NL premiere

N-Polytope: Behaviors in Light and Sound After Iannis Xenakis is a dramatic light and sound environment combining cutting-edge LEDs, sound synthesis and spatialisation, and machine-learning technologies. The installation is a response to composer Iannis Xenakis’s radical 1960s–1970s Polytopes. Xenakis’s pioneering work modelled the behavior and patterns of nature and the cosmos as they fluctuated between order and disorder; it still powerfully resonates within the current moment of extreme instability in natural and artificial systems.

Marije Baalman is an artist, researcher, and developer based in Amsterdam, creating interactive sound and light art. She is interested in how the entanglement of humans and technology and the influence of algorithms impact society and the human experience. As the author of Composing Interactions (V2_, 2022), Marije celebrates the real-time components of artistic works, such as composing processes, behaviours, and interaction modalities. 

Chris Salter is a US-born, Zurich-based artist and professor who creates large-scale installations, performative environments, and research that focus on and challenge human perception. They merge haptic, visual, acoustic, and other sensory phenomena. Exploring the borders between the senses, art, design, and new technologies, his immersive and physically experiential works are informed by theatre, architecture, visual art, computer music, perceptual psychology, cultural theory, and engineering, and are developed in collaboration with social scientists, engineers, artists, and designers.

The presentation at Proximity Music: Echoes of Entropy will be the Dutch premiere. N-Polytope was originally created in collaboration with Sofian Audry, Adam Basanta, Elio Bidinost, Garnet Willis, and Thomas Spier. 

Credits (The Hague version):

Concept and Direction: Chris Salter
Composition: Chris Salter and Adam Basanta
Architectural Design: Marije Baalman and Thomas Spier
Technical direction, Embedded Systems and Micro Sound & Light
Design/Programming: Marije Baalman
Media behavior modelling/programming: Sofian Audry
Casing design: Garnet Willis and Elio Bidinost
Lighting and Laser System Design: Elio Bidinost
Electronics design: Simon Claessen (drukknop), René Wassenburg (Schrikdraad Ontwerp) and Marije Baalman
Electronics assembly: Marije Baalman, Alexandre Saunier, Garrett Lockhart, Owen Coolidge
Structural Consultant: Schlaich bergermann und partner / David Sommer
Production: LabXModal, Montreal and LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial 
Production Assistance: Remco Schuurbiers

With the original support of: Fonds de Recherche du Québec Société et Culture, Hexagram Concordia, Schlaich Bergermann und Partner, STEIM (Amsterdam)