Iannis Xenakis (1922-2011), was a Greek/French composer, architect and engineer and a pioneer in the use of mathematical models in music and applied stochastic processes. Xenakis has been an important influence on the development of electronic and computer music. He composed music for pre-existing spaces, integrating music into architecture.
The Polytopes as “son-et-lumière” room installations, create an atmosphere with the help of space, light and sound.
“Through the masterly use of the latest technological tools in the Polytopes, architecture becomes an art of time and music an art of space”.
“[…] these spatialized light and sound scenographies take part in the tradition that links Wagner’s conception of the total art work (the Gesamtkunstwerk) with contemporary notions of cyberspace, in the sense that they both deal with the creation of an immersive and artificial environment.” [1]
Sources:
[1] Sven Sterken, Towards a Space-Time Art: Iannis Xenakis’s Polytopes, 2001
Photos, Drawing: Collection famille Xenakis DR
Iannis Xenakis, Musiques Formelles, 1963 (engl.: Formalized Music: Thought and Mathematics in Composition, 1971)