FACT tunes up to host the sounds of success
Apr 22 2008 by Laura Sharpe, Liverpool Daily Post
The FACT Centre in Wood Street, Liverpool _240
LIVERPOOL’S Foundation for Art and Creative Technology (FACT) will host a "ground-breaking" music project, it was announced last night.
The Fragmented Orchestra, a project which mirrors the way our brain works, won the £50,000 New Music Award 2008.
Described as the most financially significant award for music in the UK, the project will involve capturing sound from 24 UK locations which will be streamed into FACT.
A statement by prize organisers said: "At the heart of this pioneering new work are 24 ‘neuron units’ placed across the UK in locations chosen for their inherent sonic rhythms.
"These will include a football stadium, cathedral, dairy farm, school playground, motorway crash barrier and a field."
Each solar-powered "soundbox" contains minute technology which will capture a range of noises at each location.
These will flow centrally to FACT, where visitors will be able to listen via 24 speakers to the sounds from each site and how they interact, with a map detailing all of their locations.
The performance will also be heard at each of the 24 "neuron" sites as the collective sound generated in Liverpool will be streamed back to each remote unit.
Mike Stubbs, director at FACT, said: "It’s fantastic news that the Fragmented Orchestra will be coming to FACT. Recording in this context is art of the future, interacting sound with the public and the FACT audience.
"It’s inspiring the project is able to use creative thinking to turn the whole country into instruments of the orchestra."
Sound artist Jane Grant, musician and physicist John Matthias and Bafta-winning composer Nick Ryan are behind the orchestra and have until September, 2009, to create their new work, to be heard by thousands of listeners.
Grant has worked with film, sound, video and installation, Matthias has collaborated with artists including Radiohead, and Ryan won a Bafta for interactive radio drama The Dark House, broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
Their composition, created through newly-developed software, constantly evolves with fragments of sound.
The award, dubbed "music’s Turner Prize", was announced at London’s Shoreditch Town Hall late last night .
The New Music Award judging panel said: "This extraordinary work mirrors the fundamental human activity of the brain."
"It is music writ large across the country and, through cutting edge technology, we can all create, listen and play a part in it.
"The brain is never silent; it filters, selects and makes connections.
"The Fragmented Orchestra uses these neural patterns in the same way to allow us to hear the UK as music."
The winner was selected by judges Marcus Davey, chief executive, The Roundhouse; Jenny Abramsky, director of BBC audio and music; composers Jem Finer, Nitin Sawhney and Errollyn Wallen; and Eric Nicoli, former CEO of EMI Group.
Award organisers want to provoke the same level of debate among music-lovers as the Turner Prize does in the art world.
It champions pioneering new music, providing money towards one adventurous and challenging new musical work.
Launched back in 2004, the prize is the brainchild of the PRS (Performing Right Society) Foundation, an independent funding body dedicated to the development of new music.
The six shortlisted works at last night’s final were chosen from more than 130 entries including a "choir" of bats and a year-long piece of music generated by a bicycle.
Share
