shobus diary

random, classics and not so classics, cool and uncool -

william gaddis "jr"
stanley elkin "the macguffin"
curtis white "memories of my father watching TV"
john hawkes "the cannibal"
don delillo "ratner's star"
brian evenson "altmann's tongue"
guy davenport "tatlin!"
dave eggers "you shall know our velocity!"
w.t. vollmann "the rifles", "you bright and risen angels"
thomas pynchon "vineland"
david foster wallace "infinite jest"
richard powers "gain"
john barth "the sot-weed factor"

Today's experiment :
The ice cube as timer in the Sauna.
(In big shopping mall sento
w/ electric bath, high and big shower, massage water jet, ice and fire.. but no soap for free nor any Yakuza - maybe one light Sumo.)

We need to apologize for the serious lack of content and media updates these last days - we performed in Omi Achima for a marvellously quiet session in the dark garden of a very old shrine, then for/with children during a serious Warabimochi Party organized by Phirip (see Mehdi's pics), and today, in the crazy shaped buildings of the Yoro Tenmei Hantenchi Park (we could have played just anywhere but a huge thunderstorm forced us into finding proper sheltering places - Davide and I played a nice droning piece, then organized an anti-rain demonstration outside with two very loud megaphones and even got some followers in the audience). Again, vids and sounds are being prepared for full archive experience, and the upload problem shall be solved soon enough as we're in Iamas again and there is wifi network even in our tatami dormitories.

YOYO-chan joined us!!!!
Day off ... We climbed the 800 steps to reach a gorgeous shrine in the mountain..

yesterday's performance was in my opinion the most satisfying performance we did. the shrine where we performed had great sounds to offer (bells, wells, sinks, insects),and we had found a really good and inspiring spot for the performance ( some kind of mini-side-temple with small stone cows statues). we played for maybe 25 minutes, surrounded by the suzumoshis singing with us, the temple people didn't seem to be too angry (this was a guerilla no permission performance) and the thunder and rain arrived just at the end of the show, as intended. it's the first time i can listen to my solo track (we all record our personal/private direct output and the result is very very different from what we hear when we are play together, obviously) and i think it's ok. it's hard for me to think of the patch as of a solo instrument. and anyway i don't like to play solo otherwise because i find it boring.
my personal pick.

unfortunately the minidisc only recorded the first 6 minutes... :-(

there are some nice pics by Midori san on her flicker thing;

also, if you happen to be craving for some media about our latest performances in Osaka and Kyoto, please note that they're just waiting for some proper network to be uploaded. sorry about the delay.

...has been updated and video format modified after many of you said they couldn't see it ...
so please check it here

Small city with very nice people. We played portable PA with the Semi in a nice temple, then we joined the Walabi mochi workshop by Phirip that took place in an "art brut" galery and performed a second time portable PA.
Thank you Hitomi for giving me this cute T.shirt.

We went to the Golden temple (definitely less beautiful than the Silver temple)... We took a walk in the streets of Kyoto and went to the University of Fine Arts.
At night, we played a live evening in Tranqroom, I performed as MINITORI, Midori + Minifer and Bon-chan joined for the last song (Chotto dong dong karaoke).
Thank you everybody for coming that night, and special thanks from me to Makiko for coming one more time!

they all started by saying "hey let's play something more quiet and discreet" but within five minutes the big loud noise machine was running again. mehdi was playing some distorted reggae music through his PA, accompanied by the great sounds of the great circuit bent texas instrument. davide didn't want to play loud so he spent some time isolated in the elevator, playing some elevator music , odot and midori were also playing high volume walking aroud the shopping mall, she humming in her saxophonevoicechangertoy, he patching it all through his laptop.

at first i thought it was disapointing that they didn't stick to the original less gerilla-oriented and more quiet intent , and instead were just making noise in a mall and scaring people away. but once they went into the street, some amazingly beautiful moments came out, one guy on his bike seemed to be really fascinated and followed mehdi and davide for some time. those PAs really have a great sound once you put the volume up. they tend to distort everything in a very musical way, too bad we can't record that properly.

so in the end it's a good thing that we are unreliable people.

kyoto style

we're enjoying a nice nerdie evening at kawarasaki takamitsu's house, as mehdi and davide are kind of forcing him into downloading wolfenstein enemy territory to play with him and use his wifi network, and i'm all drunk with beer and shochu (davide noticed because i'm not using capital letters to write this post) and we're listening to some lousy idm playlist on kawaraski san's ipod. i just felt like writing a very few words about this afternoon's performance in kawaramachi dori and shinpukan mall (which was designed by enzo piano, by the way), which was absolutely wonderful. midori joined us, as well as masanobu, and we had the amazing surprize to come across bon chan, our very good friend from paris who'd come to meet us but was not quite sure it would actually happen. something like the least predictable i.e. best of surprizes, ever. very friendly, screamy, funny session if i must speak for myself - midori and i shared a portable PA, she used some kind of stupid toy electronic voice transformer in the shape of a saxophone and i used nao's patch to process her hilarious noisemaking. i think i hadn't had this fun making sheer noise since the very first MEC session. midori san is some crazy girl, i can tell you. please check out the forthcoming vid, shot by stephane, in the next future.

... and probably will never be i guess ... So many things to see notice (miss)understand and enjoy.
Today : portable PA in a small mall, quite noisy performance, and then went in the streets for walking portable PA ... Interesting interactions, our circuit bender / nanolooper Kobejin friend Masanobu Shibao and Midori-chan joined.
Merci Bon-chan et Isa d'être venue!
Thank you Yoshi-san!

Active Suspension's ally Viktor Sjöberg mentions us in his ever so nice blog. Takk someket!

There's this thing with Japanese girls. They're all so pushy and frontal when they want to get to know you, so why do they all turn up so shy and unsteady and offendable when you get to open up to them?

WHY WHY WHY do we always have to get used to THINGS

even JAPAN?

I don't
I don't
I don't
I don't
want to get used to Japan.

if i were to be completely honest, i would show you pictures of people sleeping, upload MP3s of the stupid songs we (mehdi and I) sing all the time ("la chanson du petit poulet") and i would quote the voice-over that constantly runs in my head.

dès que je ferme les yeux je vois la même demoiselle, qui n'a pas vraiment de visage, mais beaucoup de traits

cette nuit j'ai rêvé que tu m'en voulais à mort parce que j'avais raté ton anniversaire

j'aimerais arriver à ne parler qu'en onomatopées doublées

j'aimerais être tout devant manipuler des choses qui n'existent pas encore et qui ne ressemblent à rien et pas encore à ces affreux noeuds filandreux lumineux qui sont des algorithmes si savants et qui finissent en fonds d'écran

pourquoi est-ce que je lis tous ces gestes tout comme un manque de générosité pourquoi est-ce que j'ai tant besoin qu'on me donne des choses

est-ce que je suis vraiment épuisé ou est-ce que je suis juste très fatigué

tiens nous sommes déjà arrivés à Kyoto

Yesterday was semi-off, with a little lecture at ATR - something like we lo-tech shoboys and our trivial concern with actual people and actual interaction vs. the crazy supersmart researchers - and some nice demos of robots, post-feedback programs, virtual life making midi-driven music etc. (my mind kept coming and going between what was being said and a lot of other secret things I might tell you of one day). See the other guys' posts about this, will you? Most of all, I was eager to leave and take the train to Nara, which has been this huge dreamy spot ever since I saw that film by Naomi Kawase, plus there was a lantern festival going on, the Nara To-Kae. Eventually, after many talking, we managed to leave and, oh boy, it was worth it. I must be thankful to the nasty clouds who were threatening enough for us not to take the PAs with us and just go there for sight-seeing sake, and remain gentle in their rain-making. We strolled in the park, then in town, which had got almost totally dark, and managed to make it a special day, and I hadn't been this excited since our arrival in Tokyo. I am a simple boy. Hopefully, we'll find some time to wander purposelessly in Kyoto too, where we're spending the next two days.

No more words, only tourist's pictures and situations.
Just sad that we spent the whole day on Lectures and not only realtime P.A. Action in Nara.
Ok it was raining & we were/are still very tired. Also P.A. is about 9Kg i guess.

I then decided to try to communicate with spirits, wherever i could find them. ( I use to do it when I was a kid & it still seems to work now, it just uses a lot of my health, age & concentration.)


















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Centre hyper technologique le matin, démonstration de robots footbaleurs et réalité virtuelle et biches et rites millénaires le soir ... Merci Rodney, Sato San, David et Yuka.

(i hope you've got a nice earworm now)

oh boy! our good lozi is feeling sick! go to the hospital, get some medicine and get better!

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Late and sleepy.
Slicky bus tatamis won't stop the largest run of rests.

Now ready for an Adavanced Telecomunication Research disturbance.

Hey dear telecom nerdy cats, let's bounce !



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One of our 3 portable PA is broken, so i stayed in the bus while Lozi went to buy a new amp and the Frenchies to perform in Osaka's streets (I wish I'd been there too...). So i looked after the exhibition in the bus and presented the Motor Karaoke installation and met nice people there. First of all almost all the Arts Aporia staff came to play karaoke and seemed to enjoy it a lot. Then, this nice Osaka circuit bender artist came with his amazing instrument (check a short video here). I could also meet Cola, an Osaka based french artist and Karl and his girlfriend (sorry I do not remember her name...).
I also met what is called here an Otaku, for the first time in my life, and a real one... The guy was carrying a case full of dolls and accessories, and two huge photo books... As he hopped on in the bus, I invited him for a motor karaoke race, amd he performed one against an Akarenga member and then went out and started to unpack all his stuff nearby the bus ... Finally he brandished a doll in front of him facing the bus and with his other hand took a picture. I asked what he was doing, and he kindly told me the puppet name was Emily and showed me his photo books full of Emily's pictures in various touristic places ... He gave me one, showing Emily in front of a sunflower field...

(i'm typing this as we're diving from osaka to kyoto , makkori running through my veins, hello robert how are you today?) i really don't know if the music we are making with the portable PA is any good. sure i enjoy making it, and it's kind of making sense sometimes when the people are interacting with us (in any way, enjoying it or hating it, as long as they react to it it's ok i'm happy), but when it's decontextualised i don't know if there is any musical value to it. i don't know if that's important too, as playing music in context is the basis of the project... but we record the music, so that means it should still be interesting afterwards (maybe the pictures we take have to be part of the recorded music)

aaaah it's so humid here in osaka, i wonder how long it will take to this country to get dry again.

kinky pet service

Yesterday: nice AS evening hosted by Osaka Arts Aporia, a great warehouse which belongs to the city of Osaka but who is as an art place by self-managed artists (actually, rehabilitated buildings are very, very few in novelty-obsessed Japan, which is very weird for us patrimoine-obsessed French people, and Osaka Arts Aporia will be destroyed in a one-year time time to be replaced by yet another ugly noisy mall). Also Laurence's final evening with us, who'll certainly be greatly missed among us Shoboys, and not only by Davide. Cute Mikiko, who'd already come to the caves in Dazaifu, was there, as my friend Midori chan, who took the train all the way from Kyoto. We also managed to make it to the sento thirty-minutes before it closed, to bathe among yankee would-be yakuzas who played dames, which was greatly needed as we hadn't washed in two days.

Today: our first wild Portable PA session ever since Tokyo, first on the Osaka Great Tempozan Wheel, then in the huge mall just nearby. Davide, Stephane, and Nathan, a.k.a I.n0jaQ, noisejunkie from Australia (whom we met thanks to this blog) played while I documented (Mehdi got stuck in the bus to look after and make animation for the MEC installation), and performed nice immersive sounds among people and across noisy shops (at one point, the noise inside got so intense that I couldn't even tell my fellows shoboys noisemaking from the screaming advertisements). It all ended in a nice invitation from the Mall authorities to go fuck ourselves and play somewhere else, as Mikiko, her friend, French musician Colin (he used to play with Costes and now plays with Satanic Porno Cultshop)joined us together with his family, unfortunately a bit late. Quite a nice fortnight in Osaka, in the end, despite Laurence's departure and the fact that we didn't see one single Yan-Cha(it stands for "Yankee Car")style car or truck. We're leaving tonight at 8 for ATR.

here are a bunch of new videos to watch from here
domotic and miniflamm concert in AWAJISHIMA, MEC concert in OSAKA and Motor Karaoke in OSAKA

fuck i don't have a digital camera i don't have a digital photo-apparat and i don't feel like writing anything even though very good moments have been lived by me.
je suis vivant et je vous aime.

We set the installation "motor karaoke" inside the bus and begin to run it with the visitors....
please check the video samples here


Motor karaoke is a scream moto race created by MEC and Ezdac, feel free to comment ...

OSAKA CASO.
Good performance, sento express (and of course Yakuzas, this time young ones).
Now tired but please TOMORROW check the big Osaka Fairy Wheel for the Portable PA performance and supersonic Osaka skyline.









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