Dr. Klangendum

1. Budhhamachine – Martiansgohome. (2010)

In 2004 the China-based duo Fm3 released their first Buddha Machine, a small electronic device capable of playing a selection of 9 sound loops of varying length. It was to be followed by several updates, introducing new features, new design, or musical interventions by other musicians (one has been made by Throbbing Gristle for instance). As an artistic statement, the device was a totally new concept, offering the audience a product that was not a record but still a recording, and one which could be played at length, in various settings, according to the buyer’s will, or used as an instrument to play, as the duo presents it themselves, using several machines to orchestrate chessgame-like performances.

But the device has roots that pre-date its re-invention by FM3. It had before that been a longstanding product that was to be found in tourist shops around buddhist temples throughout China, or south-east asian countries. Similar in a weird way to the Tibetan prayer wheels, it is a mechanichal praying device that is considered as valid and efficient as an oral prayer, or a recitation, even if it is used distractly. Simply touching a wheel, or spinning it without concentration is said to bring the same benefits as actually praying or chanting. Similarly, the modern electronic buddha machine is a device that can be used by the layman, with the same effect as a real incantation. Most existing machines play various buddhist mantras, chosen among the most efficient invocations, but also, for technical reasons, chosen among the chants based on repetition, like the famous “om mani padme um” sanskrit mantra. Some are traditional songs of the Theravada lineage, sung in Pali, some are new age songs with a buddhist pretext. It is used by the faithful to soothe the mind and purify it. They function like a cybernetic version of a chanting monk, accompanying you everywhere, like a pocket choir that could be switched on and off. They can also be considered to be praying alone, indifferent to human presence or absence, like a mystic robot intoning its chant for its own salvation as much as for the universe’s.

Martiensgohome has put these buddhist robots in various situations where they can be heard chanting alone, or among themselves. They are recorded as they were overheard, amid their alien rituals. As such they celebrate alone, automatically processing avalokitesvara’s world peace, and at the same time revealing the aural architecture of the place they are singing in; their site-specific devotion shaping and modifying the perception of these places and at the same time being influenced by their sonic characteristics.
At the crossroad between a beautiful but kitsch gadget, and a “serious” religious artefact, the Buddha machine is a curiosity, a freak of nature like motor-powered praying wheels, or computer-controlled church bells, but it also possesses a great emotional power, and a great musical and artistic potential.

2. Industrial Boy – Kenji Siratori. (2006)
geluid; LG Simonis, stem; Peter Taylor.

3. Vankariem. (2011)

Een hoorspel geschreven door de Utrechtse dichter Han van der Vegt, die overigens enige jaren in Antwerpen woonde en werkte en door Piet Gerbrandy erkend werd als Vlaams dichter. Inmiddels zit hij weer hoog en droog in Wassenaar. Han van der Vegt publiceerde de dichtbundels ‘Oker’ en ‘Pilonder’ en essays over o.a. de poëzie van Rutger Kopland. Samen met Peter Holvoet-Hanssen schreef hij ‘De vegtlijnen; Pathos, kapsones en conflict’, een manifest voor dynamische, expansieve poëzie. ‘Exorbitans’, zijn epische sciencefictiongedicht over het gelijknamige ruimteschip, van ruim 1200 regels, is in mei 2004 integraal opgevoerd en was her en der als de Exorbitans Roadshow te bezichtigen. Het gedicht Vankariem is geschreven vanuit de stem, vanuit de logica van het strottenhoofd. Het is dus niet vreemd dat die stem er een hoofdrol in speelt.
Voor Vankariem bewerkte de Rotterdamse geluidskunstenaar Sasker Scheerder het ruwe materiaal van Vankariem, in weerwil van haar strenge structuur, vanuit de onderbuik.
Stemmen; Jeroen S. Rozendaal, Stephie Buttrich.