Sound Design Master’s program
From October 10-21, 2016 the first and second year students in the Sound Design Master’s program at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts Tours-Angers-Le Mans (located in Le Mans) and the students from ENSCI-Les Ateliers(Ecole nationale supérieure de création industrielle) the Fabrications Flexibles projects’ workshop for this edition, met as they do every year for an “applied workshop” in partnership with IRCAM.
Professional Immersion
The objective of this two-week workshop is to put 30 students in a real professional situation. Led by a team made up of teachers and researchers available to impart their artistic and technical know-how, students work on a creative sound design creative project commissioned by an industrial partner.
The role of the partner is crucial as they define the project and its objectives as well as creating the initial dynamic. Since the creation of the Sound Design Master’s degree, 6 workshops with different themes have already been organized: sound identity, sonification of a space, man-machine interfaces, interactive systems, and sound signage.
For the 2016 edition, Radio France wanted to stimulate the students’ imaginations by asking them to consider the systems currently in place to receive and accompany the public at the Maison de la Radio.
Two Intensive Weeks
Between the first day when the students discover Radio France’s expectations and visit the Maison de la Radio and the last day set aside for the presentation of their projects, the students didn’t have a minute to rest!
Brainstorming session at ENSCI © Patrick Susini
The first week, they split up into groups and started working on the concepts they presented to the partner on the 5th day during a mid-workshop meeting. This first meeting let them continue their work for the rest of the workshop. During the second week, thanks to the resources in the ENSCI studio, the students made their videos, prototypes, and demonstrators to fully present their concepts.
Mid-workshop presentation at IRCAM © Cyrielle Fiolet
Throughout the workshop, the educational team accompanies the students and follows the evolution of their projects. This year, researchers from the CoSiMa project (Collaborated Situated Media)—a project that explores the relationship between body, media, and space through new interfaces and tools for collaborative creation—were also on hand to assist the students.
One of the strong points of the workshop is the complementarity among students in sound design at ESBAM and the industrial design students from ENSCI.
At the end of the workshop, a student explains, “As a sound design student, I didn’t have any problems imagining a sound system. But when I have to make something beautiful and present it to the public, it’s a different story! Working with the students from ENSCI is really rewarding for that; it gives us another way of looking at our project. In fact, we are complementary!”
The Antenna is Yours!
The last day of the workshop, the students presented their work in the Studio 106 at the Maison de la Radio, a studio is usually used for public broadcasts.
Models of artistic installations, full-scale demonstrators, and experiments with smartphones, the students pulled out all the stops to express and give body to their ideas and to provide an overview of the possibilities to the partner, impressed by the quality of the work carried out in such a short time.
By Cyrielle Fiolet, Educational Projects Production Officer in the Education and Cultural Outreach department
