£50K For ‘Brain Music’ Project

A project designed to mirror the way human brains work has been named winner of the New Music Award, narrowly beating a choir of bats and a year-long piece of music generated by a bicycle.

The Fragmented Orchestra will collect the £50,000 first prize by recording the background noise at 24 sites across the U.K., including a football stadium, a cathedral and a farm.

The collective sound will be transmitted back to the Foundation for Art & Creative Technology (FACT) in Liverpool, where visitors will no doubt queue in droves to listen to it.

"This extraordinary work mirrors the fundamental human activity of the brain," read a press statement from the New Music Award judging panel. "It is music writ large across the country and, through cutting edge technology, we can all create, listen and play a part in it. The brain is never silent; it filters, selects and makes connections.

"The Fragmented Orchestra uses these neural patterns in the same way to allow us to hear the U.K. as music."

Sound artist Jane Grant, musician and physicist John Matthias and Bafta-winning composer Nick Ryan, who make up The Fragmented Orchestra, have until September 2009 to complete the project.