22 April 2008
The is the most financially significant award for music in the UK and has been called music鈥檚 equivalent to the Turner Prize. It champions pioneering new music and provides a significant amount of money towards the creation of one adventurous and challenging new musical work.
The winners - sound artist Jane Grant, musician and physicist John Matthias and composer Nick Ryan - have until September 2009 to create their visionary new work, designed to mimic the human brain at work and reproduce the sound of the UK as music.
The Fragmented Orchestra
The Fragmented Orchestra should mirror the function of the human brain and the way it processes sound.
At the heart of this new work are 24 soundboxes 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 an artificial neuron modelled on those which fire within the brain and will be attached to a resonant surface.
The Fragmented Orchestra will be created by Jane Grant, John Matthias and Nick Ryan.
Jane Grant is a visual artist working with film, sound, video and installation. She has exhibited widely in the UK and is currently Principal Investigator of an AHRC funded project, which merges the human voice and breath with neuronal firing patterns to be shown at ArtSway in 2008.
John Matthias is a musician and physicist. He has worked with many artists including Radiohead, Matthew Herbert and Coldcut and has performed extensively in Europe including at the Pompidou Centre, Paris.
Nick Ryan is a composer, producer and sound designer and has composed extensively for film and television.
