Jean-Jacques Birgé


Jean-Jacques Birgé is an independent French musician and filmmaker, at once music composer, film director, multimedia author, sound designer, founder of record label GRRR. Specialist of the relations between sound and pictures, he has been one of the early synthesizer players and home studio creators in France in 1973, and with Un d.m.i. the initiator of the return of silent movies with live orchestra in 1976. His records show the use of samplers since 1980 and computers since 1985.
Since 1995, he has become a sound designer in all multimedia areas and interactive composition.
Hardly classifiable musically, he may be likened to the encyclopedist current, such as Charles Ives, İlhan Mimaroğlu, Frank Zappa, René Lussier, Francois Sarhan, Jonathan Pontier or John Zorn who are mostly self-taught composers. His compositions follow cinematographic syntax more than the laws of harmony and counterpoint!
He has been writing a daily blog since 2005, actually on Mediapart, with more than 4500 articles.

Biography

After his studies at Idhec, Jean-Jacques Birgé is filled with a passion for images and sounds, and particularly for their potential to produce sense and create emotions. Birgé considers sound as a counterpoint to pictures and dialogue, an off-stage landscape and a wide opened window to imagination.
In 1975 he founded the record label and in 1976 the group Un Drame Musical Instantané, dance, photography, theater, radio, and records about 30 albums. On stage, he plays live to silent movies as well as improvising or producing multimedia shows. For "Le K" with Richard Bohringer he was nominated at the 9èmes Victoires de la Musique.
As a moviemaker, 20 years after La nuit du phoque, he directed Vis à vis : Idir et Johnny Clegg a capella. He received a BAFTA and the Jury Award in Locarno 1994 collectively for Sarajevo: a street under siege, and his short was shown in more than 1000 theatres.
A specialist for realtime synthesis music instruments, he has always lived among new technologies which offer the possibility of conceiving strange and iconoclast objects. Simultaneously to his work as a sound designer for exhibitions-shows, websites, and CD-Roms, he asserted himself as a multimedia author with , , and , created with Frédéric Durieu and Murielle Lefèvre from Kveta Pacovska's book for children.
With this CD-Rom he inaugurated a new direction of work based generative action and interactivity which lets the player discover a new interpretation each time. He collaborates on the creation of sites and .
For lecielestbleu.com he received the Prix SCAM 2002 of the Best Internet Site meilleur site and the NarrowCast Content Award 2002... For Ulchiro on flyingpuppet.com he received the Prix du Centre Pompidou FlashFestival 2002...
, together with Nicolas Clauss and Didier Silhol, won the Special Prize of Jury Senef 2003, Prix de la Création Nouveaux Médias 2004, 1st Prix France Telecom R&D Oone, Prix SACD de la Création Interactive 2004, Prix ARS Electronica Net Vision / Net Excellence Honorary Mention 2004 and is nominated among the 5 strangest sites at Yahoo! Best of 10 Years.
Boum! gets Fiction Award – Special Mention at BolognaRagazzi Digital Award 2016.
Besides his , Birgé writes in many magazines and teaches the relation between sound and pictures.
He designed the sound of Nabaztag, the smart rabbit.
His last artworks are and .
After CD Etablissement d'un ciel d'alternance, a duo with writer Michel Houellebecq, he produces dozens of online albums.
He currently plays with Amandine Casadamont, Vincent Segal, Antonin-Tri Hoang, Alexandra Grimal, Fanny Lasfargues, Edward Perraud, Birgitte Lyregaard, Linda Edsjö, Sacha Gattino and video artist Jacques Perconte. One of his last show uses the famous Oblique Strategies game of cards with musicians such as Médéric Collignon, Julien Desprez, Pascal Contet and many others.
His last participations to exhibitions feratured Musée du Louvre, Grand Palais, Panthéon and Palais de Tokyo, Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie...
In 2018, he plays at the closing of La Maison Rouge with Vincent Segal, Antonin-Tri Hoang and Mexican artist Daniela Franco. And he produces the CD The 100th Anniversary of Jean-Jacques Birgé . In 2020, the CD Perspectives for the 22nd Century follows this utopian path...
Site drame.org offers 158 hours of unissued free downlable music, plus a random radio.

Works

Records

Directing

With UN D.M.I.