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  • 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
    • Sound Perception and Design
    • Sound Analysis-Synthesis
    • Sound Music Movement Interaction
    • Musical Representations
    • Analysis of Musical Practices
    • Projects
    • Sound Workshop
    • The Musical Body
    • Creative Dynamics
    • Finished Projects
  • 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
    • Mauro Lanza in studio
    • Chloé Thévenin in studio
    • Oren Boneh in studio
    • Tristan Murail in studio
    • Martin Matalon in studio
    • Sébastien Gaxie in studio
    • Murcof in the studio
    • Vimala Pons in studio
    • Lucie Antunes in studio
    • Deena Abdelwahed in the studio
    • Music-Fictions
    • Artistic Research Residency
    • Artistic Residencies: The Blog
    • Rendez Vous 24.25
    • 2024-2025
    • Replay Concerts
    • Seasons from 1996 to present
    • ManiFeste-2024 Website
    • ManiFeste festival from 2012 to 2024
    • L’Étincelle, IRCAM’s journal of creation
  • Transmission

    In support of IRCAM's research and creation missions, the educational program seeks to shed light on the current and future meaning of the interactions among the arts, sciences, and technology as well as sharing its models of knowledge, know-how, and innovations with the widest possible audience.

    • Training Courses
    • Training Courses 2025.26
    • Max, Max for Live
    • Computer-Assisted Composition
    • ASAP & Partiels
    • Sound spatialization
    • Generative AI
    • Practical Information
    • Higher Education
    • Cursus Program on Composition and Computer Music
    • Master ATIAM
    • Sound Design Master's Program
    • Mixed-Music
    • AIMove Master
    • Discover Research at IRCAM
    • Cultural Outreach
    • Cultural Mediation at Middle School Students
    • Médiations culturelles au lycée
    • Digital Workshops
    • TACT
    • Images of a Work Collection
    • Group Tours
    • ManiFeste-2025 Festival Academy
    • 2025 ÉLAN award
    • Spatial Composition Workshop
    • In Situ Polytopes
    • ULYSSES Ensemble
    • Auditors
  • Innovations

    Engaged with societal and economic issues at the intersection of culture and IT, research at Ircam has forged a reputation for itself in the world of international research as an interdisciplinary benchmark in the science and technology of sound and music, constantly attentive to the new needs and uses in society.

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  • Strings in the air with feet over the floor (an exhibition to listen to)
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  • Strings in the air with feet over the floor (an exhibition to listen to)
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Strings in the air with feet over the floor (an exhibition to listen to)

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Premiere by the composer Benjamin Dupé
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The Guitarist and Their Clones

One of the first things that excited the composer Benjamin Dupé when he imagined this commission for Open Source Guitars, was the six guitars of this atypical ensemble. Of course the six guitarists know how to play all sorts of guitars—any size or shape, electric or acoustic—but their baseline is always the same: six identical instruments, therefore not exactly complementary, neither in terms of  tessitura nor timbre, and they are all already polyphonic…



“We almost have the feeling that it is the same musician six times over” says Benjamin Dupé, “like a cartoon where we can replicate a character as many times as we like.” This amusing vision of the ensemble for which he wrote can be found as much in the poetry developed by the composer from this ensemble of guitarists as in the audacity, the adventurous spirit, the curiosity for theater that immediately seduced him.

“From the very first tests carried out together at IRCAM, the guitarists were excited like little kids when they discovered what we could do with the sounds they made. I wanted to maintain that freshness of exploration up through the performance, that pleasure of playing with the live sound and being surprised by the electronics. This comes, perhaps, from the fact that I am a guitarist myself and I really love to play with my instrument like a child plays with a toy.”

The electronic transformations produce a sort of astonishment for the musician, disposed to inserting sound production in this pleasure that is a bit primary.

While it isn’t less written, Strings in the air with feet over the floor (an exhibition to listen to) doesn’t appear to be “interpreted” to the eyes and ears of the public. It is presented more like a small theatrical work, like a little window open to a rehearsal of Open Group Guitars, where we discover its six guitarists “testing” the electronics and playing with it, even “dressing up” with it, each one becoming a sonic transformer: which brings us back to the idea of one and multiples already mentioned. A piece for six guitarists and electronics, in short, that features its six performers inventing their music in the present.

The Technological Issues

Writing for an instrument you have played your whole life can sometimes be problematic for a composer. Of course, this supposes an intimate understanding its acoustic behavior and its diverse techniques but this also supposes a certain lack of distance.

One of the advantages of Benjamin Dupé’s experience as a guitarist is certainly his ability to create rich textures without having to use electronics. “I remember that Sébastien Naves, the computer music designer I work with, sometimes had the impression that certain samples we recorded were already full of effects, but they weren’t. With six guitars, without electronics, we can already use additive synthesis by combining different instrumental gestures with decalibrations or successive emergences, or even scordaturas (the lower strings of the guitars are un-tuned, each one a tone below the other).”

The principle research focused on the real-time treatments that made it possible to obtain a “guitaresque” sound—meaning sounds identified as being produced by a guitar but that a guitar can not produce. Two emblematic examples: sustained sounds (or sounds that grow) although the guitar is following a percussion/resonance model normally, with a swift and energetic attack followed by a rapidly fading inflection and non chromatic glissandi even though the guitar is an instrument with frets, making any sort of glissando impossible, at least without using a continual process. For this, the guitar’s sound is captured just after the attack and using diverse techniques (through infinite reverberation, or by spectral analysis followed by sound synthesis), and exploited immediately by the electronics. “These real-time processes let me explore other acoustic worlds. But other processes, sometimes far more prosaic, are sometimes sufficient for this: like bringing a tuning fork (that many guitarists keep in their cases to tune their guitars) up and down in front of a microphone, or moving the strings with different objects… Or even singing in the microphone!”

Previous project with IRCAM

Il se trouve que les oreilles n’ont pas de paupières, musical theatre based on La Haine de la musique by Pascal Quignard (2015)

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Biography

person

Benjamin Dupé

Composer (b. 1976)
Composer, guitarist, and director trained at the Conservatoire de Paris, Benjamin Dupé is dedicated to musical creation: writing for instruments, voice, and electroacoustic; improvisation; technological systems…. His works…


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Performance
Creation

Moving Sounds

5 December to 6 December 2018
Nouveau théâtre de Montreuil - CDN
French Premieres by Henry Fourès and Benjamin Dupé
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