The Fragmented Orchestra
The Fragmented Orchestra, an unprecedented and visionary new work, will launch to the public on 12 December at FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) as part of Liverpool’s European Capital of Culture programme.
A huge, geographically distributed musical structure across 24 sites throughout the UK, The Fragmented Orchestra will mirror the function of the human brain and the way it processes sound to produce a compelling and ever-changing new instrument and composition.
The 24 sites listed below have been selected by artist Jane Grant, composer, musician and physicist John Matthias and BAFTA winning composer and sound designer Nick Ryan for their inherent sonic rhythms to create a unique score that will be performed to thousands of listeners throughout the UK. From a cattle market in Aberdeen to the Brighton Seafront, London’s Roundhouse to Everton Football club, Gloucester Cathedral to the former home of the Brontes on the Yorkshire moors, a remarkable and diverse range of locations will be connected via the internet to form a networked cortex, which will adapt, evolve and trigger site-specific sounds via FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) as part of Liverpool’s European Capital of Culture programme from 12 December to 22 February. Anyone can play The Fragmented Orchestra and the public are encouraged to visit their local sites and help turn the UK into one weird and wonderful new instrument.
The 24 sites for the Fragmented Orchestra are:
London
1. Roundhouse, Camden, London – here the neuron unit will be placed in the entrance area where it will be easily accessible for the public to play and interact with.
2. Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College London – a renowned centre for brain studies where heated debates take place every Friday afternoon
3. National Portrait Gallery, London – this acclaimed national museum will host a neuron unit on one of its landings where visitors can easily ‘play’ it and listen.
4. St. Andrew’s Church, Fulham, London – a Victorian parish church in a largely deprived area of North Fulham. The Vicar, The Revd Martin Eastwood, said ‘we are thrilled to have been chosen to host this exciting project in the church here. The neuron unit will be placed in the pulpit in the church and should pick up regular sounds of worship but also of the various sounds coming from our many community activities such as the Mums and Toddlers Group, the Fruit and Veg. Co-Op and the Homeless Project.’
5. The Stephen Lawrence Centre, Peckham, London – Opened in February 08 by Ken Livingstone, the Stephen Lawrence Centre is a place for community learning and social research and a hub for exchange regarding urban design and regeneration.
6. Rochelle School, Shoreditch – established by the A Foundation, the Rochelle School has been converted to provide studios for artists and creative industries plus a gallery and project space in Club Row.
South East
7. Pavilion, West Pier, Brighton Seafront – housed in the tiny mini pavilion that would have been at the beginning of the old west pier before it was left to slide into the sea, this is the only beachfront neuron unit in the Fragmented Orchestra.
South West
8. Newlyn Art Gallery, Cornwall – the old gallery will host a neuron unit in view of the sea in this old fishing town.
9. Roland Levinsky Building, University of Plymouth, Devon – the arts building which also houses a cinema and contemporary art gallery. The Director of Peninsular Arts will be programming music and sound performances incorporating the neuron unit plus ‘guerilla’ performances by students.
10. Watershed, Bristol – the neuron unit will be installed outside the Watershed using its massive pane of glass to capture the sound of visitors to the Watershed, the river and passing boats, inner city traffic, shoppers, buskers and late night revellers. Here The Fragmented Orchestra will be working with Hewlett Packard South West fellow and poet Ralph Hoyte to present various performances.
11. Landscove C of E Primary School, Landscove, Devon – here the Fragmented Orchestra reaches a remote part of the country and will capture sounds such as children playing, shouting, music lessons and rehearsals for their annual nativity play.
12. Gloucester Cathedral – The Dean of Gloucester, the Very Revd Nick Bury, said ‘this is a wonderful opportunity to be part of an innovative and imaginative arts project in a cathedral renowned for its magical acoustic. The unit will be placed on our great west doors where it will pick up all the wonderful sounds of a busy cathedral – stunning choral music, the great organ, the chatter of excited school-children visiting the shop, tourists speaking in every kind of language and the vergers hoovering!’
West Midlands
13. University of Birmingham, Aston Webb Building – the neuron unit here will be installed in this acoustically remarkable listening gallery based in the main hall of the University and frequent home to Radio 4’s Any Questions.
Wales
14. Millennium Stadium, Cardiff, Wales (TBC, 8.11.08) – here the neuron will be placed in the tunnel where the players come out onto the pitch of this international sports venue.
15. Centre for Alternative Technology, Southern Snowdonia, Mid Wales – the neuron unit will be installed in this eco-energy centre’s woodland walk, capturing the sounds of the trees and other activity.
North West
16. Everton Football Club, Goodison Park, Liverpool – capturing fragments of the roar of victorious goals, the neuron unit will be placed on TV gantry and audible to people in the first row of that stand in this iconic football stadium.
17. FACT, Liverpool – FACT will provide a public space where people can interact with the orchestra and play the instrument at the site location and move quickly to Gallery 1 to hear the installation and their effect on it. Gallery 1 is the central hub for the 24 neuron units where visitors can hear the collective sounds of all of the sites around the UK and their interaction with each other, which will also be transmitted back to the 24 neuron units and to www.thefragmentedorchestra.com
18. Blueprint Studios, Manchester – this acclaimed recording and rehearsal studios, which plays host to sessions by the likes of Johnny Marr and Elbow, will have the only neuron unit as a wireless mic that can be carried around the studios and placed in different locations.
Yorkshire
19. Bronte Parsonage Museum, Haworth, West Yorkshire – the former home of the Brontes and home to the Bronte Parsonage Museum and Bronte Society in the beautiful West Yorkshire countryside. The neuron unit will be installed in the garden where it will capture the wind on the moors and visitors to the Museum can be part of the project.
North East
20. Kielder Observatory, Black Fell, Northumberland – recently opened by Sir Arnold Wolfendale, 14th Astronomer Royal, Kielder Observatory is an astronomical observatory located in Kielder Forest. It is situated close to the Scottish border on Black Fell near James Turrell's Kielder Skyspace. In keeping with the surrounding forest the building is solar and wind powered.
Scotland
21. The Thainstone Centre, Inverurie, Aberdeenshire, Scotland – one of oldest cattle markets in the UK, here the neuron unit will be placed on a staircase in the open market area in the centre of the building where a farmers’ market takes place every Saturday and the sound of cattle market all around will be captured.
22. The Hidden Gardens, Tramway, Glasgow – a leading contemporary art venue, the Tramway also features the Hidden Gardens, an award winning space in an inner city area with a mainly Muslim population.
Northen Ireland
23. Verbal Arts Centre, Derry – here the neuron unit will be installed in an educational charity founded to promote the language arts, celebration of commonality and diversity across all verbal art forms situated on the historic Derry city walls.
24. Sonic Arts Research Centre, Queens University, Belfast - a newly established and unique centre of excellence, dedicated to the research of music technology and part of Queens University Belfast.
Here’s how it works: A sound box modeled on the neurons found in the human brain will be installed at each site and attached to a pre-existing resonant surface. Each of the neurons will be connected to each other via the internet to form a tiny cortex and will ‘fire’ signals back and forth when stimulated by sound. When this happens fragments of sound from each location will be streamed to the central venue at FACT where each neuron unit is represented by its own loudspeaker. Across all of the sites, the public will be able to ‘play’ each neuron unit by creating local sound and hear the effect this has on the overall composition. Visitors to FACT can hear the collective sound of all of the sites around the UK, their interaction with each other and the unique music created by the cortex at work. The collective music heard in the Gallery at FACT will also be transmitted back to listeners at each of the remote locations through the use of Feonic™ technology, which turns any resonant surface into a high quality loudspeaker. The Fragmented Orchestra website will also enable people to tune into each of the neurons, as well as what can be heard at the central Gallery in FACT, 24 hours a day.
The Fragmented Orchestra is created by Jane Grant, John Matthias and Nick Ryan. Jane Grant is a visual artist working with film, sound, video and installation. She has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally and is Principal Investigator at the University of Plymouth on an AHRC funded project, Threshold which merges the human voice and breath with neuronal firing patterns, currently exhibited at ArtSway. John Matthias is a musician and physicist. He has collaborated with many artists including Radiohead, Matthew Herbert and Coldcut and has recently released his second solo album Stories from the Watercooler on the Counter (Ninja Tune) Label. He is lecturer in Sonic Arts at the University of Plymouth. Nick Ryan is a composer, producer and sound designer. He won a BAFTA for his ground breaking interactive radio drama The Dark House, broadcast on BBC Radio 4, and has composed extensively for film and television. John and Nick recently released Cortical Songs on the nonclassical label to critical acclaim.