études de bruit 2025: call for noise projects

Art Zoyd Studios, music creation and production centre based in Valenciennes, supports contemporary musical creation, with a specific focus on electronic and electro-acoustic aesthetics.

In collaboration with the MU collective, Art Zoyd Studios has created a sound installation, ‘Le Bruit de l'air’ based on a geolocation interface, for the Parvis Gérard Hourbette2, opposite the Phénix, scène nationale de Valenciennes. After paying homage to Gérard Hourbette in the first year, this installation aims to make this public square both musical and creative, while showcasing young artists through annual calls for projects. Two versions of Le Bruit de l'air have already been produced.

This year, as a tribute to Pierre Schaeffer on the 30th anniversary of his death, we are launching “Études de bruit 2025”. Designing and creating, with the help of our Computer Music Producer, a new sound geography for the paved square, freely inspired by Pierre Schaeffer's3 Cinq études de bruit (Five Studies of Noises).

Pierre Schaeffer transformed our perception of sound by giving non-musical sounds the same importance as traditional musical sounds. His Cinq études de bruit, composed in 1948, illustrate this idea by integrating everyday sounds into a musical creation, opening up the field of possibilities for sound invention.

We invite creators to re-imagine such studies today, in 2025, at a time when the notion of noise in music has taken on a whole new dimension. Noise has become not only a genre in its own right (Noise Music), but also an essential element of sound creation, not to mention the fact that the very nature of noise in our world has changed considerably over the last 75 years. For example, the material of Schaeffer's first study, the sound of trains, is not the same as it was in 1948. Similarly, kitchen utensils, such as the ‘saucers’ mentioned by Schaeffer, have acquired a more ‘chic’ connotation, thanks to the popularity of cooking shows and blogs, and turnstiles now generate different sounds.