The call for IRCAM’s Artistic Research Residency Program 2024-2025 advertises a “live coding” theme.
IRCAM’s artistic research residency program provides artists from diverse disciplines the chance to collaborate with one or more IRCAM research teams.
The “live coding” theme is promoted by the APM team (Analyses des Pratiques Musicales) which is a multidisciplinary Humanities Research Team within IRCAM with a history of work on improvisation, notation, music & hacking, analysis of creative processes. Collaborations with other IRCAM research teams are also possible.
If you consider applying, feel free to get in touch with me at the following email address: pierre.saint-germier@ircam.fr
Thanks Pierre, looks like a great opportunity! Do you have any insights into why IRCAM has kept itself so distant from live coding until now? I’ve often wondered about this. Maybe there is a particular reaction against against the creative possibilities of programmers who aren’t in the service of another composer?
Hi Alex. That’s an interesting question. I’m relatively new at IRCAM so I may lack some of the relevant historical information. But your hunch sounds right. The dominant model for artistic research there traditionally was that of a composer with ambitious ideas but little programming skills collaborating with a computer scientist with great programming skills but little musical training - which until very recently, only meant studying composition in a prestigious conservatory. This being said, I would say that the distance from live coding is also mostly a consequence of ignorance rather than hostility. IRCAM has always hosted, even if marginally, musicians working outside this model. That’s how improvisation has been an enduring research topic since the 1980s (George Lewis spent time there when he was designing Voyager). Although several IRCAM researchers are also involved in experimental, electronic, or free improvisation scenes in Paris, there is little overlap with the local live coding community for some reason, which may also explain the neglect of live coding. In any case, the proposal to have this theme for the artistic research program has been very well received from the start by the institution, so that’s a sign that the old models are changing.
Thanks for the insights! I visited a year or so ago to learn about the (awesome) RAVE model by Antoine Caillon, and was a bit surprised that I couldn’t find any live coders around then to meet up with. Hopefully that will change. The live coding scene in Paris and elsewhere in France looks super vibrant at the moment anyway, loads of events as well as new homegrown systems emerging.