• 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…

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  • 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.

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    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.

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    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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  • 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.

    • The IRCAM Forum
    • Softwares
    • Ircam Amplify
    • Innovative art-science-technology processes
    • Forum Vertigo
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    Research Topics

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    The laboratory’s scientific project  organized around 3 fields of interaction:

    Sound Workshop

    Here, sound is understood as a physical phenomenon (mechanical, acoustic) as well as digital data involving mathematical and computer science (signal processing) techniques to process data audio streams and musical or  multimedia scenes.

    Digital audio signals are addressed in as sources and fields. We characterize or synthesize digital audio sources with the accuracy, subtlety, and quality required to meet the demands of contemporary creation. Our research focuses on the specificities of the musical signal and has led us to develop more precise models employing physics, biomechanics, perception and cognition, and even symbolic musical data. The extraction of more a symbolic, semantically pertinent description and the control of models via high-level qualitative data (e.g. prosody in the case of the synthesized singing voice) are two of the laboratory’s objectives in this domain. As for sound fields, our studies aim at understanding their spatial representations and couple them with time/frequency representations, at capturing them in high resolution, and at reconstructing them realistically.

    The Musical Body

    The domain focused on here is that of music and sound, perceived and produced by humans who interact with an environment, a machine, or other human beings. Sound is not reduced to a simple vibration, but becomes a vehicle enabling interaction produced by a biological body and operating on individuals and behaviors. This domain is addressed through four issues—gesture, voice, the spatial perception of sound and its multi-sensorial integration—while examining the connections among sonic or musical contents and emotional valency.

    Creative Dynamics

    While music is a phenomenon produced and perceived by a body that capitalizes on physical objects and organizes a sound world, it is also thought, imagined—or dreamt— and occasionally formalized before being realized. The question of creativity emerges today as a scientific1 issue and a useful working paradigm for the conception of intelligent systems. Contrary to what a superficial analysis of the new directions taken by AI2 could suggest, the challenge seems to be more about mentoring and companionship than imitation: what ideas and tools are necessary to inspire, guide, and assist an artist in their creative process and make the machine a partner? We are therefore opposed to an approach that aims at replacing humans, making autonomous machines and that which aims at augmenting human capacities. We can therefore talk about augmented intelligence.

    In the artistic field, the first approach could possibly lead to understanding mechanisms that are replaced, but the second offers novel creative dimensions that could radically renew the science-music relationship. Using one of our major assets—our intimacy with musical creation—the laboratory’s work endeavors to apprehend and document composers’ creative process; to formalize, analyze, calculate, and produce symbolic musical structures in interaction with the creators’ goals; to develop new tools for writing that address contemporary issues of notation; and to capture systems that assist collective creation.

    These three fields ensure the legibility of our research and cover all our activities, they cross the physical and digital dimensions of the sound and musical world as well as its perception and production by humans in connection with issues surrounding creation and creativity. Among these research subjects, we can cite a few examples of subjects we intend to investigate more thoroughly in the upcoming years:

    • Multiphysical modelling
    • Expert expressive gesture
    • Cyber physical & human systems
    • The contribution of neurosciences, cognitive sciences, and connections with health
    • AI and musical creativity
    • New dimensions of musical notation

    1-    See the new international conferences in which the joint research lab has participated since their creation “Digital Intelligence (#DI)”, “Musical MetaCreation (MUME)”, “International Conference on Computational Creativity, (ICCC)”, or the European initiative FET “Creative ICT” that funded 5 projects in 2016.
    2-    Like the Magenta project developed by Google: “(how to develop) algorithms that can learn how to generate art and music, potentially creating compelling and artistic content on their own”.

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