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“There is no reason why art cannot, following the example of science, rise from the immensity of the cosmos; nor why art cannot, as a cosmic landscaper, modify the demeanor of the galaxies. This may seem utopian, and in fact it is, but only temporarily when viewed in the context of the immensity of time. On the contrary, what is not utopian but possible today is to cast luminous spiderwebs of colored laser beams like a giant polytope over cites and countrysides […] One could even willfully create artificial aurora boreales in the night skies whose movements, forms and colors would be controlled by electromagnetic fields aroused by lasers in the highest atmosphere. As for music, loudspeaker technology is still at the embryonic stage, too underdeveloped to send sound into space and have it received there, where thunder dwells.”
—Iannis Xenakis, Arts/Sciences: Alloys
This symposium is aimed at celebrating the work of composer and architect Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001) on the centenary of his birth. Xenakis’s work has not ceased to attract the interest of a wide range of artists and researchers. A large body of related work, artistic and academic, has been developing constantly in recent decades, ranging from archival study to artistic reworking of Xenakis’s original ideas. We are putting forward the idea of an interdisciplinary field of Xenakis Studies, in fruitful dialogue with other fields, including those beyond music or architecture themselves. It is our hope that such events as this one will foster a long-term symbiotic relationship between the arts and academic research.
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