Salute to FM3′s Buddha Machine in all its incarnations

Posted on January 22, 2009 in: Business, Life|Post Comment
I love brilliant ideas, especially when they work.

buddha1FM3 is a group of two Beijing-based musicians, Christiaan Virant and Zhang Jian, who produce electronic ambient music. A few years ago, they hatched an idea that brought their creation to a worldwide audience, far from the walls of trendy art galleries: the Buddha Machine.

The Buddha Machine looks like a transistor radio. It sounds like one, too. Except that the sound from its speaker isn’t a radio signal, but instead one of nine FM3 ambient audio compositions. All the pieces are under a minute; some under ten seconds. Once selected, a composition repeats indefinitely.
The compositions are best described as quiet and contemplative. It’s ambient music. It’s more than white noise, and it frees you from urban distractions: the unwanted sounds of traffic and office machines. The compositions differ from whale songs or wave sounds; much as I love the seashore, recorded or synthetic sounds from nature strike me as out of place in the bustling city.
buddha2The Buddha Machine is a marketing masterpiece.
It’s a content-delivery system: it allows FM3 to monetize their compositions. I doubt that even ringtone enthusiasts would pay for the ambient compositions, but many will gladly pay $20 –even €20– for the Buddha Machine.
It’s also a self-selling system. You can’t help but notice a Buddha Machine or to ask, “What’s that?” And once you’ve become acquainted with the Buddha Machine, you want to get one for yourself and to tell others about this nifty device.
And it’s global in scope. The composition and boxes are made in China, but win over consumers everywhere.
Buddhamachine2.0 New incarnations of the Buddha Machine recently appeared.
FM3 came out with a version 2.0, with new compositions, softer colors, and pitch control (whatever that is: the Buddha Machine is emphatically lo-fi).
A Buddha Machine app for the iPhone diversified the product offering: you can have a Buddha Machine on your iPhone (if you have one).
And Zendesk came out with the FM3 Buddha Machine Wall. This is a web-based, virtual wall of 27 Buddha Machines. It won me over with its ability to play several compositions simultaneously. This is a great effect because the compositions vary by length, so there’s both repetition and novel combinations. (Apparently Buddha Machine users have been doing this for years with the physical Buddha Machines.)
Finally, FM3 made available downloads of its loops, for free: you can pick up the compositions, put them on a music player set to repeat, and enjoy the sounds of the Buddha Box anywhere.
From this happy customer, best wishes to FM3 and the Buddha Machine for continued success! (And praise too for FM3′s beautiful web site, in Chinese and in English.)

Obama in France

Posted on January 21, 2009 in: Current Affairs|Post Comment

Obama fascinates French people, and this popular fascination keeps popping up in remarkable ways.

Obama's noteworthy speech, A More Perfect Union, delivered in Philadelphia last March, was promptly translated into French (by journalist François Clémenceau) and published as De la race en Amérique. (The French title brings Tocqueville to mind, which is fine but not what Obama was aiming for.)

After the book, A More Perfect Union now graces Paris stages as a theatrical presentation. It's not really a play, but instead a dramatic reading. Vincent Byrd le Sage and Gilles Bertrand have reworked the translation, and José Pliya directs.

A More Perfect Union had its Paris debut at the Théâtre du Rond-Point Tuesday, coicinciding with Obama's swearing-in. The production moves on to another venue, the Lavoir Moderne Parisien, for a one-month run.

The Raphael Levy Affair

Posted on January 19, 2009 in: Books|Post Comment
Raphaël Lévy, a cattle trader from a town in Lorraine, set out for Metz on 25 September 1669 –340 years ago– to buy some provisions to celebrate the Jewish New Year.
The same day, three-year-old Didier Le Moyne disappeared in the early afternoon. He was never seen again, and his body was never found.
But witnesses swore that they saw the child bound to Lévy’s horse.
An investigation was carried out. Lévy was incarcerated in the Metz prison in October and put on trial in January. The court promptly found Lévy guilty of murder and sentenced him to death. After being tortured –the justice system placed much importance on a confession, although Lévy maintained his innocence until the end– Lévy was burned at the stake.
In this history, political scientist Pierre Birnbaum (whom I’d met more than 20 years ago, when researching French administrative law) meticulously traces the miscarriage of justice –Lévy’s actual innocence seems certain today– and the environment in which it occurred.
The history has all the elements of a police procedural, and is a good detective story. Of course, the story told is a botched investigation and a procedurally warped trial.
The broader themes of the Raphaël Levy affair captured my imagination. Birnbaum’s interested in anti-semitic accusations of “ritual murder”, but his work makes clear that this affair was neither a Russian-style pogrom nor ordinary anti-semitism.
The Raphaël Lévy affair is noteworthy, in part, because it was exceptional. There hadn’t been a case like the Raphaël Lévy affair in France for more than a century. Jewish subjects under Louis XIV enjoyed the crown’s protection. And Louis XIV (“l’Etat, c’est moi”) hardly counts as a weak king.
At the time of the Raphaël Lévy affair, Lorraine was on the French periphery, the edge of the kingdom. If I follow Birnbaum, the relative novelty of royal authority left considerable power in the hands of the clergy, which in the midst of the Counter-Reformation was militant, and quick to sound anti-semetic themes.
This may be true, but I see another theme, and a parallel. Birnbaum shows us that people in the Lorraine harbored intense fears of sorcery. Witchcraft trials were common, more so than in other parts of France. There’s an argument to be made that Raphaël Lévy was a scapegoat –a convenient suspect–that reveals a deeper question: what were the people of Lorraine so afraid of?  Here, I see a stunning parallel with the Salem witch trials in colonial New England (in 1692).
I’m posting on this French-language academic history in the hope of inciting some interest from an English-language publisher or filmmaker.

Stereotypes are Barriers to be Demolished

Posted on January 16, 2009 in: Current Affairs, Europe|Post Comment

Laughter and fun came into my life this week from an unexpected quarter: the Justus Lipsius building in Brussels.

This building, a nondescript modern structure with offices and an atrium, houses the Council of the European Union. After France, the Czech Republic now holds the rotating Council presidency. To commemorate this and to illustrate its “Europe Without Barriers” motto, the Czech presidency installed a large sculptural work, Entropa, in the Justus Lipsius atrium. As the Czech presidency explains in its press release on the installation:

“Entropa is the joint work of 27 artists, each one from a different Member State. Each object depicts one Member States using common stereotypes or prejudices. The Presidency commissioned the artists without any restrictions and they were free to create any object they liked.”

The work is depicted here, on site, at its inauguration, in the presence of Czech artist David Cerny. It resembles a kit for making a model (airplane or boat), with plastic parts attached to a large frame. Entropa’s framing element is in EU blue, and each of the 27 EU Member States is depicted as a part of the model; each part reflects and pokes fun at national stereotypes.
stereotypes
When Entropa was unveiled earlier this week, Czech Deputy Prime Minister Alexandr Vondra spoke about what made it special:

“Sculpture, and art more generally, can speak where words fail. In line with the Czech Presidency motto a ‘Europe Without Barriers’, we gave the 27 artists the same opportunity to express themselves freely, as proof that in today’s Europe there is no place for censorship. In return we got an uncommon, yet common piece of art. I am confident in Europe’s open mind and capacity to appreciate such a project.”

Vondra’s comments hit the mark, because while some of the scultptural elements are simply funny, others seem abrasive:
  • The UK is absent, its assigned space empty;
  • France is represented by a banner reading “On Strike!”;
  • Denmark is depicted by an assembly of Lego bricks;
  • Sweden is represented by a flat Ikea box;
  • Romania is shown as amusement-park Dracula Land;
  • The Netherlands are represented by minarets poking up from a flooded plain;
  • Greece is shown to be on (forest) fire;
  • Bulgaria is represented by so-called Turkish (hole-in-the-floor) toilets.

This was reportedly too much for Bulgarian authorities, who apparently lodged a diplomatic protest with the Czechs.

There’s more to the joke, as it turns out that Entropa is not a collective work, but instead the creation of a lone Czech artist, David Cerny. Cerny not only created the sculptural elements, but also brought to life an impressive –but imaginary– band of European artists for the project. For each artist, he invented a name, insightful comments on the artwork, and a listing of shows and exhibitions. Allof this material is contained in a catalogue that, for me, rivals the sculpture in its humor and craftsmanship. Apart from having imagined art and artists, and having penned 27 national explanations (many of which are funny), Cerny also shows lots of humor towards the art world and delivers a humorous rebuke to pretentious artists.
Press reports all seem to relay the professed shock and surprise of the Czech authorities upon learning that Cerny alone created Entropa. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and am sure that no one involved seriously intended to carry out a deception, but the brief quotations above suggest to me the possibility that Czech authorities were in on the joke.
And no one seems to have commented on the pun. Entropa is a variation or inversion of “Europa”, Europe’s founding myth and an enduring source of art, but also a variation of “entropy”, a state or tendency to disorder.

Yes we can

Posted on January 15, 2009 in: Current Affairs|Post Comment

soldesyeswecanMessages from the Obama campaign continue to thrive in France.

In the midst of the winter sales frenzy, I saw this poster at Jennyfer, a clothes store chain that targets teenage girls.
Jennyfer store display windows feature the poster, but what I remarked first was its reliance on the “yes we can!” slogan. Look for the Jennyfer name as long as you want, you won’t find it on the poster. The visuals also tell you nothing about Jennyfer merchandise, except that it’s for girls.
The emphatic slogan certainly recalls the Obama campaign, but it also expresses hopefulness with respect to shoppers’ purses or wallets. I snapped the photo at an angle, because the front of the poster was blocked by stickers proclaiming 70% Off! and Exceptional Savings!
The asterisk after “yes we can!” does not point a qualification, but only to a French translation, visible (and almost legible) at the bottom left corner of the poster.

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