Longplayer: Jem Finer & Lindsay Seers

Longplayer is a musical composition lasting a thousand years. It began playing on 31 December 1999 and will continue to play, without any repetition, until the very last moment of 2999. At this point in history, it will have completed its cycle and will repeat itself once more.

Conceived and composed by Jem Finer, it can be heard at the Trinity Buoy Wharf lighthouse in London, where it has been playing since it began, as well as at other locations around the world via live streaming on the internet, and now also at La Casa Encendida.

Longplayer is played using Tibetan singing bowls that can be struck by both humans and machines, and whose sound can be reproduced very faithfully through a recording.  Designed to adapt to unpredictable changes, to endure. More than a musical composition, Longplayer is a social organism that depends on people – and on communication between people – to remain alive. Its existence depends on the existence of a community of people who listen to it across the centuries.

Jem Finer (born 25 July 1955) is an English musician, artist and composer. Since the 1970s, he has worked in various fields, including photography, film, experimental music, sculpture and installation art. His fascination with deep time, self-organising systems and long-duration processes has inspired works such as Longplayer, a thousand-year musical composition, and Score For a Hole In the Ground, a self-sustaining musical installation in a woodland in Kent.