8. Iannis Xenakis’s Materialism

Despite the ongoing resurgence of materialist philosophy, Xenakis’s work is rarely associated with materialist thought. This is peculiar since Xenakis’s lifelong commitment to physical matter properties transcribed to compositions, and his philosophical constructions and renditions of material processes in instruments, code, writings, and performances, instantly elucidate his preoccupation on how we relate to matter. Given the little effort to grapple with Xenakis’s materialist work philosophically, this chapter approaches the question of materialism in Xenakis’s work, through his relationship to philosopher and information theorist Abraham Moles and the real-time capabilities of the UPIC, and argues that in the ongoing conversations in materialist philosophy, the work of Xenakis, in its dialectic understanding, plays a pivotal role.