Guibog, Sun Yizhou

"Guibog is French, born in the 70s. He used to work as a sound engineer in France, and was involved in organising outdoor electronic music events, often playing cat-and-mouse with the police. Later, he left that life and moved to China, settling in Beijing. He works as a programmer at Douban, living with his wife and three children in the hutongs of Beijing. 

 

Many years ago, I visited him at his house, where I discovered his robot collection. He had collected the circuit boards from discarded electric pianos and cassette players, pieced them together with various everyday materials, and one by one, these stationary assemblages came to life as robots. Guibog was also using circuit boards to make music. Re-powering them and short-circuiting solder points, their in-built speakers emit a stream of crackles and pops. Later these two interests merged into a passion that took on a life of its own. He created more and more robots, and also started building amorphous circuit-board monsters. When he performs, he always brings them along with him. As Guibog often says, he simply allows these things to come alive. 

In April this year, Sun Yizhou brought two Korean friends to Guibog’s courtyard house in the hutongs; I came along as well. In his workshop, which on one side opens onto a terrace, I was captivated by the sounds occurring in the room. As everybody was chatting, the robots were emitting varied sounds, some from speakers, others from mechanical vibrations, rotations, and movements. Were the people operating the robots really playing them? It seemed more like humans and robots were playing together, living side by side.