Longplayer is a self-extending composition by British composer and musician Jem Finer which is designed to continue for one thousand years. It started to play at midnight on 1 January 2000, and if all goes as planned, it will continue without repetition until 31 December 2999. Longplayer can be played on any format - except the record players, 8 track, cassette tapes and any device created prior to early 1990s, including ones not yet invented, and is thus not tied to any one form of technology. There have also been several live performances and future performances continue to be planned. It began as an original commission by arts organisation Artangel and is currently maintained by the Longplayer Trust and is located in Bow Creek Lighthouse, Trinity Buoy Wharf on the north bank of the River Thames. History Longplayer is based on an existing piece of music, 20 minutes and 20 seconds in length, which is processed by computer using a simple algorithm. This gives a large number of variations, which, when played consecutively, gives a total expected runtime of 1000 years. It is played on a single instrument consisting of 234 Tibetan singing bowls and gongs of different sizes, which are able to create a range of sounds by either striking or rolling pieces of wood around the rims. This source music was recorded in December 1999. It was commissioned by Artangel. The piece is described as reflecting on the concepts of time and impermanence from a cosmological and philosophical perspective, and questions traditional ideas about composition sound, time and duration. The piece was the conclusion of several years' study into musical systems by Finer and is written as a self generating computer programme. According to Finer, the idea first came to him on the back of a tour bus whilst he was a musician in the folk band The Pogues. He began working on the programming in 1995, for which he learned several computer programming languages before finally settling on SuperCollider, a language which uses algorithms to organise notation, data or MIDI to compose music, sometimes known as algorithmic composition. The programme is regularly transferred from one motherboard to another in order that the software remains continuously viable. As of 2015 this was operated by a wall of Apple computers in the Bow Creek Lighthouse. The music is produced by simple mechanical processes, and Tibetan bowls were decided on