“Music is not a language.
Any musical piece is akin to a boulder with complex forms,
with striations and engraved designs atop and within,
which men can decipher in a thousand different ways
without ever finding the right answer or the best one.
By virtue of this multiple exegesis, music evokes all manners of phantasmagoria,
as would a catalyzing crystal.
Personally, I wanted to deal with the voids that surround us, and within which we live.
The most formidable ones being those linked to our destiny, to life or death,
and visible or invisible universes.
The signs sent out to us by these voids are also composed of light and sound,
engaging our two principal senses.
This is why Diatope seeks to be a place where signals of these worlds can be condensed.
Rational knowledge is combined with intuitive knowledge, i.e. revelation.
It is impossible to dissociate them. These voids are unfathomable, which is to say,
their knowledge is in perpetual and desperate flight
punctuated by hypothetical milestones throughout time.”
— Iannis XENAKIS,
“La Légende d'Er (first version).
Light and sound composition for the Diatope at the Centre Georges-Pompidou”,
in Centre Georges-Pompidou, Le Diatope: geste de lumière et son, Paris,
Centre Georges-Pompidou, undated (ca. 1978), p.8.
