• Research

    The fundamental principle of IRCAM is to encourage productive interaction among scientific research, technological developments, and contemporary music production. Since its establishment in 1977, this initiative has provided the foundation for the institute’s activities. One of the major issues is the importance of contributing to the renewal of musical expression through science and technology. Conversely, sp…

    • Research Topics
    • The STMS Lab
    • Research Teams
    • Sound Systems and Signals: Audio/Acoustics, InstruMents
    • Acoustic and Cognitive Spaces
    • Perception and Sound Design
    • Sound Analysis-Synthesis
    • Sound Music Movement Interaction
    • Musical Representations
    • Analysis of Musical Practices
    • Projects
    • Sound Workshop
    • The Musical Body
    • Creative Dynamics
    • Musique/Sciences Collection
  • Creation

    IRCAM is an internationally recognized research center dedicated to creating new technologies for music. The institute offers a unique experimental environment where composers strive to enlarge their musical experience through the concepts expressed in new technologies.

    • Composers & Artists in Studio
    • In Ex Machina
    • Jazz Ex Machina
    • Improvise cum machina 1/2
    • Improvise cum machina 2/2
    • Like Sound, Like Flesh
    • Silent Talks
    • Music-Fictions
    • Tablado
    • Musical creation around Outer Space
    • Campo Abierto
    • Musical creation around Dream Work
    • Biotope
    • EROR
    • IDEA
    • Artistic Research Residency
    • Artistic Residencies: The Blog
    • Rendez Vous 20.21
    • Season 2021.22
    • Seasons from 1996 to present
    • ManiFeste-2022
    • ManiFeste festival from 2012 to 2022
    • L’Étincelle, IRCAM’s journal of creation
  • Transmission

    In parallel to its fundamental missions of research and creation, IRCAM is committed to sharing its knowledge and know-how, its technologies with the general public. Cutting-edge research and diffusion of innovations, an international reference for education and the democratization of artistic practices are the driving forces behind the institute’s educational activities.

    • 2022.23 Training Courses
    • Max, Max for Live
    • OpenMusic
    • Modalys
    • TS2 and Partiels
    • Sound spatialization
    • From PureData to audio plugins
    • Sensors, Interfaces, and Interactive Machine Learning
    • Other training programs
    • Practical Information
    • Advanced Programs
    • Cursus Program on Composition and Computer Music
    • Supersonic Chair
    • Master ATIAM
    • Sound Design Master's Program
    • Music Doctorate
    • AIMove Master
    • School Programs
    • Studios of Creation
    • Mixed-Music
    • Artistic and Cultural Education
    • Career Discovery Visit
    • Art School Reserach and Creation Workshop
    • Images of a Work Collection
    • ManiFeste-2022, the Academy
  • Innovations

    At the center of societal and economic concerns combining culture and information technologies, the current research at IRCAM is seen by the international research community as a reference for interdisciplinary projects on the sciences and technologies for sound and music, constantly exposed to society’s new needs and uses.

    • The IRCAM Forum
    • Subscribe to the Forum
    • Softwares
    • Ircam Amplify
    • Industrial Applications
    • Industrial Licenses
    • Forum Vertigo
  • IRCAM
  • Careers & Job Offers
  • Calls for applications
  • Newsletter
  • Arrive
  • Boutique
  • Resource Center
  • Magazine
  • Medias
  • login
  • En
  • Fr
  • IRCAM
  • Careers & Job Offers
  • Calls for applications
  • Newsletter
  • Arrive
  • Boutique
  • Resource Center

Fr | En

  • login
  • Research

    The fundamental principle of IRCAM is to encourage productive interaction among scientific research, technological developments, and contemporary music production. Since its establishment in 1977, this initiative has provided the foundation for the institute’s activities. One of the major issues is the importance of contributing to the renewal of musical expression through science and technology. Conversely, sp…

    • Research Topics
    • The STMS Lab
    • Research Teams
    • Sound Systems and Signals: Audio/Acoustics, InstruMents
    • Acoustic and Cognitive Spaces
    • Perception and Sound Design
    • Sound Analysis-Synthesis
    • Sound Music Movement Interaction
    • Musical Representations
    • Analysis of Musical Practices
    • Projects
    • Sound Workshop
    • The Musical Body
    • Creative Dynamics
    • Musique/Sciences Collection
  • Creation

    IRCAM is an internationally recognized research center dedicated to creating new technologies for music. The institute offers a unique experimental environment where composers strive to enlarge their musical experience through the concepts expressed in new technologies.

    • Composers & Artists in Studio
    • In Ex Machina
    • Jazz Ex Machina
    • Improvise cum machina 1/2
    • Improvise cum machina 2/2
    • Like Sound, Like Flesh
    • Silent Talks
    • Music-Fictions
    • Tablado
    • Musical creation around Outer Space
    • Campo Abierto
    • Musical creation around Dream Work
    • Biotope
    • EROR
    • IDEA
    • Artistic Research Residency
    • Artistic Residencies: The Blog
    • Rendez Vous 20.21
    • Season 2021.22
    • Seasons from 1996 to present
    • ManiFeste-2022
    • ManiFeste festival from 2012 to 2022
    • L’Étincelle, IRCAM’s journal of creation
  • Transmission

    In parallel to its fundamental missions of research and creation, IRCAM is committed to sharing its knowledge and know-how, its technologies with the general public. Cutting-edge research and diffusion of innovations, an international reference for education and the democratization of artistic practices are the driving forces behind the institute’s educational activities.

    • 2022.23 Training Courses
    • Max, Max for Live
    • OpenMusic
    • Modalys
    • TS2 and Partiels
    • Sound spatialization
    • From PureData to audio plugins
    • Sensors, Interfaces, and Interactive Machine Learning
    • Other training programs
    • Practical Information
    • Advanced Programs
    • Cursus Program on Composition and Computer Music
    • Supersonic Chair
    • Master ATIAM
    • Sound Design Master's Program
    • Music Doctorate
    • AIMove Master
    • School Programs
    • Studios of Creation
    • Mixed-Music
    • Artistic and Cultural Education
    • Career Discovery Visit
    • Art School Reserach and Creation Workshop
    • Images of a Work Collection
    • ManiFeste-2022, the Academy
  • Innovations

    At the center of societal and economic concerns combining culture and information technologies, the current research at IRCAM is seen by the international research community as a reference for interdisciplinary projects on the sciences and technologies for sound and music, constantly exposed to society’s new needs and uses.

    • The IRCAM Forum
    • Subscribe to the Forum
    • Softwares
    • Ircam Amplify
    • Industrial Applications
    • Industrial Licenses
    • Forum Vertigo
  • Home
  • Aki Ito & Jean-Philippe Lambert 1/4 : Astérismes
Publish date


With Published chosen, won't be shown until this time





Nov. 30, 2021
Edit
Article
Creation
News






Aki Ito & Jean-Philippe Lambert 1/4 : Astérismes

Edit






Artistic Residencies: The Blog
Edit






The very name they have given to their project reveals its origins: Asterisms. It is indeed a question of stars and their delicate mechanics.

“If I don't rely on the observation of astronomical phenomena to compose, I am certainly inspired by them," says Aki Ito, a Japanese composer living in France. In a stellar system, each celestial body has its own period, and that's what I like to do in my music too: to have several 'modules' of different periods cohabit within the same piece. Initially, these modules are apparently independent of each other but, as in astronomy, all the stars in a system (stars, planets, satellites, etc.), such as the solar system, interact with each other, sometimes significantly modifying their periods.

A phenomenon of gravitational interaction called 'orbital resonance'," explains Aki Ito. It is thanks to this type of phenomenon that scientists have managed to detect the presence of Neptune (by studying the perturbations in the orbit of Uranus) - and, more recently, a staggering number of celestial bodies, even extrasolar ones - to the point of determining their exact orbits around their stars, without ever seeing them.


Photo : Jean-Philippe Lambert © Bastien Defives


For his part, Jean-Philippe Lambert, a researcher associated with Aki Ito in the Asterisms project, is a regular at Ircam. Working in various teams at the Institute (Sound-Music-Movement Interaction, Acoustic and Cognitive Spaces, Sound Analysis and Synthesis, etc.),  a few years ago he took part in a research project on the use of web browsers for sound diffusion. Ircam contributed to the WebAudio tool included in the fifth version of the html standard (HTML5, the current standard), in a desire to go beyond the mere technical device to make it a real tool for sound experiments and productions, even concerts.

Thus the idea of Asterisms was conceived: a form of concert that could be described as "participatory and immersive", without a stage, and in which the sound diffusion is distributed in the audience, each of its members becoming an independent sound source evolving in  space. And the key to this broadcasting can be found in almost every pocket: the smartphone.

Web standards are relatively open," says Jean-Philippe Lambert, "and this openness has varied over time and will certainly continue to vary. As things stand, when a page is opened in a smartphone browser, the host website can access the display, of course, but also the device's speakers, its motion sensors, and even a portion of its computing power..."

There are many technical pitfalls in broadcasting music in this way: synchronisation of all the devices, sending the sound (without saturating the browser's memory or connection capacities), the quality of the sound obtained, mixing, etc. "Even getting a sound to come out correctly from a remote telephone required a lot of work," says Jean-Philippe Lambert. Then, we have to manage to make several of them hear, to establish a link between them, to create an ecosystem, and then to orchestrate it.

The development of the tool thus becomes closely linked to that of the musical work: the intrinsic constraints of the former (such as having to mourn the loss of knowing exactly where the sources are located and their relative positions in real time) become catalysts of creativity for the latter. Certain technical constraints are thus resolved by musical creativity, even proving to be very inspiring, opening up new possibilities, which are then developed musically. And vice versa, in a back-and-forth exchange of ideas: "Our (many) respective constraints are often resolved by the other," emphasises Jean-Philippe Lambert.

Asterisms project in the Ircam studios

"I try to fill the sound space without invading people," says Aki Ito. And the work appears each time under a different face not only because I interpret it differently (I manage all the sounds from a tablet), but because the instrument I play (the phones in the audience, each of which has its own audio characteristics, and the audience itself, which can walk around the space, causing the quality of the sound synthesised by the ensemble to fluctuate at all times) undergoes variations - perhaps greater than those of a traditional instrument - to which we must adapt..."

In the following episodes, we will look in more detail at each aspect of this work, as well as at the members of the Ircam scientific team who are particularly involved in it.

Edit

Next episode

News
Creation

Aki Ito & Jean-Philippe Lambert 2/4 : Experimenting with collective sound interaction research

Article
One of the sine qua non conditions for the acceptance of an artistic research residency project at Ircam is that the technological stakes of the project resonate with the concerns of the research tea…
Ircam

1, place Igor-Stravinsky
75004 Paris
T. +33 1 44 78 48 43
Opening times

Monday through Friday 9:30am-7pm Closed Saturday and Sunday
Subway access

Hôtel de Ville, Rambuteau, Châtelet, Les Halles
  • Jobs Offers & Internships
  • The IRCAM team
  • Partners
  • Support IRCAM
Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique

go to :
  • Centre Pompidou
  • Legal Notes
  • General Conditions
  • Espace Pro
Copyright © 2022 Ircam. All rights reserved.