Artistic and Cultural Education

Experiencing and sharing sound creation: a threefold cultural challenge for today's youth.

The latest technological innovations and the audio revolution herald a democratization of digital creation and a recognition of the "power of sound" in our daily lives. This is apparent in the rise of sound design and sonic immersion, the development of conversational agents, new interfaces with the machine, digital textuality, and generative artificial intelligence. Given this new context, the IRCAM of the 21st century is committed to transmitting its practices and challenges to users who, from a very young age, will be empowered to design and create creative and sound objects.

First and foremost, these workshops, intended for a wide audience (school groups or individuals, children, teens, young adults, and even parents with their children), focus on creating voices (human and synthetic) and on narratives/fictions. They offer concrete ways to understand and decode the technological and cultural mutations of today's society, to shed light on the alliance between creativity and automation, and to reappropriate human-machine companionship in our digital age.

1. Replay Culture Heritage

Create a sound work collectively with audio-digital creation tools.

Launched by the European network Ulysses, with the support of Creative Europe, "Replay Culture Heritage" will be carried out from 2021 to 2023. It offers a class of high school students the opportunity to learn about sound creation by discovering and re-appropriating a major work of contemporary music.


Replay, work session with Claudia Jane Scroccaro © IRCAM-Centre Pompidou, photo : Salomé Bazin

Objectives

  • Allow students to discover IRCAM's particularities
  • Give students their first look at the use of digital audio tools for music creation
  • Provide students with the opportunity to discover a contemporary work and understand its compositional challenges
  • Encourage students to work together to create a remake of this work, which will be presented at the end of the program during a national presentation day

The program

Like the other participating countries, IRCAM will select a contemporary musical work. This work will be the starting point of the project.

1. Discovery of the Work
The piece is presented to the students in different forms and contexts. Students will use it to produce a musical work of their own inspired by and related to the work studied, reflecting their conception of the work and what it represents.

2. Collecting “Sound Material”
In order to create their own sound work, students collect sounds that they can later use.

3. Creation of a Sound Work
Using various materials collected, students produce their own sound creations, in reference to and echoing the work they have studied. Their work is presented to the public in the spring.

2022-2023 Project

7 two-hour sessions for secondary school classes are organized at Collège Joliot Curie in Bagneux
Instructor Kinda Hassan, sound designer
Music studied: Laborintus II by Luciano Berio.


Replay, work session with Claudia Jane Scroccaro, 2021-2022 Project © IRCAM-Centre Pompidou, photo : Salomé Bazin

Information

Public junior high and high school classes
Number of Sessions 5-10 sessions
Contact 01 44 78 47 70 | info-pedagogie (at) ircam.fr

Supported by the Fondation Fiminco.  This project was implemented within the framework of the ULYSSES Network, co-financed by the Creative Europe Program of the European Union.

2. Interactive Map of the Bois de Vincennes

In conjunction with the production of Transfert  by composer Florent Caron Darras, educational workshops based on the theme of field recording and listening to the environment were held with students from the Maurice Ravel high school, exploring the world of sound creation and electronic music.


Interactive Map of the Bois de Vincennes, January 2023 © IRCAM-Centre Pompidou, photo: Quentin Chevrier

The Program

1. Recording of sound samples in different spaces
The students approach the Bois de Vincennes through listening, spending an afternoon recording sound samples in different areas of this landscape located midway between urban and natural spaces. This exercise lets them hear different sounds and their variations in the same environment.

2. Composition
The students learned audio editing techniques on a computer so that they can transmit their experience through short sound portraits of the spaces they visited. They then created a sound map of the area with the help of their history-geography teacher, Morwenna Coquelin, present throughout the project. This interactive sound map—a subjective representation of the Bois de Vincennes—helps students synthesize their experience and share it through a physical and tangible medium.

3. Discovery of IRCAM and Exchanges with the Artistic Team
During this project the students visited IRCAM, its anechoic chamber, and its studios. They met with composer Florent Caron Darras and computer music designer Augustin Muller to talk about their work in the studio for the creation of the piece Transfert. Students were able to discover several compositional techniques used in the creation of this piece. They also meet with Laurent Cuniot to discuss his work as conductor of the TM+ ensemble.

4. The Performances
Two performances were be organized. The first, for the general public, was held at IRCAM during the Open House in January 2023, and the second at the school for other students, parents, and the educational community.

Through these workshops the students will be able to familiarize themselves with the musical creation being carried out today at IRCAM as well as some of its technologies.

Project 2022-2023

Several sessions with students from Maurice Ravel High School (20th arrondissement of Paris) in the IRCAM studios from October 2022 to January 2023
Instructor: Pierrick Pedron, sound designer