DJALCHEMI

Time and Timelessness: Laurie Anderson, Doris Lessing, Jem Finer

Alongside her performances at the Barbican next month, Laurie Anderson is participating in a public conversation with Doris Lessing on the theme of Time and Timelessness (26 May, at the Royal Institution). The blurb for the event proffers:

Since the year 2000, the lighthouse on Trinity Buoy Wharf in London's Docklands has been home to the continuing performance of Jem Finer's Longplayer, a 1000-year-long piece of music commissioned by Artangel [donate]. Impossible to listen to in a single lifetime, does this constitute timelessness? Or maybe its simply a way for us to think about more than just our own experience, as science has always done.

There are lots of links here. Apparently Anderson has just completed a year as NASA's first artist-in-residence, and Jem Finer has also been artist in residency in the Astrophysics deptartment of Oxford University since 02003. His Cosmolog blog of this residency is hosted on the same server as this site. Both artists have worked on Artangel projects.

[Update, 1 June 02005: here are my notes of the conversation.]

And long-term readers of this site will know of my interest in extended time frames (also evidenced by the gauche and pretentious way I add a leading zero to dates, as in 02003, 02005). Here are some of my related postings:

• Longplayer: 1,000 Year Composition;
• Eno on the Long Now;
• Brains, culture, then what?;
• Long bets.