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Copyright

Peter Nelson

Published On

2024-10-09

Page Range

pp. 501–514

Language

  • English

Print Length

14 pages

30. The UPIC System of Iannis Xenakis

Autoethnography as Rapprochement

  • Peter Nelson (author)
Chapter of: Meta-Xenakis: New Perspectives on Iannis Xenakis’s Life, Work, and Legacies(pp. 501–514)
Drawing on the author’s experience of working with Les Ateliers UPIC between the presentation of the UPIC computer music system at the Huddersfield Festival of Contemporary Music in 1987, and its residency at the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC) 1990, this paper will reflect on the technological, educational, social, and organizational milieu of UPIC during the period of its formation as both a material equipment, and a cultural project. As well as interrogating historical anecdote, this chapter attempts to contextualize UPIC within a set of cues taken from recent work in science and technology studies–particularly the work of Antoine Hennion–as well as from Howard Becker’s classic sociological investigation of ‘art worlds’, in order to clarify both the historical impact and the possible future potential of Xenakis’s conception. Beginning in an era when institutional infrastructure was a necessity for any project of this kind, UPIC has morphed, in the subsequent era of internet sociality, into an app with a contrasting set of technical and operational consistencies. This contrast will be considered as a key means of insight into the creative conceptions that underpin UPIC as part of an attempt to reassess the position of the system within Xenakis’s main theoretical achievement and creative output.

Contributors

Peter Nelson

(author)
Professor Emeritus at University of Edinburgh
https://www.eca.ed.ac.uk/profile/prof-peter-nelson

The British composer and music scholar Peter Nelson is Professor Emeritus of Music and Technology at the University of Edinburgh, where he established the electronic and computer music studios and led a research group in music and artificial intelligence. He met Iannis Xenakis in 1986 and became an associate of Xenakis’s computer music studio Les Ateliers UPIC between 1987 and 1991, touring and teaching with the Atelier and composing a number of works for UPIC. He has published book chapters and articles on a number of topics including music and technology, and rhythm. Between 1992 and 2022 he was Editor of the international journal Contemporary Music Review, published by Routledge. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in 2024.