IRCAM exceptionally opens it doors to the public. Come and visit this venue, discover its spaces dedicated to sound creation.
Maquette de l'Ircam, à l'entrée
© Ircam-Centre Pompidou, photo : Quentin Chevrier
For the European Heritage Days, IRCAM opens its doors to the public. You can visit the rare piece of architecture designed by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers under the Place Stravinsky, and discover its spaces dedicated to musical creation: the studios, the anechoic chamber, the Espace de projection, as well as the multimedia library. An immersive and literary program, free to attend, will extend your experience.
IRCAM's multimedia library invites the public to discover its collections of resources dedicated to contemporary music and to the sciences and technologies of music and sound. Visitors can, in particular, discover a selection of scores noted for their distinctive graphic character, exceptional format, or inventive and singular notation.
Place Igor Stravinsky
Designed by Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely, the Stravinsky Fountain is Paris's most musical fountain. It is filled with references to Stravinsky's ballets, including Ragtime, Les Noces, Renard, Le Rossignol and, of course, the magnificent Firebird, whose presence sets the entire fountain in motion. We invite you to discover it through music with Sivan Eldar's electroacoustic work L'eau la colonne le fer and Sept contes de la fontaine by writer Hélène Frappat and composer Mikel Urquiza. Simply connect your headphones to the dedicated IRCAM Circus app and begin your sound walk.
L'eau la colonne le fer
Musical Composition Sivan Eldar
Texts Laura Vazquez
Computer Music Design Étienne Démoulin
Sound Mixing Sylvain Cadars
Sept contes de la fontaine
Text Hélène Frappat
Music Mikel Urquiza
Sound Design and Direction Pierrick Pedron
Visual Design Agence Kiblind
Software Development and Interface Design Emmanuel Roullier for Mosquitos
Sound Mixing Sylvain Cadars
Featuring the voices of Hélène Alexandridis (French version) and Geoffrey Carrey (English version).
Musical performances recorded by Maxime Echardour (percussion), Mayu Sato (flute), Mathieu Steffanus (clarinet) and Noé Nillni (trumpet).
Don't forget your earbuds or headphones for an optimal experience!
Production: IRCAM – Centre Pompidou, with the support of Sacem and AXA.
Immersive spatial electronic sound works
Musiques-Fictions bring together contemporary literature, musical creation and the shared experience of immersive listening. Developed by IRCAM, this series places musical composition in direct dialogue with literary fiction, offering a fresh interpretation of the radio drama tradition.
Production: IRCAM – Centre Pompidou.
Studio 1, 3.15 pm & 5.15 pm
Duration: 50 minutes
We love cars because they give us the freedom to travel; we hate them because they crash, crumple and break apart—taking our lives with them. The automobile is an inherently ambivalent object. Whether we like it or not, it inhabits our imagination, shapes our landscapes, and pollutes both our visual and sonic environments. Cars evoke traumatic memories—wrecks and twisted metal—as readily as family holidays. From one generation to the next, the changing forms of their gleaming metallic bodies have accompanied our own journey through life. Cars, too, bear the marks of time.
Christian Sébille, Célie Pauthe and Olivia Rosenthal set out to tell this intimate, social and generational story, from the iconic Citroën DS of the 1960s to the automated Teslas poised to redefine the future of mobility. Together, they have created an immersive sound world of voices, rhythms, impacts, mechanical noises and memories of accidents, revealing the complexity and richness of our enduring relationship with the automobile.
Text Olivia Rosenthal
Music Christian Sébille
Direction Célie Pauthe
Computer Music Design Johannes Regnier
Sound Engineering Oscar Ferran
Featuring the voice of Olivia Rosenthal
Music performed by the Quatuor Tana
Studio 2, 3.30 pm & 5.30 pm
Duration: 55 minutes
This Musique-Fiction presents Erri De Luca in conversation with the Italian mountaineer Nives Meroi, who pledged to climb the world's fourteen highest peaks without the aid of porters or supplemental oxygen. The climbers are gathered in a tent on one of the ascent camps of Dhaulagiri, the world's seventh-highest mountain, in the Himalayas. As dusk falls, they begin a dialogue that brings together the reading of the Bible and the practice of mountaineering.
Text Erri De Luca
Music and Direction Xavier Charles
Adaptation and Voice Direction Laetitia Pitz
Computer Music Design Carlo Laurenzi
Sound Engineering Lucas Ciret
Lighting Christian Pinaud
With the voices of Océane Caïrati and Sélim Zahrani
Music performed by Joris Rühl (clarinet and bass clarinet) and Xavier Charles (clarinet)
Based on Sur la trace de Nives by Erri De Luca (2005).
© Éditions Gallimard
Studio 1, 4.15 pm & 6.15 pm
Duration: 40 minutes
Action! An investigator plunges into Hollywood in search of three women: Tippi Hedren, Melanie Griffith and Dakota Johnson—grandmother, daughter and granddaughter. Three generations in the film industry where disappearance, traces and erasure intertwine through films including The Birds, Marnie, Working Girl, The Bonfire of the Vanities and Fifty Shades of Grey. Novelist Hélène Frappat's investigation meets the music of Para One, united by a shared passion for cinema.
Text Hélène Frappat
Music and Direction Para One
Adaptation and Direction Nathalie Pivain
Computer Music Design Johannes Regnier
Sound Engineering Clément Cerles
With the voices of Cindy Almeida de Brito, Christiane Cohendy, Julie Lesgages, Valérie Schwarcz and Geoffrey Carrey.
Based on Trois femmes disparaissent by Hélène Frappat (2023).
© Éditions Actes Sud
Studio 2, 4.30 pm
Duration: 50 minutes
In 2015, while conducting anthropological fieldwork in the remote reaches of Siberia, Nastassja Martin ventured alone into the forest and was attacked by a bear, which tore away half of her face. Following numerous reconstructive operations in Russia and France, she recounts her physical and psychological recovery. Yet her account extends far beyond the narrative of a traumatic accident, becoming a profound meditation on encounters between human and non-human worlds at a time of accelerating ecological collapse. Croire aux fauves stages another encounter: between Audrey Bonnet's voice and Frédéric Pattar's music, brought together through Mathilde Delahaye's adaptation.
Text Nastassja Martin
Music and Direction Frédéric Pattar
Adaptation Mathilde Delahaye
Computer Music Design Quentin Nivromont
Sound Engineering Jérémie Bourgogne
Featuring the voice of Audrey Bonnet
Based on Croire aux fauves by Nastassja Martin.
© Éditions Gallimard
Espace de projection, from 3.oo pm to 6.oo pm
Discover the Espace de projection, IRCAM’s concert hall with infinitely modulable acoustics: two very contrasted audio universes carry you through an immersive journey, from poetry to the rainforest.
Musical Composition Sivan Eldar
Texts Laura Vazquez
Computer Music Design Étienne Démoulin
Production: IRCAM – Centre Pompidou, with the support of AXA Philanthropy and Sacem.
Supported by IRCAM – Centre Pompidou through its Artistic Research Residencies program, the National Museum of Natural History (artist residency in collaboration with ecoacoustician Jérôme Sueur), and the CNRS Nouragues Research Station (French Guiana).
Free, open access
