We've watched Ringo cavorting on a roof; Paul McCartney playing Anfield; the Royal Liverpool Phil stacked up on a stage like gargoyles on a cathedral wall. But how fitting that the musical part of Liverpool's year as European Capital of Culture is culminating in something that reflects the quirky creative genius of that great city.

It's called the Fragmented Orchestra, but that's a slightly misleading title. Imagine a big brain that receives intermittent sound signals fired from 24 different “neurons” or locations around Britain. The brain mixes and sifts them, then relays the resulting wild and wacky polyphony back to the original locations (all public sites), using smart technology capable of turning any resonant surface into a high-quality loudspeaker. That is basically what this highly original project - the winner of the £50,000 PRS New Music Award - is doing for the next two months.

The central hub of this brain is at Fact, the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology in Liverpool. That's where you can hear the sounds from all 24 locations coming into 24 loudspeakers via the internet, and listen to the interaction between them before the results are relayed back.

You can also listen via the website below or visit the “neurons” themselves, both to make your own sonic contribution and to listen to how it gets fragmented and woven into the overall piece. (As in tennis, there's a delay between your serve and the return.) In that way, the project's creators say, you'll be part of a “vast and evolving musical composititon extended across the UK”.

The locations have been cannily selected. Some, such as the new Kielder Observatory on remote Back Fell in Northumberland, or the garden of the Brontë Parsonage Museum on the Yorkshire moors, will probably transmit almost nothing except the wind whistling through your trousers. Others in urban locations will pick up mostly conversations, traffic noise or other human-made sounds.

There's a “neuron” on the seafront by the West Pier in Brighton, another at Goodison Park to capture the roar of the crowd when Everton score (don't hold your breath), another inside Gloucester Cathedral where the sounds of worshippers and tourists intermingle in that glorious acoustic, one in the players' tunnel of the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, and so on. One of the most intriguing aspects, I guess, will be working out which fragment comes from where. What strange sounds, I wonder, will emanate from the Insitute of Psychiatry in London, the National Portrait Gallery, or the Inverurie cattle market in Aberdeenshire?

The project is the brainchild of the visual artist Jane Grant, physicist/ musician John Matthias and composer Nick Ryan - three avant-garde types associated with the University of Plymouth. They hope that the Fragmented Orchestra will prompt visitors to ask questions about the very nature of sound and music. Does it exist in “space”, for instance, or in the space between our ears where it is collected and comprehended? But I suspect that most punters will just have fun adding their own aural signature to this giant sounding-board. Either way, it's a lovely bit of avant-garde fun to cheer up these dark months.

www.thefragmented-orchestra.com

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