Thursday (9/2) on the BBC News website , Tim Masters reports, “Nick Franglen is using London Bridge and its human traffic to create a 24-hour piece of music—armed only with a theremin and an espresso machine. Tucked underneath the arches—surrounded by effects pedals and a mixing desk—Franglen has already been on the go for 10 hours. Since midnight, the musician has been using an electronic instrument called a theremin to create what he calls ‘washes of sound’ which are looping out of a nearby speaker. The unwitting players in his Hymn to London Bridge are the pedestrians passing overhead who trigger a sensor that briefly cuts the flow of music. The project lasts a full 24 hours. ‘It’s about an incredible surge of humankind doing their thing above us,’ says Franglen. ‘What I’m trying to do is to get some idea of what that human movement really feels like—a sense of the ebb and flow of the human traffic.’ … The whole of Hymn to London Bridge will go up on Franglen’s website.”
Posted September 3, 2010
