The ZKM | Center for Art and Media  and Centre Iannis Xenakis (CIX), affiliate partner of the Interfaces Project organized a two-day artistic-scientific symposium to explore current approaches and contemporary trends in the field of graphic notation for parameter generation for musical compositions.

In the late 1970s, composer Iannis Xenakis developed UPIC (Unité Polyagogique Informatique de CEMAMu, Centre d'Études de Mathématique et Automatique Musicales), a computer program that digitally translates graphic notation into sound. Using the tablet interface, composers can draw the waveforms and envelopes directly on an electronic tablet and the computer converts them into sound in real time. Drawing thereby become the vehicle of both the micro- and macro- structure of a musical work. The revolution in graphic composition triggered by Xenakis and supported by other established computer musicians such as Jean-Claude Risset or Curtis Roads continues forty years later thanks to modern computer programs, such as the graphic open source sequencer "Iannix".

Artists as well as musicologists resituated the "UPIC" in both an historical and cultural context and also discussed the state-of-the-art in the field of electroacoustic sonifications of graphic notations in lectures, a panel discussion and a concert. The symposium also served to prepare the book publication: "From Xenakis’s UPIC to Graphic Notation Today"

-->see here the full programme!

--->read more about the publication!