham’s ‘Tune in to Reality!’ has been republished in the last few weeks by Luke Roberts at Distance No Object. A big thanks to Luke and all involved - you can buy the book here. I’ll post more about Lily Greenham’s work in the future, especially in relation to the Lily Greenham Archive at Goldsmiths, where myself and other members of the Lily Greenham advisory board have been developing and preserving Greenham’s extraordinary work for future generations.

Lily Greenham was born in Vienna in 1924. She was a visual artist, writer, and composer, and a performer of concrete and sound poetry. You can listen to her here and here, and there’s a 1972 interview here.

Tune in to Reality! was her only published book of poems, appearing in an edition of c.100 copies from Bob Cobbing’s Writers Forum in 1974. This new edition is transcribed from the original, and presents Greenham’s wildly inventive ‘neo-semantics’ in their full glory. 23 poems, 7 translations (into German, French, Danish, and Spanish), all of them daring you to blink first.

In her own words ‘an outsider even amongst outsiders’, Greenham’s later career involved collaborations with film-makers including Lis Rhodes, and work based in computer graphics. She died in London in 2011.

This book appears with the co-operation of the trustees of the Lily Greenham Archive (Goldsmiths Special Collections), with grateful thanks.

Read an excerpt here.

(text quoted from Distance No Object)

Event – 'The Rising Sun' by David Shearing

The last few weeks have been spent working with the studio Variable Matter, led by artist and a long term collaborator of mine, David Shearing. Shearing has been working in partnership with communities in and around Romford, East London over the last year, interviewing and celebrating the voices of 100 people in Havering, mapping their histories and futures.

This has culminated in the spatial installation work The Rising Sun, an immersive environment situated in the centre of Romford Market that envelopes audiences in haze, light, and sound, evolving as time passes. It has been a great privilege working on the piece with David, and hugely insightful exploring and composing the voices of the people involved in the project.

Technically, the piece involved developing a custom spatialised system of 52 speakers (for which I must thank Ed Borgnis and Max Hunter), from which unfolds a long durational score of voices, music and field recordings shifting and moving around the space as the day unfolds.

The Rising Sun is open 15–30 July 2022 0800–2000 at Romford Market, London RM1 3ER

For more information on visiting and to access an online version of the work, please see the project website here.

The Rising Sun - Romford Market. Photograph: David Shearing.

The Rising Sun - Romford Market. Photograph: Hannah Davis.

Review – 'Evolver' in the Independent

A 5* review of Evolver in the Independent this morning, highlighting some of the core motivations behind the work.

Event – VCS4 Day 2022

Forthcoming on Thursday 23 June is VCS4 Day 2022, which is taking place at Goldsmiths, University of London. The day marks the arrival of the VCS4 synthesiser at Goldsmiths, a project I have been fortunate to take part in, alongside Simon Desorgher and Dr Marcus Leadley from Goldsmiths Electronic Music Studios. Further information about the event, including a link for watching a live stream, can be found below.

VCS4: 2022
23 June 2022, 1400–2000 BST.
Curzon Cinema, Goldsmiths. University of London.

The VCS4 was built by the world-renowned Electronic Music Studios Ltd (EMS) company in London more than 50 years ago and was one of a number of synthesisers used in the 1970s by pioneers of British electronic music. This is a key element of Goldsmiths’ modular synthesizer suite at the Electronic Music Studios in the Department of Music, where it is available for use by our music students, researchers and visiting artists.

The VCS4 was built for Harrison Birtwistle’s performance of Medusa at South Bank in 1970. It was moved to the EMS studio in Putney before it was taken to the Royal College of Music by composer Tristram Cary. It was subsequently owned by Simon Desorgher, a former RCM student. The VCS4 was restored to functional order in 2006 by Robin Wood at EMS and acquired by Goldsmiths in 2019. Additional restoration and repair work has since been carried out by Steven Thomas of Digitana Electronics.

The VCS4 is based on two EMS VCS3 synthesisers – a portable analogue synthesiser developed in 1969. These were widely used by such luminaries as Delia Derbyshire, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Brian Eno, Hawkwind, Pink Floyd, Robert Fripp and Aphex Twin. The VCS3’s in the VCS4 have been heavily modified and incorporated into a base station featuring keyboard, external audio input mixer, and signal processing inside a wooden cabinet. It is a completely unique instrument. A second, but very different, VCS4 model is owned by Matt Black of Coldcut.

 The VCS4 was acquired for the Department by Research Associate Dr James Bulley with support from the Goldsmiths Friends and Alumni Fund. For more detailed information on the VCS4 at Goldsmiths see: https://www.gold.ac.uk/ems/resourcesie/

VC4 Day 2022 will feature performances from Lawrence Casserley, Simon Desorgher, Alina Kalancea, Olivir Haylett and Ingrid Plum. The full programme of talks and discussion for VCS4:2022 will be confirmed shortly.

See Goldsmith’s event page for updates: https://www.gold.ac.uk/calendar/?id=13966

Join via livestream for a day of performances, talks and discussions featuring the unique EMS VCS4 Live Performance Module: https://youtu.be/VP4Tg_E0cCQ