SOUND DESIGN

Activities

Integrated into IRCAM's activities in 1999, the Sound Design Team unites researchers and composers. By associating scientific and artistic competences, its objective is to bring bases which are still lacking to this new discipline.

Sound design was born less than twenty years ago, and regroups diverse domains. It has been defined as a sound esthetic "applied to the search for new forms, and adapted to their functions", according to the sound design charter. The applications are numerous : transport, identification, industrial products, communication, multimedia…

For quite some time, industry has called on acousticians for noise control. Today, sound design gives the possibility of "new and functional" sounds.

The Sound Design Team is made up of a research sector (under the responsibility of René Caussé and Olivier Warusfel, assisted by Nicolas Misdariis), and a creative design sector (with Projects Manager Louis Dandrel, assisted by Emmanuel Deruty).

In order to respond to the diverse nature of the projects, a permanent collaboration has been established with the other IRCAM teams, and particularly with the Musical Perception and Cognition Team.

Themes and Associated Projects

The activities of the team are based on four dominant research and creative aspects :

 Diffusion space. Many sound design applications require a mastery of diffusion and the use of particular techniques, notably in the domain of spatialisation and of control of source directivity.
 Physical modelling synthesis, which allows simulation or conception of the sound of an "object" in industrial sectors.
 Sonification, or the use of sounds other than speech as a means of communicating information. The applications in the domains of telecommunication, online radio, and multimedia are numerous.
 The semantic description of sounds, which aims at constituting a representative sample of sounds as well as a lexicon of terms associated with the qualitative description of these sounds.

Areas of expertise

Sound design, sound environments, identification, sonification, man/machine interfaces, acoustic quality.

Team Members

 Head of research : Louis Dandrel
 Scientific coordinators : René Caussé, Patrick Susini, Olivier Warusfel
 Engineer and researcher : Nicolas Misdariis
 Production Assistant : Emmanuel Deruty
 Technician : Gérard Bertrand
 Doctoral student : Julien Tardieu

Collaborations

PSA Peugeot-Citroën, Total-Elf-Fina, Centre des Monuments Nationaux, Université de Technologie de Compiègne, Ecole du Paysage de Blois, INA-GRM, Elias Arts-Sound Design (New York), Acoustics & Soundscapes (Netherlands).