Yannis Kyriakides’ Music-Text-Film Multimedia Concept

What is the nature of the voice that emerges in our minds when we read, think, or recall a well-known melody? Does th is voice sound like our own authentic voice? Furthermore, if one is engaged in both listening to music and reading at the same time, how does the auditory experience differ? The Dutch composer of Cypriot origin, Yannis Kyriakides, has been engaged in an investigation to ascertain the answers to these questions.
Kyriakides's works combine music, image, and text projection.  In his multimedia compositions, Kyriakides employs the term "music-text-film" to describe the integration of these three elements. This term defines a form of audiovisual work in which the combination of music, text, and film creates the conditions for new ways of perception. The audience becomes an active participant in the process of realizing the artistic intent of the work at a deep cognitive level. Consequently, the inner voice of the listeners has become an additional instrument for the composer, which he employs not only to perform the "text part," but also to investigate the boundaries of human perception.

As a fundamental method of analyzing his multimedia concept, Kyriakides proposes the use of the typology of voices he has created, including the mimetic, diegetic, and multimodal voice.
The composer cites the essay "The Mimetic Hypothesis" (A. Cox) to illustrate that the voice is activated when listening to music in the form of "silent singing." This process is reminiscent of the widely discussed phenomenon of "silent reading," and refers to the more challenging to grasp inner voice—the voice of thought—which is also known as "silent discourse." All of these phenomena are collectively referred to as the "mimetic" voice in the aforementioned text.

The "diegetic" voice is a component of the narrative in a work that appears at the moment of separation from the discernible real voice, leaving the narrator without a clear embodiment or bifurcating between different media.

In Kyriakides, the "multimodal" voice is one that is capable of moving freely between the layers of music, text, and image, thereby changing not only the perspective but also the language of its expression. In other words, it assumes a mutable essence, transitioning from one state to another without acquiring specific properties such as sound.

Concurrently, in his compositions, each of the media is an autonomous narrative in itself. For example, the text frequently functions as a kind of counterpoint to the music, thereby creating a new context when all three media are combined in varying proportions. Given the intricate compositional approach, the listener is compelled to adopt a more focused and engaged approach to the musical composition, as described by Kyriakides as "cognitive immersiveness".

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