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Spatiodynamique 19. The structure occupies and dynamizes both inner space and the surroundings. |
par Nicolas Schöffer
Abstract - The author creates "sonic structures", or music, not with the usual background and perspectives of a musician but with those of a visual artist. In this article he discusses first the historic spatial and temporal limitations of music and the visual arts. He then describes how, in his sonic and visual experiments, he has attempted to liberate these artforms from their traditional bounds. By programming and combining the non-material elements of space, light and time as well as the concrete forms deriving from them (such as architecture, film, video, dance and literature) he has sought to bring together various disciplines that have been separated since the Renaissance. His work involves contemporary technology, such as the computer. He foresees a "collective choreography" of the visual and sonic spaces of cities, involving the creative interaction of artist and public.
Like a space empty of any visually perceptible content, an environment totally silent, without any sonority, is difficult to conceive and would not be bearable. Sonic information, like visual information, feeds us even if it assaults us.
Sonic information - which is my concern in this article - comes from natural and artificial sources. Natural sources, those caused without the direct intervention of humankind, come from the elemental world (such as a murmuring wind or deafening thunder), the plant world (such as cracking and falling sounds), and the animal world (such as the rubbing of the elytrons [wing-shells] of insects or the trumpeting of elephants), or the interaction of these worlds. Artificial sonic information comes from a wide range of sources, from speech to the noise of tools, from song to polyphonic instrumental music, and extending to artificially created sounds.
Music is an improvised or pre-organized alternation of isolated or grouped sounds and silence, within certain time limits. A more or less aesthetic and meaningful content can be ascribed to these alternating sounds and silence according to their original source and their destination. Music's final value is determined both by environmental factors and by history [1]. (numbers between brackets [ * ] links to REFERENCES AND NOTES)
This definition of music specifies its limits in relation both to time and to its insertion in the sociocultural context whose characteristics are changing with extreme rapidity.
The limited time it takes music to unfold, which always comprises a beginning and an end - even when improvised - places music in a situation different from that of traditional visual works. The latter, with the exception of works using cinematic techniques and certain video experiments, exists in time without their duration being defined or limited either at the level of their conception or at the level of their perception. On the spatial plane - although this is not a constant - the size of visual works can entail a limitation comparable to the temporal limitation of music.
It is evident that music is more limited in time than the visual arts. The visual arts can be very limited in space - easel painting is an example - or they can go beyond their traditional spatial limits and beyond the spatial limits of music, as seen with sculpture (Eiffel Tower) and architecture (Rockefeller Centre). We can thus consider music to be more handicapped in its freedom of expansion and conception than the visual arts, even if contemporary technology enlarges its spatial field of action. Its percussive quality, however, its capacity to "densify" sonic effects within a limited space-time framework and to induce concentration, gives it an increased power on the level of perception-reception.
The real challenge in artistic research is to attain a maximum of freedom, freedom to define and select parameters for a combinative formula designed to enrich the quality and quantity of the effects produced. By developing ideas without redundancy and by allowing acute as well as unforeseen impressions to arise, on can thus explode the temporal and spatial limits of the work. In order to accomplish this in music, one must eliminate one of its essential characteristics : its very confinement within temporal and even spatial limits.
But music without beginning or end is no longer "music", it is already something else. On the sociocultural level, time limitations lead to limitations on the consuming of music - that is, its availability [2]. On the sociotechnical level, music has been consumed in limited spaces and times. These limitations have censored its creators, Musical compositions has been founded on extremely rigid rules, where defined time has been programmed from relationships clearly signifying the linearity and ordered arrangement of its unfolding. Thus, music made linear and enclosed within its temporal prison has been the dominant form up to the present.
How does one move beyond this ? The solution is in my opinion simple : one needs only transfer the techniques of visual arts to the techniques of sonic arts and rethink the problems of technical and social diffusion and consumption of music (some words, like here "diffusion", are linked to a GLOSSARY, since N.S. gave new or more elaborate definitions to various commonly used terms : clicking on the word).
However, it is not enough to create a work. This work must insert itself in the programs which guide the unfolding of individual and collective existence. The problem is both technical and conceptual [3]. The specifically programmed time of the work must intervene, participate and disappear in order to return again, in accord with the fluctuations in the programmed rhythm of the human environment.
Enclosing a musical work within a concert hall for a limited period with an equally limited public is as "anti-socio-cultural" [4] as enclosing visual works inside museums with limited spaces and entrance fees. But, while visual art, through architecture and sculpture, has broken down these barriers, music remains enclosed, if only inside appliances such as radios, record players, tape recorders or television sets.
We must liberate music !
Let us consider music an open, polyvalent structure. Through music's interaction with the environment, and thanks to its permanent availability, a combinative process can be derived to expose its multiple, even infinite, facets.
Music thus perceived becomes both permanent and contingent : it appears in an ensemble of programs when necessary, without preset limitations; and the environment instigates its creation when necessary, in a register harmonious with the spatio-temporal ensemble of which it is a major component [5]. Its visual corollary - a visual structure corresponding to the sonic one - works in symbiosis with it, in parallel, contrapuntal, or contradictory fashion.
Now we come to the fundamental problem which is at the root of everything : creation [6].
From the moment visual or sonic art is liberated from its traditional temporal and spatial bounds and dynamically inserted in the city, it no longer concerns some individuals only, but the society itself. As soon as sound takes place in social life, it can only be as a permanence, fluently programmed by its environment, not a concert piece with definite beginning and end. This permanence is a continuous creation related to the basic creation of the sonic structures by the artist.
From this point on I shall speak of sonic structures rather than music. Why structures ? Because henceforth we are no longer creating a work, we are creating creation [7].
Instead of setting up a program, we determine with maximum rigour a certain number of sonic (or visual) parameters whose harmonic structures have shared characteristics. Each parameter is itself a developed structure, and in order to "optimize" combinations of parameters we assign perceptibly different qualities to each. Thus we are able to bring forth, through combinations of parameters, results not only without redundancy but which go beyond the intentions of their originators, and this in infinite number [8].
The first phase of creation is strongly determinative. The resulting second phase is contingent and spontaneous but governed by the quality and exactness of the web from which it has come and whose indelible mark it bears.
Why is television so fascinating, if not because the translucent rectangle is a source of continually renewed images ? Each time we turn it on, we know we will see something new once again. For the first time, a machine delivering non-redundancy has been socialized on a global scale.
This is an event of considerable importance and one of the great disruptions of history. Its consequences will determine the future. This availability of non-redundancy through television causes a growing appetite for non-redundancy of visual information. Redundancy and stability need no longer be perceived in the same manner, and consequently two reactions will dominate : either a total lack of interest in everything that is static or repetitive, or on the contrary a preference for rigidity and redundancy, depending on the environmental or momentary conditions and the personal characteristics of the consumers. I believe that from now on we can almost certainly presume that instability will dominate.
Moreover, the destabilization of the media-dominated society has already begun, with consequences we cannot yet foresee. Classic and traditional artistic techniques will surely no longer be able to strike massively and socially, except to encourage those who are nostalgic for a flight into the past.
The only operative intervention I see that will slow the inertial force of history is non-redundant art which, "mediatized" and "socialized" - especially in the urban setting - will take the collective rhythm [9] in hand by structuring it and making it aesthetic. More and more punctuated by a non-redundant and variated audiovisual art, the forward movement of history will then simply become a true progression [10].
In order to avoid any preliminary censorship at this point and to emphasize better the effects of this art, some counterpoints, if not whole sequences of redundancy (effects in which repetition, periodical returns, are obvious and perceptible), could be reintroduced as a contrast. Let us not forget, moreover, that diversity itself has its saturation points and its non-formalized redundancies.
Art is a subtle navigation between the snags of redundancy and multiform information overload.
It is from these premises that I first developed my visual experiments and then, much later, my sonic experiments [11].
I began my first experiments en 1948. After numerous technical experiments investigating the coordination of the speed of creation at the level of my imagination with the speed of manual execution, I became aware of the impossibility of adequate coordination due to the rapid process of the imagination, which the hand cannot follow. Subsequently, I decided to give free rein to my imagination and recorded internally the result of my mental activity. Once the creative process was finished, I laid out the schemes which allowed me to realise my spatio-, lumino- and chrono-dynamic programs, that is to say, to program successively space, light and time, this latter being the parameter shared with music [12]. The first idea led to metallic sculptures - Spatiodynamiques - whose proportions modified the inner and external spaces which their structure delimited. Thus the potential dynamism of space became perceptible to the senses.
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Spatiodynamique 19. The structure occupies and dynamizes both inner space and the surroundings. |
The second idea led to the Lux series, which modified and exalted the intrinsic dynamic quality of space and light in a metallic structure endowed with holes of different sizes and with external white or coloured light sources.
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Lux 1. Structure in space capturing and emitting light. |
The third idea led me to "dynamize" time in sculptures called Chronos, including spatial and light moving elements such as stainless steel mirrors that rotate at certain speeds or stop according to a program distinct from that of the projectors integrated in the sculptures. The combination of these two programs resulted in a new contingent program, with visual effects that were non-redundant and infinite.
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Chronos 13. |
For these programmings, I also allowed for the use of self-regulating cybernetic systems [13]. The currents and treatment of surrounding information gave my sculpture a retroactive behaviour harmoniously linked to the environment [14].
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Cysp 1. Aluminium and mixed media (computer, traction motor, direction motor, 2 microphones, 2 photoelectric cells, 19 micromotors), height 2,6 meters, 1956. Autonomic cybernetic sculpture with 2 ballerinas from the Béjart Ballet, on the roof of the Cité Radieuse of Le Corbusier, Marseille, 1956. This is the first sculpture to have a human-like self-determined behaviour: the informations received by the microphones, electronic eyes, etc..., once processed, induces the sculpture to react (lights, motions, movements, sounds, etc...) according to the events evolving or occuring in its environment. |
All my space and time structure have been worked out on framework based on harmonics derived from the Golden Number, which I obtained through simple mathematics [15]. The result of the work of imagination - freely and instinctively visualised - was later set on these frameworks. This was further materialised in files containing blueprints of structures worked out in both space and time and organised on the same framework of harmonics. Thus were born a great number of files, of which only a few cybernetic towers have been executed since 1954.
This work continued until 1977, when a new element entered my experiments in the form of an electronic organ. I discovered that the flexible mechanism of the organ, containing 8 octaves of sounds and 84 parameters of commands combinable with each other, offered me the exceptional capability to create sonic structures with my hands moving at the very speed of my imagination and to record them immediately with a tape recorder connected to the organ.
Free from any classical or contemporary musical training, I familiarised myself with the organ, exploring its non-musicial, i.e. pure combinatory, possibilities. Then, as a creator of programs, I began a process which was the opposite of the "demanualization" of my visual experiments and which led me to use my hands as the synchronous extension of my imagination [16].
My essential problem in developing a sonic structure is maintaining constant contact with the creative thread unravelling on the level of my imagination. The unfolding idea must be followed unfailingly to its outermost limit by the play of my hands manipulating the organ in the broadest possible and most effective manner. Within the time I allow for any sonic structure, the idea must be clearly developed and its nature revealed. The elements composing the whole must create a solid structure with harmonious temporal proportions and whose sonic sequences bring out a mobilising, if not fascinating, effect.
In determining whether a sonic structure is a "success", I consider the most important parameter to be the proportional relationships established during the performance of the piece. I consider the sonic structures I have produced with the electronic organ successful to the extent that there was coordination between the imagination and the execution.
Every creator of sonic or visual art reveals and develops a framework. The harmonics of the framework in some sense mirror the complex structures which make us what we are and act upon our programs, regulating them according to each person's specific rhythms.
The approach toward these rhythms hidden in the depths of our consciousness is difficult, yet frees our intuition and basic instincts. Both emerge from us temporarily and punctually and transcribe themselves into all kinds of visual, sonic, or audio-visual structures. Concretized in the domain of art, these structures constitute works coded and programmed in time and space.
The decoding of these works and the communication that follows cause psychosociological repercussions more or less profound and lasting, depending on the quality and topicality of the programs. But the concretization of the works rarely occurs immediately because of their complexity and the newness of the language and the combinations. For these reasons, the coding and preservation of programs are essential. At the opportune moment, the programs must be in a state of readiness to be executed, diffused and communicated. Shakespeare, Boulee, De La Tour, Vermeer, J.S. Bach and Varese all fixed and coded messages which were not immediately communicated [17].
Apart from any desire to over- or underestimate the products of imagination or to presume their value, just in order to better understand and control one's actions, each creator would do well to preserve his or her programs, whether these be executed and recorded or coded and indexed, or both. Thus one can maintain the possibility of a later easy decoding and have a reserve from which to reconvert or recombine programs.
Personally, I consider my sonic structures recorded on tape, indexed and computed according to their characteristics, to be a growing library from which I can draw. By inserting whole selected structures or only certain fragments of them into new structures, new frameworks, I can create combinations capable of revealing new perspectives.
Today all this is made considerably easier by the use of computers, those powerful electronic extensions of mankind, conceived by humans. Here the notion of "the creation of creation" becomes an obvious reality. The computer can explore and choose, or can at least easily and rapidly present us with, series of combinations by which our own choice is facilitated to create and recreate multiple solutions in multiple directions, each having the trademark and quality of the basic programs while differing fundamentally from them [18].
Among the many varied explosions which characterise our time, I see demography, technology, production and consumption as the main ones. But the most important, concerning all of them, is probably the explosion of quality joined to the explosion of quantity. The growth of demography, technology, production and consumption in quantity has allowed the number of elements of quality to grow in quantity. This leads to growth in the quantity of the quality itself. Yet, these four explosions characteristic of contemporary life are practically insignificant compared to the explosion of ideas, particularly in the fields or artistic creation, philosophy, sociology and theoretical sciences. These ideas are exploding even though their effects are not always immediately perceived. Their diffusion varies according to the opportunities afforded them by the era, and very frequently they emerge abruptly or progressively after long periods of incubation [19]. Be that as it may, the finality of true creation is found first in itself and not in its ultimate "socialisation", or popularisation. The Cybernetic Light Tower of La-Defense (Paris) is a non-realised project but, thanks to information of all kinds, it already belongs to the memorised and probably archetypalised repertory of the significant works in the domain of plastic arts.
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Cybernetic Light Tower of Paris La Défense Steel painted with epoxyl and a complex cybernetic system related to near and far environmental informations. Height of unrealised tower: 327 meters. First public presentation of the project: 1963. This maquette represents the tower functioning fully in the middle of its urban space, thus reacting to the informations characteristic of the life of the town (traffic,mail, stock exchange, trains, helicopters, planes, winds, temperature, etc...). |
Sowing the seed is a necessary precondition to subsequent harvesting. The true creator is a seed-sower. The soil is not always sufficiently fertile for the crop to come forth, but the role of the sower is not to prepare nor to enrich the field. That is the role of education and mass media [20].
A fertile and fertilising idea is a dense and solid concentration of idea-parameters rigorously dosed out and structured through a combinatory process broadly opened out for the blossoming of a multitude of information. The more simple and rigorous the basic parameters, the more diverse, varied and rich are the combinations which offer infinite information.
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Children in front of The Prism Mirrors and a translucent screen receiving luminodynamic projections (various scales). First exhibited in 1955, the triangular arrangement of mirrors and screen transforms the space into a multiple glittering series of surfaces receiving luminodynamic projections. Thus a virtually unlimited space is created, in which a single figure and a laser are multiplied to infinity. |
This idea can be seen in The Prism, where space bounded by three panels covered with mirrors is set in the form of an equilateral triangle. The triangle is opened on one side and closed on the other by a translucent screen. Simple mechanisms behind the screen program variously perforated shutters and polychromatic and rhythmic luminescent sources in combinations sent out over the bursting surface. The threefold shimmering panel becomes an endlessly varied play of non-repetitive coloured projections [21]. This process of reverberation seen in The Prism is transposable to the field of sound, thanks to the computer.
The sonic structures I prepare allow one to select the parameters to be introduced in varied combinations. Through the careful proportioning of speeds, reverberations and inversions, infinitely variable programs can be established. Traditional time limits are thus exploded and yield to permanencies capable of being hidden or revealed according to the demands of the environment [22].
Among the spaces perceived by man, the urban space holds a privileged place. While interior living spaces concern restricted groups, the city is at the disposal of the masses.
The pieces of information received in the enlarged urban space have a primordial importance in the formation and the behaviour of all who reside or enter there. This consumable and constantly consumed space, both determined and nourished by its consumers, must therefore be developed with maximum care by making the determining structures optimum. The essential components of these structures are visual and sonic information.
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Chronos 15., in its half-contemporary, half-ancient environment in Bonn, West Germany. Stainless steel programmed structure with mirrors (1977). Night view of the sculpture in action. This can easily and quickly be modified into a cybernetic sculpture. |
A city is but a constant audiovisual performance whose unfolding is contingent, where the decors are both static and dynamic, where the actors are also spectators, and where the musical accompaniment originates automatically from sounds caused by diverse visual parameters in varied and variable movements.
While visual parameters are laid out taking into account certain functional and sometimes aesthetic rules, the sounds they engender by their movements and reverberations are fortuitous, even anarchical, and certainly not aesthetic. Therein lies a serious error in staging.
My first automobile sculpture, Scam 1, was realised with the intention of introducing an aesthetic perturbation into the urban space. Instead of being fixed somewhere in the town - as sculptures are usually - Scam was able to move around and participate in the collective spectacle or spontaneous choreography of the normal circulation of vehicles and people in the streets and places dedicated to traffic.
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Scam 1. circulating in the middle of urban traffic in Milano, Italy, 1973. Chronos 10. was fixed on a chassis specially coceived and constructed by the Renault Auto Company with a body specifically designed and executed by Coggiola in Torino, Italy. Scam was meant to meet people in the street without any spatial limitation, thus increasing the social impact of traditional static sculpture, set up in a precise spot in the city. |
The term "staging" does not necessarily imply a fixed prescription of programs. Rather, contingent programs prepared from certain constituent sonic elements rigorously selected and combined will always be adapted to their visual environment. This staging also concerns filling sonically empty spaces with integrated sonic structures. These structures should therefore either replace the anarchic sound of frequently harmful noises which invade the urban space or integrate these noises into a context where they serve their intended function without disrupting a programmed sound combination which should be flexible and adapted to the collective life that is the city.
Let us take up again the term "music". Far more important than that of concert halls, the music of cities involves in its creation a public actively participating, collectively or individually, as producer or consumer.
It is necessary that music, like the visual arts, be socialised. Placed at the disposition of the masses, it must finally "de-passivate" mankind. Up to now, mankind has been condemned to receive. Respectfully seated most of the time - whether in concert halls, at the opera, in theatres, in front of televisions or beside transistors - people receive auditory and audiovisual information whose unfolding and content they cannot modify.
Passivated humans, humans made passive, ready to be manipulated, more and more sheep-like, have created a tentacular system of adulterated media. In order to avoid drowning, let us introduce creation, creativity, into the spaces available to the public. Collective spaces allowing for the participation of everyone will revivify the spirit of groups faced with noble and aesthetic collective actions.
A collective choreography would incorporate the movements of each person, with costumes and colours judiciously chosen, structured sounds combined and programmed contingently, and mobile decors also programmed - all in diversified spaces. This is how to depassivate the external space, that active and animated space of cities where so many are called to be spectator and actor.
The music of cities is called upon to replace the noise of cities, and, when necessary, the silence of cities.
Acknowledgement - I wish to thank Eleonore Schöffer de Lavandeyra for her invaluable assistance with this manuscript, particularly regarding the References and Notes.
Note n° 1. To avoid misunderstanding, I have given new or more elaborate definitions to various commonly used terms such as man, consciousness, culture, art, cybernetics, economy, politics, power, information, perturbation, etc. Musical creation being art, my fundamental definition of art is as follows :
"Art is the creation-invention, on
the level of the mechanisms of thought and imagination, of an
original idea having an aesthetic content that can be translated into
effects perceptible to human senses. The occurrence and the ordering
of these effects are worked out by a program in time or in space, or
in both simultaneously, their components and their proportional
relations being optimal, novel and aesthetic.
These effects are transmitted through visual, auditory or audiovisual
signals to those who, accidentally or deliberately, become
spectator-auditors of these effects.
The result is a process of fascination giving rise to a more or less
profound modification of their psychological fields depending upon
the aesthetic value of the creation.
This modification must be in the direction of transcendency,
sublimation and spiritual enrichment through the complex mechanism of
the human sensibility and intellect.
Thus, thanks to the creator's over-reaching faculty, aesthetic
products having a strong impact penetrate through the multiple
communication networks to social reality. In order to achieve this
end, the creator must use a language and techniques which correspond
to the true level of development of his time."
Note n° 2. Music being linear, listening to it implies concentration and therefore limitation of its consumption in time. On the contrary, with a sculpture or a painting, this linearity of time disappears.
Note n° 3. N. Schöffer, La Ville Cybernétique (Paris : Tchou. Ed., 1969 and Paris : Denoël-Gonthier, Bibl. Mediation, n° 91, 1972). This fundamental book and a few others of the ten I have written have been translated into Italian, Japanese and Spanish but never into English.
Note n° 4. In my writings, I have been induced to create new words or to modify existing words to imbue them with new significance. Here, I have joined "social" and "cultural" in keeping with my native Hungarian language. I have then further altered the resulting single adjective with the prefix "anti". In N. Schöffer, Perturbation et Chronocratie (Paris : Editions Denoël-Gonthier, Grand Format Mediation, 1978) 1st Part, I develop a method for extending the language and the conceptual world attached to it by what I call "la Trialectique". With this method any prefix can be added to any concept or word to produce various nuances. For example : culture - anti-culture - pro-culture - retroculture - subculture - transculture - etc. This "explosion" of the language leads to an expansion of understanding and liberates us from the linear, binary dialectic system in which we are all prisoners.
Note n° 5. N. Schöffer, La Ville Cybernétique (Paris : Tchou. Ed., 1969 and Paris : Denoël-Gonthier, Bibl. Mediation, n° 91, 1972), "Topologie des rythmes", pp. 138-140; "Topologie de l'audible, organisation de la densité des évènements visuels et sonores", pp. 143-145; "Schéma III", p. 215. N. Schöffer, La Nouvelle Charte de la Ville (Paris : Denoël-Gonthier, Bibl. Médiation, n° 119, 1974) "Les Topologies des sons", pp. 34, 60-62.
Note n° 6. N. Schöffer, Le Nouvel Esprit Artistique (Paris : Denoël-Gonthier, Bibl. Médiation, n 72, 1970) "Mécanismes de la création", pp. 122-125 with schema and "Les trois étapes de la sculpture dynamique", pp. 24-46.
Note n° 7. "The artist no longer creates a work, he creates creation." A spatio-lumino-chrono-dynamic work is an ensemble composed of two groups of parameters. Each group is commanded by a combinator. Since both combinators have two different speeds, their programs combine in a non-predetermined way. The results, i.e. visual information (or sonic information in the case of sonic structures), are constantly diversified, as are the effects produced by this ensemble on the spectator-auditor. This diversified production is infinite when the result of a number of parameters. For instance 150 parameters give birth to : 1x2x3x4x5x6x...x150 unique possibilities, which is "infinite" to our capacity of observations.
With some other works (such as the Graphilux) I create "creativity" which is the impulse for a new creation; Through such works children and even adults become in a way the "creative creation of my creation".
Note n° 8. According to the number of parameters and combinators (in the case of "programmed structures") or according to the types and quantity of informations coming from the environment combined with the artistic programs, translated into artistic effects (in the case of "cybernetic structures"), on can obtain an infinite number of effects.
Note n° 9. The collective rhythm is the dynamic effect that emerges from the continuity of the life of groups. For instance the life of a town has its own time characteristics different from those of a village or a desert. People wake up, move about, stop, work, eat, communicate and so on. The town awakes, becomes excited or relaxes differently according to the days, the moments of the year, the climate, etc.
Note n° 10. Instead of explaining what is or would be a "simple and true progression", let us consider a "fuite en avant", a period of disorder when people turn to nonorganic solutions to their problems (alcohol, drugs, tobacco, suicide, wars, etc.). Progression, or progress, is simply the result of a real and constructive logic in the behaviour of individuals and society.
Note n° 11. N. Schöffer, Le Nouvel Esprit Artistique (Paris : Denoël-Gonthier, Bibl. Médiation, n 72, 1970), "Existence et persistance - son et vision", pp. 127-142, dated 1965. In fact, the first nontheorical sound research started in 1977.
Note n° 12. N. Schöffer, Le Spatiodynamisme, text of a lecture given at the Sorbonne, 19 June 1954 (Boulogne s/Seine : Art d'Aujourd'hui Ed. 1954). See also N. Schöffer, Le Nouvel Esprit Artistique (Paris : Denoël-Gonthier, Bibl. Médiation, n 72, 1970) Chapter 3, pp. 71-101. The "spatiodynamisme" theory has given birth to a series of sculptures called Spatiodynamique 1 to 26 (1948-1958).
N. Schöffer, La Nouvelle Charte de la Ville (Paris : Denoël-Gonthier, Bibl. Médiation, n° 119, 1974) "Le Luminodynamisme", pp. 31, 32, 59-60. The "luminodynamisme" theory has given birth to a series of works (1956-1977) called Lux 1 to 13; The Musiscope (1963); The Luminoscope 1.2.3.; The étléluminoscope; The Mur Lumière; The Lumino; The Minieffets; and recently Murlux, a "luminodynamic tapestry" (1977).
N. Schöffer, Le Nouvel Esprit Artistique (Paris : Denoël-Gonthier, Bibl. Médiation, n 72, 1970) and N. Schöffer, La Ville Cybernétique (Paris : Tchou. Ed., 1969 and Paris : Denoël-Gonthier, Bibl. Mediation, n° 91, 1972) pp. 95-99, 203-211. Since 1959, the "chronodynamisme" theory has given birth to the sculptures Chronos 1 to 24, Microtemps 1 to 35, the "automobile sculpture" SCAM 1. and large installation such as Chronos 10 in Munich, Germany, 1980 (16 meters high, in Paris, 1980 (10 meters high), Chronos 15, in Bonn, Germany, 1977 (20 meters high), in San Francisco (20 meters).
Note n° 13. N. Schöffer, Le Nouvel Esprit Artistique (Paris : Denoël-Gonthier, Bibl. Médiation, n 72, 1970) pp. 32.46. The "spatio-lumino-chronodynamisme" leads to the programming of the five topologies (space, light, time, climate and sound) either by contingent programs or by cybernetics.
N. Wiener, Cybernétique et Société (Paris : Ed. des Deux-Rives, 1949) a translation from Cybernetics and Society - The Human Use of Human being (1949).
Here my definition of "cybernetics" may be useful :
"Cybernetics is the awareness of the process that keeps phenomena in balance. It is the science of efficiency and government by the organised control of all information, including the data that concern perturbations of every kind. These perturbations are processed so as to achieve the optimum regulation of every organic, physical or aesthetic phenomenon. The result is therefore a fluid permanence in flexible balance. In this balance every appearance of a tendency toward periodicity or stagnation triggers the intervention of the perturbations needed to maintain the openness and the contingent character of any evolving process."
Note n° 14. N. Schöffer, La Ville Cybernétique (Paris : Tchou. Ed., 1969 and Paris : Denoël-Gonthier, Bibl. Mediation, n° 91, 1972) p. 105. Before Cysp 1., a 50- meter-high Cybernetic Tower was built in St-Cloud in 1954, followed by the 54-meter-high Cybernetic and Sonorous Tower of Liege (Belgium, 1961). The last cybernetic tower (26 meters high) was built in Kalocsa, Hungary, in 1982 with a sophisticated technology and vertical projections 2 km high. The T.L.C. (Tour Lumière Cybernétique) of Paris-La-Défense (327 meters high) has not been built. See N. Schöffer, La Tour Lumière Cybernétique (Paris : Denoël-Gonthier, Grand Format Médiations, 1973).
Note n° 15. Matila Ghyka, Le Nombre d'Or (Les Rites, Vol. II) Philosophie et Mystère du Nombre (Paris : Payot, 1979); Chapter V in Schöffer [ 3 ] p. 47.
Note n° 16. N. Schöffer, Hommage à Bartok (Budapest : Hungaroton, 33 tours, 1979).
Note n° 17. The plans of the Cenotaph of Newton (1784), of the revolutionary architect Etienne Louis Boullée, constitute an available coded treasure that could be built at any moment.
Note n° 18. N. Schöffer, Perturbation et Chronocratie (Paris : Editions Denoël-Gonthier, Grand Format Mediation, 1978) ; N. Schöffer, La Théorie des Miroirs (Paris : Belfond, 1981).
Note n° 19. N. Schöffer, Perturbation et Chronocratie (Paris : Editions Denoël-Gonthier, Grand Format Mediation, 1978) ; N. Schöffer, La Théorie des Miroirs (Paris : Belfond, 1981).
Note n° 20. One of the roles of the media should be to inform people about the evolution of artistic ideas and of new research connected with new techniques, to create a climate of suspense for great cultural events and important artistic realisations, as well as to create a feeling of respect, love and pride for the patrimony of the past, the present and the future. The media has succeeded perfectly regarding its similar role in the domains of technology, science, and particularly politics and sports (even criminology) but has failed in its main vocation; It has focused the interest of people on the commercial phenomenon which presents art as a production of merchandise, with its prices, speculations and so on. This has nothing to do with art and the fundamental research that corresponds to the real level of civilisation. This does not prepare people to understand and appreciate the world of artistic creation, nor to participate in it, as it should.
Note n° 21. According to the principles, five Prisms have been realised (1 to 5), (1965), as well as a Grand Prisme of 20 meters for Kyldex 1.a cybernetic experiment with music by Pierre Henry and choreography by Alvin Nikolais at the Hamburg State Opera (1973), and another cybernetic experiment with computer music composed by Pierre Barbaud (1975) at the Chapelle de La Sorbonne, Paris. Recently, an 8-meter-high Prisme has been installed in the Museum of Beaux-Arts of Budapest, Hungary (1982).
Projects of Centres de Réflexion and Videotrons are already coded and describes in N. Schöffer, Perturbation et Chronocratie (Paris : Editions Denoël-Gonthier, Grand Format Mediation, 1978) pp. 125-127, 215-231 and in N. Schöffer, Perturbation et Chronocratie (Paris : Editions Denoël-Gonthier, Grand Format Mediation, 1978) ; N. Schöffer, La Théorie des Miroirs (Paris : Belfond, 1981) p. 114.
Note n° 22. N. Schöffer, La Ville Cybernétique (Paris : Tchou. Ed., 1969 and Paris : Denoël-Gonthier, Bibl. Mediation, n° 91, 1972).
demanualization - a neologism concerning the importance of the hand in the creative process; but, the hand, being too slow compared to the speed of the imagination, is put aside and quicker techniques are used.
diffusion - both spreading and techniques of spreading.
harmonics - The Golden Number (phi : 1.618) allows for the development of a "series of harmonic numbers". These are related to 1.618 as well as to one another according to a "harmonious proportion". The dimensions of the sculpture and the duration of its program are calculated to obtain a series of harmonic numbers among which the characteristics of the sculpture are chosen. For instance, the basic number is the height of the sculpture. This number will be multiplied or divided by Phi. Any another arithmetic operation between those two numbers will give other numbers, and all of them will constitute "a series of harmonics of the Golden Number", some of them having an "optimum quality". This is the repertory from which we can extract the different numbers necessary to structure, or compose, the numerous parts of our "spatio-lumino-chrono-dynamic programs" : height, width, thickness of the metal bars, distances between holes, diameters of the plates, number of elements, surfaces, durations and so on.
mediatized - distributed and expanded through the media and, in that way, poured into society : "socialised".
optimum, maximum - The difference between "optimum" and "maximum" being that of quality and quantity, to "optimise" means "to bring to the utmost quality".
passivated man (in French "depassiver", "depassivation") - a "passivated man" is not a "passive man". "Passivated" or "passivised" implies that various factors in life, such as those described, have made people passive. In this neologism the emphasis is on the active responsibility of the factors and on the fact that it is not a normal state supposed to last. A certain hypnotism is implied, a certain "sleep" from which humans should awake. The problem of "activation" or "depassivation" of people then arises in the minds of those who are conscious of the situation. It is part of the role of the true artist to find and propose solutions to this problem.
polyvalent structure - a structure that combines a certain number of parameters such as percussions, high pitch sonorities, low pitch sonorities, accelerations, infrasounds, different kinds of timbres, etc;, each part capable of being used separately or attached to other parameters.
program - a fixed or contingent plan determined by people (their habits, rhythms, tastes, research, etc;) and/or imposed on groups (professions, collective, schedules, holidays, school periods, etc.).
register - a group of specific parameters which evolve on a definite level.
to socialise, socialisation (in French "socialiser" - I created these neologisms independent of any political content. Art is not a merchandise and should not fall into the system of commercial speculations nor caste privileges. Art exists for society, for the city, for a better life and, through harmony, wonder and ... perturbations, should help people transcend their materialistic conditions.