Last Jan­u­ary, Eno­ra Labidurie and Car­men François, stu­dents in Mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing, won the Radio France sound design prize for their mul­ti­chan­nel Olympic Games jin­gle, organ­ised for the first time dur­ing the inter­na­tion­al bien­ni­al Le Mans Sonore.

The jin­gle lasts just a few sec­onds and will be broad­cast on Radio France as a pre­am­ble to pro­grammes devot­ed to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. The mul­ti­chan­nel sound cre­ation devised by Eno­ra Labidurie and Car­men François, Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing stu­dents at the UTC, won over the jury and was award­ed the Radio France Sound Design Tro­phy, pre­sent­ed for the first time at the inter­na­tion­al bien­ni­al event Le Mans Sonore last Jan­u­ary. This was a great recog­ni­tion, and a real chal­lenge that the two UTC stu­dents tack­led with fly­ing colours as part of their DS01 Sound Design course in the autumn. «This com­pe­ti­tion was a real plus in terms of our course. We had strict spec­i­fi­ca­tions, with no recog­nis­able vocals or har­mon­ic sounds,» explains Car­men François. Move­ment, momen­tum and ener­gy were the three key words we were giv­en to cre­ate a con­cept. Eno­ra is a great design­er. As for me, I’ve been mak­ing music since I was a child and that helped me to for­malise the sounds we cre­at­ed, lay­ered, refined and worked on in the stu­dio. The line may seem com­plex but it’s still very under­stand­able. The soft­ware we used helped us to grasp the notion of perception.

For Nico­las Dauchez, Direc­tor of the Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing depart­ment, and co-ini­tia­tor with Arthur Givois of the Acoustics and Vibra­tion for Engi­neers spe­cial­ty course, and sound design­er and musi­cian Christoph Har­bon­nier, of the Acoustics and Vibra­tion for Indus­tri­al Design Engi­neer­ing spe­cial­ty course, «this com­pe­ti­tion was an oppor­tu­ni­ty to apply our knowl­edge in real time and space, which best suit­ed our project. Cre­at­ing sounds means meet­ing a set of spec­i­fi­ca­tions, defin­ing your inten­tions, work­ing on your vocab­u­lary… First you have to sketch out the sub­ject, then clas­si­fy a score of events over time accord­ing to dif­fer­ent fre­quen­cies, draw up a sound guide and think about how to imple­ment it. In their cre­ation, Eno­ra and Car­men have, for exam­ple, imag­ined the “sound” of the Olympic flame. It means some­thing and it makes sense. Their spon­tane­ity and fresh approach won over the jury. Com­pet­ing against spe­cial­ist engi­neer­ing schools and pro­fes­sion­als, it was a bit of a sur­prise and quite incred­i­ble». Between now and April/May, the duo, whose skills have proved to be high­ly com­ple­men­tary, will vis­it the Radio France stu­dios to rework their cre­ation so that it can be broad­cast. UTC female engi­neers “in the start­ing­blocks”, so to say !