The Sound of Spectacle: Xenakis at the Montreal World’s Fair

Abstract

The Polytope de Montréal, conceived by the architect and composer Iannis Xenakis, was the first in a series of five realized “polytopes,” large-scale multi-media installations performed in Canada, France, Iran and Greece. Drawing upon recent archival and field research conducted at the Fonds Iannis Xenakis, Paris, and the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), Montreal, this article argues that Xenakis’ unique conception of sound and space in the Polytope de Montréal indicates a move toward a new typology of audiovisual architecture that emerged after World War II and coincided with developments in sound and lighting technology. Furthermore, the article explores to what extent Xenakis’ audiovisual architectures are only achievable under the aegis of high-profile international expositions. Finally, it offers some brief observations on the wider relevance of Xenakis’ polytope, and the soundscape of spectacle, as a subject of study for architecture.

Keywords:

• Iannis Xenakis
• polytope
• spectacle
• soundscape
• EXPO 67
• Montreal

Funding

This work was supported by London Arts and Humanities Research Partnership [grant number AH/L503873/1].

Notes

Notes

1 Letter dated 27 June 1966; Fonds Iannis Xenakis, Paris, IX (OM) 23-7_002-005. The term “polytope” does not appear in correspondence until six months later; IX (OM) 23-7_021.

2 Le Corbusier delegated full responsibility for the architectural and technical design of the pavilion to Xenakis as lead architect. Xenakis also composed Concret P-H (1958) for the occasion.

3 Iannis Xenakis, “Notes Towards an Electronic Gesture,” in Iannis Xenakis, Music and Architecture: Architectural Projects, Texts and Realizations, ed. and trans. Sharan Kanach (New York: Pendragon, 2008 [1958]), 131.

4 Ibid., 131–134.

5 Realized polytope projects: Polytope de Montréal (1967), Polytope de Persépolis (1971), Polytope de Cluny (1972/74), Polytope de Mycènes (1978), and Le Diatope (1978). Unrealized polytope projects: World Polytope; Mexico (1974); and Athens (1985).

6 Scored for 1(pic).0.2(clpic, clCB).1(cbn)-0.1.1.0, perc, crd (4.0.0.4.0 or multiple); Iannis Xenakis, Polytope de Montreal. Orchestral Score (London: Boosey & Hawkes, 1967); Polytope de Montréal. Polytope de Montréal, Edition RZ 1015–1016 (Ensemble Ars Nova de l’ORTF, Marius Constant, 2003).

7 Philips continued to work closely with Xenakis on Polytope de Montréal.

8 Xenakis was advised by Jean Faugeron “to seek a solution of transparency for the sculpture of the central vacuum”; Fonds Iannis Xenakis, Paris, IX (OM) 23-7_010.

9 Xenakis, Music and Architecture, 205.

10 Fonds Iannis Xenakis, Paris, IX (OM) 23-3.

11 Iannis Xenakis, Formalized Music: Thought and Mathematics in Composition (Hillsdale: Pendragon, 1991 [1971]), 179.

12 André De Mot and Michel Perthusian, “Les arts sonores au Pavillon de la France à l’Exposition Internationale de Montréal 1967,” Travaux (1967), 354, Fonds André Blouin, CCA, Montreal, 38-DT-008. This was a technical review of the French Pavilion produced by Omnium Technique OTH; Xenakis also adapted technology used for commercial electronic information displays, which used perforated command tapes.

13 Ibid., 352.

14 Alain Corbin, Village Bells: Sound and Meaning in the Nineteenth-Century French Countryside, trans. Martin Thom (London: Papermac, 1999 [1994]).

15 Tony Bennett, “The Exhibitionary Complex,” New Formations, no. 4 (1988): 76.

16 Iannis Xenakis, “Proposition” (1966), in Xenakis, Music and Architecture, 208.

17 Fonds Iannis Xenakis, Paris, IX (OM) 23-7_003-005.

18 Xenakis, Formalized Music, 110–130.

19 Theodore L. Turocy and Bernhard von Stengel, “Game Theory.” CDAM Research Report Lse-CDAM-2001-09, available online: http://www.cdam.lse.ac.uk/Reports/Files/cdam-2001-09.pdf (accessed September 22, 2017).

20 Fonds Iannis Xenakis, Paris, IX (OM) 23-7_003-005.

21 Xenakis, Formalized Music, 113.

22 Iannis Xenakis, “World Polytope” (1974), in Xenakis, Music and Architecture, 254.

23 Xenakis, Formalized Music, 38–42. One might surmise Xenakis is referring to the “aleatory” music of John Cage.

24 Xenakis, “World Polytope,” 254.

25 Iannis Xenakis, “χώροι και Πηγές – Ακροαμάτων και Θεαμάτων” [Spaces and Sources – Audiences and Spectacles]. Conference paper presented June 1980; see also Fonds Iannis Xenakis, Paris, IX (DE) 8–26. It is perhaps relevant that 1967, the year of the Montreal Expo, was also the year of the original publication of Guy Debord’s influential treatise La Société du spectacle (Paris: Bucher/Chastel, 1967), translated as Society of the Spectacle (London: Rebel, 1992).

26 Fonds Iannis Xenakis, Paris, IX (DE) 8–26.

27 Sarah Bonnemaison and Christine May, eds., Festival Architecture (London: Routledge, 2008), 2.

28 Fonds Iannis Xenakis, Paris, IX (DE) 8–26.

29 Jonathan Crary, “Spectacle, Attention, Counter-Memory,” October, 50 (1989): 100–104.

30 John R. Gold and Margaret M. Gold, Cities of Culture: Staging International Festivals and the Urban Agenda, 1851–2000 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 106.

31 Emily Thompson, The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900–1933 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004).

32 The French-speaking Parti Québécois came into existence in 1968, shortly after the closure of Expo 67.

33 Gold and Gold, Cities of Culture, 115.

34 Tom McDonough, “Obsolescence as Progress and Regression: Technology, Temporality and Architecture at Expo 67,” in Expo 67: Not Just a Souvenir, ed. Rhona Richman Kennealy and Johanne Sloan (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010), 88.

35 Jonathan Sterne, “Space within Space: Artificial Reverb and Detachable Echo,” Grey Room, 60 (2015): 113.

36 Thompson, Soundscape of Modernity, 171–172.

37 Sounds of Expo 67, phonograph record, 1967, Fonds May Cutler (AP049), Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA).

38 Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars, trans. William Rees (London: Penguin, 2016 [1939]). The central theme of Expo 67 was inspired by the quasi-philosophical memoirs of French aviator and writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, first published in French as Terre des Hommes (1939). Its aerial perspective would have been a relatively new concept to most contemporary readers.

39 This installation took place in the period September 18–30, 2017. It was created by artist Karine Lanoie-Brien, produced by l’ONF executive producer René Chénier in partnership with La Société Radio-Canada; L’ONF dévoile Expo 67 Live, un voyage immersif magistral, April 27, 2017, available online: https://ctvm.info/35316-2/ (accessed August 16, 2017).

40 Sven Sterken, “Iannis Xenakis, ingénieur et architecte : une analyse thématique de l’oeuvre, suivi d’un inventaire critique de la collaboration avec Le Corbusier, des projets architecturaux et des installations réalisées dans le domaine de multimedia” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Gent, 2004). I situate my own research in relation to that of Sterken.

41 As cited by Elizabeth Darling, “‘Britain Today’ at Expo ‘67,” in Richman Kennealy and Sloan, Expo 67: Not Just a Souvenir, 47.

42 My approach is informed by Gascia Ouzounian and Sarah Lappin’s notion of “Listening Thickly;” Gascia Ouzounian and Sarah A. Lappin, “Soundspace: A Manifesto,” Architecture and Culture, 2, no. 3 (2015): 305–316.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ruth Elizabeth Bernatek

Ruth Bernatek is a Ph.D. candidate in Architectural History and Theory at The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London. Her research addresses the complex relationships between music and architecture in the “Polytope Projects” (1967–78), a series of large-scale multimedia installations conceived by the composer and architect Iannis Xenakis. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to research, she draws upon her academic background in art history and her musical training. She is co-founder of the Bartlett Sound Making Space Doctoral Initiative. Her Ph.D. is funded by the London Arts and Humanities Partnership and has been generously supported by a Bartlett–Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) Research Collection Grant.