Benoit Meudic is a computer music designer at Ircam. He received his Phd degree in computer music in 2005 for his research on automatic pattern extraction of polyphonics pieces with varying tempi. Since 2004, he has worked as a computer music designer and has collaborated with several composers, including Yan Maresz, Unsuk Chin, Luca Francesconi, Michaël Levinas and Bruno Mantovani and has performed their pieces in several countries (Germany, Sweden, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Holland, Corea). In 2008, he founded the ensemble “Hierophantes”; together with the visual composer Yves-Marie L'Hour, with the aim of experimenting psychoacoustics through the composition of electronic and visual music. Their works have been shown in museums (Taipei fine arts museum, Pompidou center), festivals (Antilope dance festival 2010, Nuits blanches 2009) or conferences (Sophrologies plurielles 2011, Futur en Seine 2009).

Computer Music Designer (CMD): Insights of A “Nearly” New Born Profession at the Edge Between Composers, Musicians, Artists and Researchers.
Born together with the increasing use of technology in the music of the seventies, the profession of computer music designer has evolved through the years to a complex set of activities requiring various abilities in domains such as art, science and humanities. Often unknown from the large public due to its hidden nature, the profession is however exciting and rich of its perpetual mutations in the context of rapidly changing technologies.
 
This talk will focus on various creations I have made as a computer music designer in the studios of Ircam with composers such as Yan Maresz and Michaël Levinas, presenting concrete examples ranging from the conception of a polyrhythm machine to the musical design of an opera. I will also present some parallel activities I have in the domain of interactive and participative numeric art that feed my work at Ircam.