Polytope de Montréal

The installation included a sculpture, light show, and musical composition designed and composed by Iannis Xenakis for Expo 67, the 1967 International and Universal Exposition.

[1] The pavilion, designed by architect Jean Faugeron, was a multi-level structure consisting of exhibition halls surrounding a central open area.

[3] This would become Xenakis's first "polytope," a term derived from the Greek polys ("many") and topos ("place"), and would consist of a large metal sculpture housing a light show, plus a musical component.

[6] The lights were individually controlled by a film which caused them to be triggered twenty-five times per second, allowing Xenakis to create a six-minute series of configurations that resulted in moving patterns and shapes, all characterized by a sense of visual continuity.

[1] The music, the composition of which overlapped with that of Xenakis's first spatial work Terretektorh,[6] involved registrally-extreme glissando-based passages that were passed from one group to another, and was recorded in Paris by the Ensemble Ars Nova, conducted by Marius Constant.