Adam Stoner

Read this post at adamstoner.com/longplayer

When I speak of this thing called Longplayer to people, I tend to get one of two reactions: amazement, or bemusement. Both respectable, because Longplayer isn’t your average piece of music – and Jem Finer, the composer behind it all, isn’t your average musician. While contemporary songs sit comfortably around the four-minute mark, Longplayer is a single composition with a track duration of one-thousand years.

Starting 12:00 UTC on the 31st of December 1999, Longplayer aims to continue without repetition until the last moment of 2999. Composed for singing bowls – whose resonances can be very accurately reproduced in recorded form – Longplayer is designed to be adaptable to unforeseeable changes in its technological and social environments, and to endure as a long-term and self-sustaining institution.

I’ve known of the project for several years and have, in my own way, become somewhat obsessed with it. To me, Longplayer explores time in a neutral medium, one that everyone can appreciate and understand: sound. After repeatedly dipping in and out of the project – occasionally checking back for developments here-and-there – I was left with questions, and Finer, who spoke to me over the phone after an appointment earlier this month, was more than happy to answer them...

Longplayer is a permanent instillation at Trinity Buoy Wharf, London. You can visit every Saturday and Sunday between the hours of 11am and 5pm. 

“Set in the former lamp room of a lighthouse, Longplayer uses the sounds of Tibetan ‘singing bowls’ to take you on a atmospheric journey into time and space.”

You can find out more about Longplayer at longplayer.org. Finer has also written a book detailing its creation. It includes scans of his personal notebooks, meetings of minutes and detailed commentary from inception to creation.