The Fragmented Orchestra at the Parsonage

A press release from the Brontë Parsonage Museum:

BRONTË PARSONAGE MUSEUM TAKES PART IN NATIONAL MUSICAL PROJECT, THE FRAGMENTED ORCHESTRA

The Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth is one of 24 public sites across the UK taking part in an exciting new musical project. The Fragmented Orchestra, which launches on Friday 12 December, is a huge, geographically distributed musical structure that mirrors the function of the human brain and the way it processes sounds, to produce a compelling and ever-changing new instrument and composition evolving across the UK.

A sound-box, installed in the Parsonage garden, will transmit sounds of the Brontë moors to the FACT Gallery in Liverpool. Here they will be mixed with sounds from each of the other sites taking part, including The National Portrait Gallery, Everton Football Club and Gloucester Cathedral, to form a dynamic new musical composition.

Visitors to the museum in Haworth will be able to ‘play’ the instrument by creating local sound and hearing the effect this has on the overall composition.

Jenna Holmes, Arts Officer, said:

“This is a very unique project and one that we’re delighted to be involved with. We hope the public will be intrigued to come and discover The Fragmented Orchestra for themselves. There really is a special atmosphere at the museum at this time of year and it is incredible to think that the sounds here at the Parsonage, such as the church clock, wind whistling from the moors and the rooks that nest in the trees, will be heard by thousands of people at sites across the country. This is yet another example of how the museum is committed to engaging with contemporary art in all its forms and enabling new audiences to discover the Brontës”.

The Fragmented Orchestra is free on admission to the museum and will run until 22 February 2009.

About The Fragmented Orchestra:

The Fragmented Orchestra is designed by composers John Matthias, Jane Grant and Nick Ryan and is the winner of the PRS Foundation’s New Music Award 2008.

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.

Here’s how it works: A sound box modelled 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.

Categories: Brontë Parsonage Museum, Music