Doctor in musicology with a thesis published éditions MF entitled Les cloches d’Atlantis. Musique électroacoustique et cinéma / Archéologie et histoire d’un art sonore, researcher at the IReMus, université Paris-Sorbonne, teacher and composer for images, Philippe Langlois is known for his work at the crossroads of sound and technology, music and film, radio and sonic arts.
In July 2017, he was appointed director of the Department of Education and Cultural Outreach at IRCAM.
Philippe Langlois, you have a multidisciplinary background. Can you tell us a little more about it?
While carrying out my thesis in musicology of the 20th century co-directed by Jean-Yves Bosseur and Marc Battier, I also coordinated the Atelier de création radiophonique de France Culture from 2001 to 2011. I created a Master’s Degree in sound design with IRCAM and the École des beaux-arts du Mans in 2010 where I was teaching the history and theory of sound art. I worked with the Sound Perception and Design team and the Department of Education and Cultural Outreach at IRCAM for this project and I had the pleasure of directing a few of the “Images of a Work” documentary series.
I am delighted to join the IRCAM team today and work on one of the institute’s primary missions: the transmission and development of knowledge alongside a vibrant and reactive team, keeping in step with technological innovations for musical composition.
What are your projects for IRCAM?
I endeavor to assure the continuity and development of the work begun by my predecessors (Cyril Béros, Andrew Gerzso), while including IRCAM’s resource center within the department, imagining new connections between these two departments. Due to our common mission of transferring knowledge, obvious connections can be imagined between educational activities and the institute’s resources, notably during presentations by composers to students in the Cursus and Atiam programs. In this case, it is possible to organize the documents and resources we own—scores, books, articles—beforehand.
My nomination also portends an aspiration to extend the pedagogical actions undertaken by the institute to “adjacent artistic professions and technologies”. I would like to develop our activities beyond the simple scope of music to the milieu of images, of radio, as well as sonic poetry where sound is connected to meaning, where technology can intervene as a genuine semantic and expressive vehicle. We also wish to extend our pedagogical offer to sound installations, sonic visual arts, and design through relations with networks of art schools in France and abroad.
In the Department of Education and Cultural Outreach we must find the best ways to transmit the knowledge and know-how emanating from the institute via the actions we carry out, those we will develop, and those we will invent.
What are your main goals for 2018?
Among the numerous projects we are beginning, here are a few concrete examples.
Access to the culture of contemporary music in venues where this is practically inexistent is at the heart of our mission of transmission. We already intervene in junior high schools, in vocational trade high schools, in agricultural high schools, and hotel management schools via the Studios of Creation program in partnership with the Centre Pompidou. For 2018, we will study the possibility to delegate our label to partners outside the Paris region such as the Grame in Lyon as well as the network of French national music conservatories so that our offer is extended throughout France. In addition to a national presentation every year in Paris during Museum Night, we would like to see other local presentations of these programs put on in order to give a broader visibility to this operation while promoting the students’ work.
In 2018, we must also adapt to changes currently underway in French legislation concerning further professional training. Training organizations will be “required to provide a label and post their performance records”. In this context, the demand for certification requested from the CNCP for IRCAM’s training programs on Max (level 1 has been granted, we are waiting for level 2) should provide a sufficient guarantee of our level of expertise as a professional training organization.
Alongside the Education team and the composer associated with the Cursus program, Thierry De Mey, we would like to start a reflection on the way we can reorganize our teaching for the composers in the Cursus program. Should we conserve the idea of a common, purely technological, foundation or should we offer a more modular system that could include theory, aesthetics, and musicology while turning towards other arts (film, dance, visual arts, sonic poetry)? In keeping with this idea, we contacted the dance department at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris for one or two end-of-Cursus pieces, making it possible for composers to work with dancers.
Finally, another important issue can be found in the question of e-learning and remote instruction currently developed at IRCAM by Mikhail Malt, where contrary to traditional Moocs, the idea of an iMOOC or an interactive Mooc is currently being explored. This system makes it possible to create a real exchange between professor and a class. The offer we want to develop would offer different options ranging from a general presentation of the technologies developed at IRCAM given as a lecture, or 8 2-hour sessions on IRCAM software such as OpenMusic, Modalys, Audiosculpt. Or, for a more general public, a virtual visit of IRCAM including meetings with the institute’s different professions.
