EUROPE IN C : A collaborative and musical plateform for young musicians EUROPE-IN-C is a project held by PIANOANDCO, a cultural structure located in Marseille whose main purpose is to use music as a universal language and to highlight art for its social transformation capacity. This transnational cooperation project is born of a common need to invent and offer innovative musical pedagogical tools for young people in order to adapt to the challenges of digital transformation. Our goal is to create a digital device on a European scale to facilitate exchanges and collaborative practice between young musicians. This collaborative platform proposes to use and promote an existing technology, pioneering in its field: the system called LOLA (https://lola.conts.it/) developed by the GARR (IT) and the conservatory Tartini in Trieste in Italy, which allows the retransmission of masterclasses or concerts remotely, live and without time lag. It also offers an instrumental database and a skills program to be validated by all participants. The creation of the platform is accompanied by a mobility program between musicians aged 15 to 25 from the five countries of cooperation to follow digital and artistic mediation workshops. Each session ends with a musical performance open to the public around Terry Riley's music sheet of IN C, a polyphonic work as a European anthem for diversity and integration. The skills to engage this set-up require different knowledges which have been identified in different countries with the GARR (IT) consortium, which gather technicians and researchers in the new technologies for musical education: LabMAT in Athenes (GR) (electronic and acoustic music laboratory) working with artificial-intelligence’s researchers and musicians. Four educative structures, such as the conservatory of Dunkerque (FR), the conservatory G.Tartini (IT), the musical institute of Rostock (DE) and the Ostende Conservatory (BE), are in charge of organizing the interface with their students in order to co-build this platform and to involve them in the proposed activities. In addition to a renewed and collective practice, by means of these numerical tools, multicultural meetings throughout the program will enhance the richness of EUROPE-IN-C. Cultural exchanges of good-use between partners from different countries will constitute a strong approach to disseminate this research work toward a new pedagogy to pass on and to develop on the long term. A documentary will demonstrate this process and the results of the project.
EUROPE IN C is a device aiming at inventing an innovative artistic learning process and at building new technological and pedagogical tools which will be destined to young European musicians. Projected by PIANOANDCO, an artistic production organisation based in Marseille, and shared by a net of musical research and teaching organisations, the project revealed as a true artistic, technological and digital innovative path on a European scale. Thanks to its assimilating capability, Terry Riley’s IN C (without a conductor and whose interpretation depends on the listening between the musicians) constituted the artistic center of the project. This work, chosen for its sequenced constituent structure, allowed to test an interactive and creative pedagogical method. The pedagogical team partners were totally involved and actively took part to the project. Before the Nathalie Négro organised workshops took place, the pedagogical partners worked with their students in order to elaborate original ways of restitution. The 3 concert-performances of IN C, that have accompanied every stage of the project, have allowed more than 70 young musicians to perform in a professional environment in front of an audience of more than 1.500 people. Some helping digital devices have been developed within the project in order to consolidate the collaborative exchanges and to equip the partner establishments with lasting digital softwares allowing them to work at distance during the meetings. In this way, the creation of a digital platform embedding an instrumental data bank allowed to create a common base and to build a long-term community around this project. The LoLa software allowed the realisation of real time-at-distance concerts on a European scale: a première. This cutting-edge technology is definitively installed thanks to our cooperation and will work as a starting point for new long-term projects. The production of a documentary by Anne Alix shows the great number of challenges that project faces and will ensure the publishing of the results. This adventure that gathered 6 European harbor cities, Marseilles and Dunkirk in France, Athens in Greece, Ostende in Belgium, Trieste in Italy and Rostock in Germany, 8 conservatories/schools of music/universities, 3 research centers and an establishment of artistic production increased the competences of the entire collective. The other elements who participated to the success of this project are the high level of technological development, its main goal represented by the presence of young musicians and the public events like the concerts or the final event on a European scale.