As part of Manifeste 2022, IRCAM's annual festival, five original works were created for an exhibition at the Centre Georges Pompidou.

• Locus Solus - Didem Coskunseven, composer, trained at IRCAM (cursus 2021)
• Sur les quais - Georges Aperghis, composer
• Canal Ciment - Romain Barthelemy, composer and sound designer
• Network - Fabien Bourlier, sound designer - Photo credits: Philippe Barbosa
• Massy Opera - Lundja Medjoub, sound designer - Photo credits: Quentin Chevrier
  

In Locus Solus, Didem Coskunseven reinterprets two photographs of the Centre Pompidou building as a polyphonic musical instrument. An architecture in perpetual mutation, a stream and a cascade of colors tell us about the passage of time, inviting us to improvise at the crossroads of jazz and electronic music.

Sur les quais is a musical interplay of voices and cities, inhabitants and buildings. It's a creation full of windows and façades, where the playful spirit of Magritte meets the voyeuristic temptation of Hitchcock. An initial urban scene invites visitors to focus their attention on one building rather than another. Depending on their choice, they are then thrown into the intimacy of the building's inhabitants, such as an inquisitive neighbor or a pigeon sitting on the windowsill. What's going on inside? What forms of life are reaching it? Gesture after gesture, voices are heard and music blossoms as the city becomes a theater.

Sur les quais, Georges Aperghis © Quentin Chevrier

Submersion, création TACT réalisée avec Méryll Ampe, Mona Hackel et les élèves du collège de Sèvres © DR

As part of SeineLab, a laboratory for experimentation with sound and digital technology at La Seine Musicale, IRCAM and the  Département des Hauts-de-Seine presented Submersion, a TACT creation created with sound artist Méryll Ampe, visual artist Mona Hackel and students from the Collège de Sèvres. The sound artist Méryll Ampe and the visual artist Mona Hackel led a series of educational workshops on the links between image and sound from November 2022 to January 2023 at La Seine Musicale. By questioning the students from the Collège de Sèvres on how they listen to music, by focusing on what it generates in their bodies and their relationships with others, the students translated the effect of sounds through abstraction and figuration. The sound artist Méryll Ampe and the visual artist Mona Hackel led a series of educational workshops on the links between image and sound from November 2022 to January 2023 at La Seine Musicale. By questioning the students from the Collège de Sèvres on how they listen to music, by focusing on what it generates in their bodies and their relationships with others, the students translated the effect of sounds through abstraction and figuration.

Some of the graphic elements (characters and textures) and sound elements created by the students were incorporated by Méryll Ampe and Mona Hackel into their co-creation entitled Submersion, commissioned between Département des Hauts-de Seine and IRCAM Centre-Pompidou. This title refers to both the act of submerging and the act of being submerged. The audio-graphical creation Submersion is a direct echo of the familiar expression, sub, which designates subwoofers, these loudspeakers intended to reproduce the lowest frequencies of the audio spectrum. One of the challenges of this co-creation was to create a sound and visual environment capable of immersing visitors in the world of the free and inclusive party.

Œuvre de Méryll Ampe et Mona Hackel - Submersion © DR

In June 2023, IRCAM and the association Les Causeuses inaugurated the piece PANORAMA, created by Zoé Aegerter, Romain Barthélémy, and children from the school on the island of Hoëdic. Over the course of their artistic residencies, composer Romain Barthélémy and designer Zoé Aegerter worked with the elementary school pupils and their teacher to invent a way of telling the story of the island and its landscape. Together, they lowered their gaze and stretched their ears towards the ground, looking for horizons other than those on the postcard. They changed the scales of their perceptions, equipped with microphones and magnifying glasses, or often simply lying on the ground. The creation was on display at the fort on the island of Hoëdic, in Morbihan, until the end of August 2023.

Winning project of the Mondes Nouveaux program.

In 2024, IRCAM joined forces with the Ultima festival to present an exhibition of a new work created for TACT, an interactive visual and sonic system. Both the electronics and the visuals were produced in the IRCAM studios and in Oslo. Photographer Brian Cliff Olguin, designer Zoe Aegerter, and composer Romain Barthelemy worked with a class of students from the Bjørnholt videregående school in Oslo. The exhibition of this new collaborative work ran from 12 September 2024 to 21 September 2024, as part of the Ultima festival.