By the alchemy of art and technology for which Columbia's Computer Music Center is renowned, the empty volume of circular space under Low Memorial Library's high rotunda will fill to bursting on the evening of Friday, July 14, with the ethereal sound (and the unearthly sight) of electronic music composed by celebrated masters and promising aspirants. The creation of an interactive electronic music universe is promised with the performance of the Computer Music Center's "Masterpieces of 20th Century Music-A Multimedia Perspective."

Multichannel presentations of seminal works by Xenakis, Stockhausen, Barrière and Varèse -- who while at Columbia in the 1940s helped to launch computer music in the United States -- accompanied by real-time visual mapping/analysis of several of the compositions, will be heard and seen.

Stereo electronic works by contemporary composers will also be performed, as well as multimedia, interactive installations by some of the Center's most promising students.

An exhibition of the past 50 years of electronic music mounted on the Low Rotunda walls traces the music's evolution with, for instance, archival material from the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, the first of its kind in the U.S., and the progenitor of the Columbia University Computer Music Center.