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

 
 

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

'Sonic Ray' by Jem Finer

Last night I attended a launch for Jem Finer’s Sonic Ray — it is a mesmerising thing to see a laser beam of sound traversing the river Thames, journeying back and forth across darkened waters beneath it. The work opens to the public from 30 September–21 November 2021 and you can book tickets here.

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.

Built in 1864 the lighthouse at Trinity Buoy Wharf in East London was known as the “Experimental Lighthouse”, a landmark housing the workshop where Faraday conducted his optical tests. It has been the home of Longplayer for 21 years

Sonic Ray transmitting Longplayer from Trinity Buoy Wharf Lighthouse

Sonic Ray transmitting Longplayer from Trinity Buoy Wharf Lighthouse

The receiver at Richard Wilson’s Slice of Reality

The receiver at Richard Wilson’s Slice of Reality

Drawings by Jem finer in Richard Wilson’s Slice of Reality

Drawings by Jem finer in Richard Wilson’s Slice of Reality

'Longplayer' partnership with Goldsmiths

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 beautiful 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.