Research Unit STMS

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, specific problems related to contemporary composition have led to innovative, theoretical, methodological, and applied advances in the sciences with ramifications far beyond the world of music.

Focused on artistic production, in all its particularity and sensitivity, this highly original research dynamic addresses modes of representation and of extended manipulation of sound and music, thus eliciting scientific and technological applications that touch an increasingly wide-ranging public including sound and music professionals, industrial concerns, academics, music devotees, etc. Central to the interaction between research and musical production is the development of software tools for musicians, composers, performers, and musicologists using the models and prototypes created by the research teams in various music-related domains including information technology (e.g. languages, human-computer interaction, realtime, and databases), signal processing, acoustics, auditory perception and cognitive psychology, and musicology.

The work carried out in the STMS joint research lab (Science and Technology of Music and Sound) is supported by the CNRS, the French Ministry of Culture, and Sorbonne Université.

The joint research unit is structured by its 7 teams each characterized its theoretical anchoring and the subjects studied; their activities are organized around 3 multidisciplinary fields of interaction, covering the entire range of sciences and technologies of music and sound: the sound workshop, the musical body, and creative dynamics.