AI Advances Enable IRCAM to Recreate André Breton's Voice for the Surrealism Exhibition
Discover Surrealism Through the Voice of André Breton
From the moment visitors enter, the poet's voice rings out, guiding them to the heart of the exhibition, where his Manifesto of Surrealism rests, sheltered by a central “drum”. The discovery of André Breton's original manuscript, on exceptional loan from the Bibliothèque nationale de France, is accompanied by a short film projected in an immersive 300° setting, shedding light on its genesis and meaning. Interestingly, although the voice of André Breton himself presents these writings, it was never actually recorded at the time the Manifesto was published. This is a scientific feat, achieved by teams from IRCAM's Sciences et Technologies de la Musique et du Son (STMS) laboratory, who have succeeded in recreating the young poet's voice using artificial intelligence.
Max Ernst, The Angel of the home (The Triumph of Surrealism), featured in the Surréalisme exhibition at Centre Pompidou.
© Adagp, Paris. Vincent Everarts Photographie
Combining paintings, drawings, films, photographs, and literary documents, the exhibition features 250 masterpieces by emblematic artists of the movement, selected from international public and private collections. Among the artists represented are Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst, and Joan Miró, not forgetting female Surrealists such as Leonora Carrington, Ithell Colquhoun, and Dora Maar.
The journey—which is both chronological and thematic—is introduced by Breton's voice and structured into 14 chapters evoking the literary figures who inspired the movement (Lautréamont, Lewis Carroll, Sade...) and the poetic principles that shaped its imagination (the artist-medium, the dream, the philosopher's stone, the forest...).
IRCAM Teams Take on New Vocal Conversion Challenge
The researchers and engineers at IRCAM have accomplished the feat of reviving a lost voice, with the added challenge of making it sound younger. To achieve this, the Sound Analysis and Synthesis team used the latest cutting-edge technologies developed for voice conversion based on the latest advances in fundamental research into artificial intelligence.
From left to right : « PHOTOMATON » André Breton portrait © Centre Pompidou
Manifeste du surréalisme © BnF, département des Manuscrits
Sound Analysis and Synthesis team © Philippe Barbosa
The reconstruction process developed is based on deep learning technologies that combine content analysis and differentiation strategies to distinguish the content and expressiveness of the speech of the actor interpreting André Breton, from his vocal identity.
With the aim of transforming the voice of a living actor into a historical voice, the research team distanced itself from the tools known as “text-to-speech”, which can now generate an intelligible and expressive synthesized voice from text, but which lacks contextualization, in favor of a model that converts the speaker's voice. Starting from the actor's interpretation, this model changes the vocal identity, while preserving its natural expressiveness and speech content, and replaces it with that of Breton. Once this vocal mask has been created, a few final sound adjustments are applied in post-production. The voice is then ready, truer than life.
The Surrealism exhibition offers a unique journey, sublimated by the story of the author of one of the founding texts of this intellectual, literary, and artistic movement that revolutionized thinking in the aftermath of the First World War.
Discover the project Visit the exhibition
Curators
Didier Ottinger assistant director of the Musée national d’art modern, Centre Pompidou
Marie Sarré conservation attaché of the modern collections, Centre Pompidou
Reconstruction of André Breton’s voice with artificial intelligence
IRCAM team
Axel Roebel IRCAM-STMS research director
Mathilde Abrassart IRCAM-STMS PhD doctoral student
Sylvain Cadars sound engineer
With the voice of Hugues Jourdain
