Evis SAMMOUTIS

Project at the MaCI

January – July 2025 & November – December 2025

In 1977 Iannis Xenakis’s vision of developing a machine that would allow him to break free from the constraints of traditional music notation using drawing as the main impetus became a reality. In his research center, the Centre d’Études de Mathématique et Automatique Musicale (CEMAMu), the prototype of UPIC (Unité Polyagogique Informatique CEMAMu) was developed, allowing the interconnection of drawing, sound representation, and music, and ultimately fusing his passion for architecture and music in a single device.

Between 2016 and 2020 Professor Sammoutis helped coordinate an international, interdisciplinary project funded by the Creative Europe program, entitled “Interfaces”, as part of which he commissioned and helped develop UPISketch. UPISketch is an app / software, which was created at the Center Iannis Xenakis as an attempt to transfer Xenakis's vision of his historic UPIC to the twenty-first century. UPISketch uses drawing as the means of generating sound; the user only needs to draw shapes that are then translated into music (pitch, timbre, duration, dynamic, attack). Drawing is a universal human practice involving sight and touch and UPISketch adds hearing to this equation.

The app can be used on any smartphone or tablet, keeping the relationship between audio and visual representation as faithful to Xenakis’s original concept as possible. A computer version (both Mac and PC) was later added, with more advanced functionalities, and this is the version that Professor Sammoutis will utilize in his project, exploring this version’s potential as a tool for fusing visual and aural ideas. Professor Sammoutis will explore collaboratively the creative possibilities that the UPISketch computer version can offer, and ultimately use the software to inform his composition decisions and devise musical structures that are closely linked with gestural elements.

This theoretical research will lead to the composition of two new solo violin pieces, written especially for Peter Sheppard Skaerved. The new compositions will be performed in France, as well as in England and the USA, among other places, and a series of lectures on both sides of the Atlantic are also envisaged to help disseminate the research findings to as a wide of an audience as possible. 

Professor Sammoutis' fellowship has both scientific and artistic goals, all realized within a multidisciplinary transnational framework. The main objectives of his project are to:

• Research the historic UPIC archives and to choose aspects to be further incorporated in the continuing development of UPISketch.
• Research Xenakis’s archives, primarily his architectural designs and drawings, so as to generate visual ideas that he can use as potential springboards for the gestural design of his new works.
• Develop UPISketch templates based on some of these gestures that other users can also access in the future, in consultation with faculty and staff in Grenoble.

Ultimately, this theoretical research will help him compose two new works for solo violin, that will fundamentally test the applicability and specifics of his theoretical conclusions. Professor Sammoutis states that being a Fellow at MaCI will help him expand his multifaceted research from an interdisciplinary standpoint, and MaCI’s state-of-the-art facilities will support his research dynamically and decisively, while allowing him to pursue travel in France and in England for some of his research goals. He intends to work closely with colleagues from the School of Arts and Humanities, from the School of Architecture, and from the School of Technology at UGA.