The interesting thing about Xenakis as it relates to this entry and in the interest of focus is that he doubled as an architect. Most of his works are motivated by pure mathematics. To preface all of this odd convergence, a coworker of mine has been reading “Is God a Mathematician?” which solely deals with the question of math being a purely human invention or the hinting of its omnipotence. Its obviously on my short list of things to ingest in the coming month. But to get back to Iannis for a second, we are beholden to his gift of using mathematics as a jump off point to compose pieces of work that are quite unsettling.

I wouldn’t expect something that references Einstein’s theory of relativity to sound particularly pleasing to the ear. But the interesting thing to note about our friend Xenakis is his compositional method which incorporated any number of things, pardon the pun. From statistics, Fibonacci sequences, to other esoteric bits of things most of us generally cringe at the thought of our freshman year of high school algebra class. As an architect, he married the worlds of sound and structure together and paved the way for some very unsettling realizations in my head.

The most contemporary usage of these kinds of ideas are most evident in Richard D James’s seminal track “Equation” which purportedly uses a program called coagula to translate the image of his face into pure audio. The results of which are below.

The importance of bridging the world between the realm of physical object and sound structure is not at all evident at first. What we see every day in the skyline or next to our small compartments where we sleep and breathe do not immediately strike us as dissonant. Most of us are city dwellers after all and we have become used to the grit and grime. How did the grit and grime become edited out of our visual field? How can we blot out the constant rush of traffic combined with the rusted steel girders that pollute our line of sight? How are we not affected daily by it? And how do we keep from going insane?

What freaks me out about Xenakis and my limited knowledge of architecture and software over the years is that the advent of parametric modeling teeters on the brink of Euler ideals and Escher inspired madness. Both of which I’m sure sound, if translated from pure raw data, like varying degrees of white noise, tape delay feedback, or consistent clattering. Seeing as how these are the industry standards of design and construction, we are destined to be subjected to these Frankenstein inspired arcologies. We will never be able to escape the constant mutant vantage point. The demolition cranes will make sure of that.

Its often thrown around that early nineties techno was oft inspired by the desolation that was Detroit. In the absence of physical life were the heavy presence of motor city leviathians. Thick pillars and girders that stood in the blast zone. There were no friendly faces on the street to draw your attention away from their looming presence. It stood like a fucking monolith humming in the depths of space as a challenge. A pure representation of mathematics that had a hidden face in the spectrograph. The face of God maybe if you believe in such things. And God sounded like space. Pure fucking outer space. Why was Chicago house and detroit techno so drastically different? Could you link it to the subliminal influence of the architecture? What is the sound of the strip mall? The melody of speckled Nagel ladened hair cutteries interspersed sporatically with fast food fryers.

If you reference records by Greg Anderson from Sunn O))) which has on occasion felt the need to ironically leverage churches sonically, you begin to understand the nature of such things. Walk by any Judeo-Christian temple and you can hear the echo like a megaphone, specifically designed to amplify the word of God. Think of the minaret in Muslim countries that heralds the call to prayer. Created with structural integrity in mind but taking in account the purpose of the edification, firmly rooted in the known aspects of spirituality. Walk through a city like Antwerp in Belgium and the cobblestone, religious lineage, and trappist ales will practically set your mind at peace. Live in a city comprised of chaos, crack smoke, and parametric theory and its evident that the postmodern virus is destined to murder your sense of spirit.

I’ve been especially drawn as previously mentioned to that Mount Eerie record. The line from “Between Two Mysteries” has resonated over the last month.

“I’ve seen moss covered stumps in dying light taking on shapes. Black wooden mythologies… I know a place. Layer after layer of comprehension welling up in Northen light between two mysteries.”

Even the Guattarian aesthetic that has permeated the return to the organic in architecture references such natural occurring phenomena. Guattari’s conceptual ideals of substrates and nodal points permeate the idea of living architecture. It banks on the essence of sustainability. Aptly suited for the territory, the largest living fungal network lives in Oregon as the honey mushroom and ages from 2500 to 7200 years old. Thats fucking ancient. In the immortal words of Ice T, I wonder what that shit would sound like?

And more importantly, I wonder how that would make me feel subliminally. And this is what gets me back to the work of Xenakis. The world which surrounds me and keeps me from sleeping at night. The world which sends the flurry of city dwellers seeking out any number of escapes which are ultimately not green, not ethical, not efficient, and more viral than fungal. Rampant drug use and abuse, promiscuity, masochism, nihilism, and general disregard for human decency.

Not to get poetic, but in the city things decay and sink into the asphalt and are never reborn in the ecosystem. About the most beautiful thing you see is a smashed rat being fed on by a swarm of flies. I see that a lot in the alleys. It never puts me at ease. I see that a lot in clubs metaphorically. On the street corner and on the bike path as I pass any number of two to four a.m. bars. Why? Maybe because it seems predatory in nature. Why does the concept of mycelium and some enormous mushroom seem far more palatable. Thats a mystery right there.

All I know is that when I look upon the skyline of Chicago, it is bittersweet and diverse. But I can’t help to think and wonder that some people just aren’t ready for the dissonance. You can see it defaced on the walls on every blocked you traverse. Edifications ruined by scatalogical slogans and paint. Sometimes beautiful, other times pathetic. Glass smashed and violence constant.

A perfect pairing with the work of Xenakis, the parametric mathematical reality, the face of Richard D James, or my own harshly cut features in harsher iridescent light.