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    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…

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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
    • 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
    • "I am in blood" for Sixteen Musicians and Live Electronics
    • Lucie Antunes in studio
    • Deena Abdelwahed in the studio
    • "Transfer" for 10 Musicians and Electronics
    • L'Annonce faite à Marie
    • In Ex Machina
    • Jazz Ex Machina
    • Improvise cum machina 1/2
    • Improvise cum machina 2/2
    • Like Sound, Like Flesh
    • Silent Talks
    • Music-Fictions
    • Artistic Research Residency
    • Artistic Residencies: The Blog
    • Rendez Vous 20.21
    • Season 2022.23
    • Seasons from 1996 to present
    • ManiFeste-2022 Website
    • 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
    • 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.

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  • Composers & Artists in Studio
  • The 1987 Max Headroom Broadcast Incident
    • Biography






The 1987 Max Headroom Broadcast Incident

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Premiere by the composer Mauro Lanza
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For Augmented String Quartet

This quartet finds its inspiration in a pirate story. Not pirates of the Caribbean, with an eye patch and a parrot on their shoulder. Not airline hijackers either…. although…. Here, it is more "information pirates". In other words, the ancestors of today’s hackers. Their crowning achievement is absolutely unthinkable today, as long as the technologies they played with are obsolete: one night in November 1987, they hijacked a Chicago-area TV channel’s signal, replacing over 90 seconds of the scheduled show with a strange and fantastic transmission that would be perfectly at home in a David Lynch film. This was a double hijacking; in addition to the signal intrusion, they also committed identity theft. And they didn’t steal just any identity, because one of them was disguised as Max Hedroom, an extremely popular computer-generated science fiction TV personality. With total disrespect for the media they had taken over, the hijackers made fun of diverse advertising slogans, media icons, TV series, and songs.

This moment of interrupting the established order could only seduce Mauro Lanza who has already composed several pieces on this subject (recently at IRCAM with Ludus de Morte Regis [2013]). For this quartet, he makes use of an imagination that borrows references from the horror film Videodrome by David Cronenberg—in which particularly morbid video signals can possess a man and deform reality—and cyberpunk science-fiction in homage to Fausto Romitelli.

Technology

What does one do with this type of subject with an "augmented" string quartet? Hijack it, of course! Mask its identity and speech just as the hijackers did with the TVs of millions of Americans. Using a process inspired by techniques for frequency and amplitude modulation, common practices in radio and television, the composer shakes up the quartet’s microcosm, its hierarchy and codes.

Previous Projects at IRCAM

Ludus de Morte Regis (2013), for chorus and electronics
Häxan, la sorcellerie à travers les âges (2009), music for a silent film by Benjamin Christensen (Sweden, 1921)
Vesperbild(2007), for ensemble, toy instruments, electronics
I funerali dell'anarchico Passannante (2005-2006), for chorus and electronics 
Le songe de Medée (2004), music for the ballet by Angelin Preljocaj for ensemble and electronics
Mare (2004), for soprano, ensemble of children’s instruments, and 8 instruments
Burger Time ou les tentations de saint Antoine (2001), for tuba and electronics
Erba nera che cresci segno nero tu vivi(1999), for soprano and synthesized sounds

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Biography

person

Lanza Mauro

Composer (born in 1975)
Born in 1975, Mauro Lanza studied piano in Venice and electronic music at IRCAM. Tinted with irony, his compositions have always been the result of a continual, growing effort towards an intimate fusion of classical instruments wit…

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