About the IPEM archive

This archive mainly consists of two large entities: first the ca. 1000 magnetic tapes that make up the IPEM-tape archive in strict sense, and second the tape archive collected by the Belgian composer Louis De Meester containing almost the same number of tapes. Besides these, some smaller collections are included, such as tapes from the personal archives of important pioneers of electronic music in Flanders: Lucien Goethals and Norbert Rosseau.

The main body of the archive has been established in the periode 1963-1987. In this period the IPEM functioned as a collaboration between the University and the Flemish Radio (the former BRT, now VRT): Ghent University was interested in scientific research into the possibilities of electronics in the analysis and synthesis of sound. The BRT, from her side, was interested by the radiophonic applications of this research and in the production of functional music. In this way, artistic creativity and scientific research could be combined in one and the same institute.

All the musical productions realized in the studio for electronacoustic music of the IPEM are stored in the archive, together with concert recordings (many of them from the successful series of 'IPEM-concerts' with contemporary music), and recordings of other contemporary music, collected for musicological study. Apart from this, the archives contain soundtracks and jingles realized at the IPEM for radio and television, together with 'building material' (concrete sounds) for sonorization. Finally, the scientific activities of the IPEM also left their trace in the archive: recording of lectures, interviews and analytical concert introductions.

However, also this unique audioarchive has been unable to resist time and technological progress: the magnetism of the tapes dissappears gradually, together with the tape recorders. Thus the need to conserve the archive and to transfer it to an easily accessible, digital format became urgent.