Jean-Jacques Birgé

Jean-Jacques Birgé (born 5 November 1952) is an independent French musician and filmmaker, at once music composer (co-founder of Un Drame Musical Instantané with which he recorded about 30 albums, as well as for movies, theater, dance, radio), film director (La nuit du phoque, Sarajevo a Street Under Siege, The Sniper), multimedia author (Carton, Machiavel, Alphabet), sound designer (exhibitions, CD-Roms, websites, Nabaztag, etc.), founder of record label GRRR. Specialist of the relations between sound and pictures, he has been an early synthesizer user and with Un Drame Musical Instantané, an 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, Birgé has become a sound designer in all multimedia areas and interactive composition.Hardly classifiable musically, he may be likened to composers such as Charles Ives, İlhan Mimaroğlu, Frank Zappa, René Lussier, Francois Sarhan, Jonathan Pontier, Jim O'Rourke or John Zorn. Birgé's compositions follow cinematographic syntax more than the laws of harmony and counterpoint.

He has been writing a daily blog since 2005 on Mediapart, with more than 5400 entries so far. After his studies at Idhec (Institut des hautes études cinématographiques, now La Fémis), 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 GRRR (Defense de features on the famous Nurse with Wound list) and in 1976 the group Un Drame Musical Instantané (with Bernard Vitet and Francis Gorgé. He composed for movies (I. Barrère, D. Belloir, D. Cabrera, P. Desgraupes, P. O. Lévy, P. Morize, F. Reichenbach, F. Romand, Jacques Rouxel, R. Sangla, M. Trillat, la Cinémathèque Albert Kahn...), dance (J. Gaudin, Karine Saporta...), photography (Arles), theater, radio, and records about 30 albums. On stage, he plays live to silent movies (26 since 1976) 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 (issued on DVD with the reissue of the cult-record défense de), 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 Le sniper 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 (Il était une fois la fête foraine, The Extraordinary Museum, The Laying of the Hands, Passerelle, Le Siècle Métro, Jours de Cirque, L'argent, Révélations, Monuments aux morts, Carambolages, French Pavilion Aïchi World Fair...), websites (BDDP-TBWA, Laurent-Perrier, Ville de Lyon, Compagnie Générale des Eaux, Rencontres Numer, Determinism, Else, Virtools, Adidas, Ptits reperes, Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Musée de l'Immigration...), and CD-Roms (At the Circus with Seurat, Fenêtre sur l'Art, Europrix 98, AZ, Firmenich, Le DVD-Rom du Louvre, Le Grand Jeu, Sethi et la couronne d'Egypte, Mr. Men series, 9 Cahiers Passeport, 4 Salto & Zelia, Domicile d'Ange Heureux...), he asserted himself as a multimedia author with Carton (Enhanced-CD where an original game refers to each song), Machiavel (interactive video scratch of 111 loops, with Antoine Schmitt), and Alphabet, created with Frédéric Durieu and Murielle Lefèvre from Kveta Pacovska's book for children (Grand Prix Möbius International 2000, Prix Multimédia de la SACD 2000, Coup de coeur Trophées SVM Mac, Prix de la meilleure adaptation au Festival de Bologne en Italie, La Mention Spéciale au Salon du Livre de Jeunesse à Montreuil, First Prize CineKid en Hollande, GigaMaus en Allemagne, First Prize Package MMCA au Japon, et aux USA : Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Platinum Award 2002, Parents’ Choice Silver Honor 2001, Discovery.com Award of Excellence 2001, Software Magic Award Parenting Magazine 2001, Children’s Software Review All Star Award 2001, Choosing Children’s Software Best Pick 2001, Best Software Pick Edutaining Kids.com 2001).

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 (on-line et off-line). He collaborates on the creation of sites lecielestbleu (with F.Durieu) and flyingpuppet.com (with Nicolas Clauss).

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 ...

Somnambules, together with Nicolas Clauss and Didier Silhol, won the Special Prize of Jury Senef 2003 (Seoul Net Festival), Prix de la Création Nouveaux Médias 2004 (Vidéoformes), 1st Prix France Telecom R&D Oone (Art Rock Festival), Prix SACD de la Création Interactive 2004, Prix ARS Electronica Net Vision / Net Excellence Honorary Mention 2004 (Austria) and is nominated among the 5 strangest sites at Yahoo! Best of 10 Years.

Boum! (Les inéditeurs) gets Fiction Award – Special Mention at BolognaRagazzi Digital Award 2016.

Besides his daily blog, 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 Les Portes (Doors, interactive video installation with Nicolas Clauss) and Nabaz'mob (opera for 100 smart rabbits with Antoine Schmitt for which they receive Ars Electronica Award of Distinction Digital Musics 2009).

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 (turntables), Vincent Segal (cello), Antonin-Tri Hoang (alto sax, bass clarinet), Sacha Gattino (misc.)... 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 (2015), Grand Palais, Panthéon and Palais de Tokyo (2016), Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie (2016-2018)...

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 (1952-2052). In 2020, the CD Perspectives for the 22nd Century follows this utopian path. In 2021, he recorded Fictions LP with saxophonist Lionel Martin, and in 2022 he reformed Un Drame Musical Instantané with Francis Gorgé and writer Dominique Meens. In 2020 and 2023 the 3 CDs Pique-nique au labo features 48 guests.

Site drame.org offers 179 hours of unissued free downlable music, plus a random radio.