“En hommage à Iannis Xenakis” , research at IRCAM / DKDM

KUV DKDM link 
“En hommage à Iannis Xenakis” is a project conceived by the two musicians and researchers, Lorenzo Colombo and Marco Fiorini. While sharing different backgrounds, spacing from contemporary music to non idiomatic improvisation, they have the common intent of constantly experimenting new means of expression, and a shared deep knowledge of electronic music.
The proposed project, to be developed over the next three years, is supported by REACH, an ERC (European Research Council) Advanced Grant, and by IRCAM, in the area of interest of the Musical Representation team at STMS lab. Willing to fulfill the inter-disciplinary objectives designed by the REACH project, this collaboration intends to bring up the potential of Somax2 as an application for musical improvisation and composition in the real world of high level performers and musicians, facing real life scenarios. In this way, the outcome of previous scientific research works is applied to concrete creative situations, building important interactions between music researchers, composers and performers, to reveal the mechanisms of co-creativity and build the epistemological boost required for this creative interaction to succeed.

Iannis Xenakis/ Somax2 : A.I. Komboï, 1981 rev 23

..works must be challenged, as Lorenzo Colombo did so exemplarily with Xenakis' Komboï (1981) ... Together with Italian Marco Fiorini, the debutant subjected the Greek percussion work to artificial intelligence and a stabbing MIDI harpsichord, bringing it seriously to life with resilient sound and compositional energy.
Sune Andberger, SEISMOGRAF

Psappho, After Iannis Xenakis

Lorenzo Colombo percussions
Marco Fiorini AI-Agents Somax2, live electronics

December 2 2025
IMPROTECH CONCERT #1at Espace de Projection, Ircam

Psappho is the third instance of the project Xenakis Reloaded, after Evryiali (2022) and AI-Komboï (2023), paying homage to Xenakis through the choice of a well known piece and an improvised extension using AI. As the continuation of a broader research and performance project developed by Lorenzo Colombo and Marco Fiorini, two artists and researchers dedicated to exploring the creative potentials at the intersection of human and artificial intelligence in music, this new chapter will use Psappha (1975) as its central material. The project will investigate new modes of cyber-human co-creativity by integrating Somax2 and gestural control into an immersive spatialized performance environment. Psappha will serve as the compositional and performative ground, with a focus on gestural and temporal density, rhythmic articulation, and structural complexity, core features of Xenakis’s language, and fertile terrain for this novel interaction.

Organized as part of the European REACH project, the Improtech international workshop-festival is dedicated to combining the universal art of improvisation with digital intelligence cultures through a series of conferences, interdisciplinary workshops, installations, performances, and concerts. After traveling across three continents and bringing together leading figures in the field, Improtech returns to Ircam, one of its founders, for an edition that will focus on space and composition/improvisation and pay tribute to American composer George Lewis, an essential reference in musical AI.

This year, Ircam will host Improtech concerts in its unique concert hall, Espace de projection, encouraging a triple synthesis: that of acoustic instrumental culture with the original interactive artificial intelligence developed by the REACH project, that of solo improvisation with writing for mixed ensembles, and finally that of spatialization and sound immersion, also renewed by creative AI. This groundbreaking combination, supported by leading artistic figures in composition, improvisation, performance, and technology, will undoubtedly create a dazzling version of this sixth Improtech.

Full program at: improtech.ircam.fr/ikparis 
all Improtech@Paris videos at :  vimeo.com/showcase/IkPP25 

VIdeo: Nicolas Sok, Rikako Takahashi, Lounico Production
Sound: Clément Cerles, Luca Bagnoli, Manuel Poletti, Sylvain Cadars

Indietro

TORSO
Avanti

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