Waves and Forms

Waves and Forms
Inside Technology
edited by Wiebe E. Bijker, W. Bernard Carlson, and Trevor Pinch
A complete list of the series appears at the back of the book.

Waves and Forms
Electronic Music Devices and Computer Encodings in China
Basile Zimmermann
The MIT Press

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© 2015 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
I Culture, Chinese Studies, and STS 1
1 Introduction 3
2 An Inductive Theoretical Journey 9

Technical Objects 10
Biographical-Level Observation 16
Art as Collective Action 20
Truth, Falsity, Chinese, and Non-Chinese 23
3 Science Studies and Cultural Difference 27

From Sinology to Chinese Studies 32
The Present of Things 37
To Sum Up 45
4 Culture and Materiality 47

Waves 51
Electronic Music Devices, SNS, and Computer Encodings 54
II Electronic Music Devices in Beijing 57
5 The Band and the Roland MC-505 Groovebox 61

Sanlitun 61
China’s Firsts 64
The Roland MC-505 Groovebox 65
The Past in the Present 67
6 The Vinyl Records of Xiao Deng 73

The Dancer 73
The Vinyl Records 79
Xiao Deng and Phil 83
A DJ with Good Records 89
viii Contents
7 The FM7 Software and Xiao Deng’s “TK Remix” 93

Writing Techno Songs 93
Inside Xiao Deng’s Computer 99
Xiao Deng and Peter Krischker 101
The Blurring of Categories 103
8 Lao Dong’s Internet Connection 107

The Instructor 107
Music Work Process 110
Lao Dong and His Virtual Friends 115
Living Artifacts 121
9 Omnisequ, or The Path of Complexity 125

Max/MSP 125
Omnisequ 130
Circulation 135
Modifiability 143
10 Lao Li and the Inscriptible 149

Making Experimental Music in China 150
Observing Lao Li 154
The Flows’ Perspective 157
Inscriptibility and Modifiability 166
Unmodifiable versus Inscriptible Objects 170
III Social Networking Sites and Computer Encodings in China,

2008–2012 173
11 Beta Testing the Framework: Sinology 175

Happy Network ⺨⽫仹 176
12 Beta Testing the Framework: Science and Technology Studies 185

Computer Encodings in China 187
IV Waves and Forms 199
13 Waves and Forms 201

Plasticity and the Synaptic Trace 202
Memetics 208
Circulations 214
Baidu versus Google 216
Conclusion 220
Notes 229
References 255
Index 269
Acknowledgments
The story behind this project lasted ten years. There are definitely far too
many humans and nonhumans to thank! I still would like to try to briefly
name some of those whose input contributed directly to the birth of this
book.
This research owes a lot to my colleagues in the Faculty of Humanities at
the University of Geneva, Switzerland. Through the years, Nicolas Zufferey,
as advisor of my PhD thesis and the person in charge of our unit of Chi-
nese studies, provided invaluable help, guidance, and friendship, and he
allowed me to experiment with some of the ideas presented in this book in
my teaching. Ellen Hertz, coadvisor of my thesis, deeply shaped my under-
standing of social sciences and the way one talks about cultural issues.
Michael Lackner, my adviser during the first two years of the PhD, played
a central role in supporting my idea (somewhat unusual at that time) to
work on everyday technical objects in China, and he provided support dur-
ing difficult moments. QIU Zeqi 恙㲥⣯, my adviser at Peking University,
gave me crucial advice and criticism during the main field research. PhD
students at the Department of Sociology, especially DENG Suo 总撩 and
ZHANG Yan ⻈䅽, were amazing classmates. When it came time to turn my
messy thesis into a real book, Trevor Pinch played a crucial role in advising
me on how put my arguments into good shape, Marguerite Avery at MIT
Press and several anonymous reviewers gently pushed me at key moments.
The editing team at the MIT Press did an amazing job reviewing and polish-
ing the final manuscript.
Former studies at the Institut de Musique Electroacoustique et Informa-
tique de Genève (IMEI), from 1996 to 1999, formed my understanding of
electronic music and eventually gave me the idea of doing such research.
My teachers Rainer Boesch, Nicolas Sordet, Emile Ellberger, Pierre Walder,
Claude Jordan, and Ulrich Kohler offered to ignorant and inexperienced
young students the richest and most stimulating environment one could
x Acknowledgments
ever dream of. Sébastien Pauchon, Christian Pauchon, Marc Torrent, Oliv-
ier Doret, Thierry Simonot, Christophe Matzinger, Yanneck Salvo, Dimitri
Delcourt, Vincent Hänni, Franz Treichler, Michel Zürcher, Andrea Valvini,
the cave12, the freesound mailing list, and the online Max/MSP commu-
nity, through friendship and emulation, helped me improve my musical
and technical skills in many ways. ACR Fuchs Hanimann & Cie in Geneva
and their staff often advised me about technical issues related to electronic
music devices with exceptional passion and expertise. A hacker nicknamed
snapCASE had a profound influence on my understanding of computer
music software through the various files s/he/they put on the Internet at
the end of the 1990s, often up to one year before I would read about it in
the Computer Music Journal.
Many colleagues and friends, mostly in Asian studies and social sci-
ences, contributed through discussions about the content of the research.
As some will remember with smiles, theoretical arguments presented in the
following pages came out of inflamed discussions. Among others, I would
like to thank Mareile Flitsch, Daniela Cerqui, André Ducret, Michel Graa,
Muriel Jarp, Dalila Maggia, Yann Mauron, Yves Bennaïm, ZHU Jian 㛙‍,
Ben Kostrzewa, Muriel Bowie, Grâce Poizat, Laure Zhang, Jorg Schumacher,
Marie Buscatto, Jean-Claude Pont, Gabriel Ruget, Pierre Souyri, Pierre San-
chez, Paul Schubert, Carole Fry, Jorg Schumacher, Pierre Hagmann, Kevin
Ching, Nadia Sartoretti, HU Ping 傉⸛, Bruno Latour, Paul Clark, Dario
Gamboni, Philippe Papin, GAO Yunfei 檀ḹ梆, Harry Collins, Robert Evans,
Martin Weinel, Nicky Priaulx, and Léo Freuler. Howard Becker and Dianne
Hagaman, through their works and personal contacts, advised me regularly
with enormous generosity. Christine Jeanneret, Maya Todeschini, Antoine
Hennion, and my old friends Oliver Constable and Marc Tiefenauer took
the time to read different versions of the manuscript through the years
and to suggest many improvements. Nicolas Nova commented on various
aspects of the concept of waves and was an amazing intellectual compan-
ion during the last couple of years of research.
My father Thomas, my mother Michèle, my brother Thierry, my sisters
Leila and Julie, my uncle Kuno, Jacques, Wajd, Florence, Stéphanie, Vin-
cent, Philippe, as well as the rest of the families (with a big S!), Alessia,
Dimitri, and Emilie shared their opinions with me and provided constant
support. My cat, Balthazar, helped me remember that nothing beyond
sleeping, eating, cuddling, and scratching expensive loudspeakers really
matters and kept me sane during hard times. Mucyo and Frédéric, library
friends, are two of the nicest people I have met in my life and a great source
of motivation; more than half of the book was written with them sitting
Acknowledgments xi
next to me at the Public Library in Geneva, to which this book is dedicated.

Franco encouraged me all these years, was a great source of inspiration, and
helped me give shape to many of the arguments in the book. La Guilde,
with Bernard, Sacha and Mehran, regularly shared wise and experienced
advice. Mio and Leïla did parts of the journey with me at different times
and provided precious support and feedback on issues related to artistic
practice. Mehdi, Jane, le Yone, Philippe, and Huong, hosted me occasion-
ally in Paris through the years, allowing me to spend weeks in the beautiful
libraries of the city. Andrej helped me improve my English and kindly fol-
lowed my work through the years.
Pierre Adrien, Wenxi 㔯䅁, Pierre Micic, Caroline Grillot, Christiaan
Virant, and Sebastien Bayne guided my steps at the beginning of the
research in China. The Chinese musicians were of tremendous help dur-
ing all the fieldwork and beyond, especially Lao Dong, Xiao Deng, and Lao
Li, as well as their groups of friends. I felt humbled to have the privilege
of observing their activities, and I am grateful for the opportunity to have
spent those moments with them.
Amazing people’s agencies, embodied in technical objects (as I discuss
later in the book), also shaped this research: five Apple computers, amaz-
ingly designed, and incredible software such as OmniOutliner, OmniWeb,
OmniGraffle, Mellel (a real word processor), Evernote, Max/MSP, Sound-
Hack, GRM Tools, MetaSynth, SoundMaker, Litter Power, Argeïphontes
Lyre, SuperCollider, Dropbox, TimeMachine, Nikon and Lumix digital
cameras, Sennheiser HD-25 headphones, and Siemens and Nokia mobile
phones. The Café de Niro in Beijing was an island of calm in a moving city
in 2005–2009, and the staff was lovely. The Computer Center at Geneva
University, and especially Patrick Grespan and Richard Clerc at the Fac-
ulty of Humanities, provided extra support and technical advice, and once
found a replacement laptop for me within hours when I broke mine five
days before a deadline.
I feel much privileged that I had the opportunity to exchange with all
the people mentioned here, and I must emphasize that having their name
listed above does not imply they agree with everything in this book (actu-
ally some quite disagree).
The financial support of the Swiss National Science Foundation under grant
PBGE 1101317, from the Fonds Général and the Faculty of Humanities at
the University of Geneva, and the Société Académique de Genève, Fonds
Han Suyin are gratefully acknowledged.
xii Acknowledgments
I am also grateful to the publishers listed below for permission to reprint

materials that first appeared in other publications. Portions of chapter 11
were originally published in Basile Zimmermann, “Materiality, Description,
and Comparison as Tools for Cultural Difference Analysis,” in A Companion
to New Media Dynamics, ed. J. Hartley, J. Burgess, and A. Bruns (Oxford:
Wiley-Blackwell, 2013); reprinted with permission of John Wiley & Sons,
Inc. Parts of the study on computer encodings in chapter 12 first appeared
in Basile Zimmermann, “Redesigning Culture: Chinese Characters in
Alphabet-Encoded Networks,” Design and Culture 2, no. 1 (2010): 27–43;
reprinted with permission of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc (Berg Publishers).
I Culture, Chinese Studies, and STS
1 Introduction
In a comic strip by Dik Browne, his famous character Hägar the Horrible, the
red-bearded Viking, is at the house of Dr. Zook. Hägar is impressed by the
various devices the druid-like physician uses for his practice and intrigued
by a stone with a square-shaped, empty space carved in the middle. Mea-
sure values are indicated on the side: I at the bottom, II in the middle,
III on top. “How does it work?” Hägar asks. Dr Zook explains that the device
is used to measure the size of people and offers to show him how it works.
He then pushes Hägar into the square-shaped space. Since Hägar is far
too big to get into the tiny space, a couple of images follow where we see
the physician compressing the body of Hägar, which finally ends up
squeezed in, his back uncomfortably located on top, with his head, hands,
and feet stuck together. Dr Zook proudly comments: “You’re exactly three
feet tall!”1
Technical objects constrain what users do with them. They are not neu-
tral entities; they embody information, choices, values, assumptions, or
even mistakes that designers have voluntarily or involuntarily embedded in
the technology. As a result, we often observe discrepancies between users’
needs or expectations and what the creators originally had in mind.
Although this issue—sometimes labeled as technological determinism—
was problematized by sociologists and historians of technology a long time
ago, and even though its characteristics can be observed in everyday life
(e.g., when entering a house one generally uses a door, as there is no pos-
sibility of walking through the wall), technical objects are often viewed as
supercultural and not tied to any particular ways of living and thinking.
For instance, in observing Chinese users confronted with Roman alphabet-
embedded interfaces, such as the ASCII keyboard, as they attempt write in
Mandarin, I have heard people wonder if the Chinese script—made up of
thousands of characters—that has been used in China for three millennia,
is convenient.
4 Chapter 1
Figure 1.1
Hägar the Horrible. © HAGAR © 1973 by King Features Syndicate, Inc. World rights
reserved.
Introduction 5
In this book, I will discuss how technology creates, transmits, or sup-

presses various sorts of information. I will build upon Madeleine Akrich’s
influential concept of script in science and technology studies (STS), which
she uses to describe how designers embed their vision in the content of
technical objects (Akrich 1992).
Designers . . . define actors with specific tasks, competences, motives, aspirations,

political prejudices, and the rest . . . A large part of the work of innovators is that of
“inscribing” this vision of (or prediction about) the world in the technical content
of the new object. I . . . call the end product of this work a “script” or a “scenario.”
(Akrich 1992, 208; emphasis in the original)2
I will go beyond the notion of script and discuss how designers’ visions
of the world travel between humans and nonhumans. While examining
this question in detail, I will also attempt to provide an alternative to the
notion(s) of culture and to connect Chinese studies issues with research
methodologies from STS.
Specifically, this book develops two concepts I call waves and forms and
illustrates how they can be used to deal with the notion of cultural dif-
ference. The core idea is to consider the shape that matter takes to host
information and use it as a way to deal with materiality. To comprehend it,
think of a plate filled with grains of sand, and imagine that you use a finger
to write the letters happy in the sand. Then you erase it with your palm and
write heureux (“happy” in French). If we compare these two situations—
with the two words, in English then in French—we note that the material
content of the plate—the grains of sand—hasn’t changed much (we assume
all the grains remain in it, with none sticking to the hand of the person
writing), but the shape created by the position of each grain has changed.
In the same way that the sand is made of grains, the idea is to consider that
the shapes of the words happy and heureux are made of waves—lower-level
entities of shape. I will also use the word forms to describe aggregates of
waves one identifies for operational purposes, such as the words happy and
heureux.
In order to describe the transfer of waves from one medium to another,
I will rely on the word circulation to speak about situations in which waves’
contents are created, conserved, or dissipated. For instance, if we imagine
that we take a picture of the word heureux written in the sand inside the
plate, send it by email to a computer, and print it on a sheet of paper, we
say that the form heureux circulated from the plate to the sheet of paper. Its
content of waves remained in the sand, but it was also transferred to the
camera, the computer, and the paper (as well as various other human and
nonhuman entities on the way, but I will get back to this question later).
6 Chapter 1
In a nutshell, the strength of the binomial framework waves and forms is

that it constitutes a powerful descriptive toolkit for speaking about technol-
ogy and culture. On the one hand, the idea of waves is a positivist stance;
it aims to describe the lowest level of shape that matter can take and allows
us to measure precisely how things are shaped (e.g., the shape of each grain
and the grains’ respective positions in relation to each other). On the other
hand, the idea of forms is a relativist stance; it describes aggregates of waves,
and it allows one to identify different shapes for operational needs (the
words happy and heureux are each a different form). It allows one to provide
a detailed account of circulation processes while keeping such descriptions
grounded in data.
Most of the case studies presented in this book relate to China and con-
nect with the concerns of sinology (the traditional European science of
China). As sinologists traditionally focus on history and philology rather
than technology studies, I will rely on STS frameworks to deal with the
technical aspects of the research.
The materials used to develop the arguments and illustrate them come
from three groups of case studies. The first group, of considerably longer
duration than the two others, consists of observations of electronic music
devices I conducted in Beijing between 2001 and 2011. The second is
a study of a Chinese social networking site called Happy Network ⺨⽫仹
that I observed between 2008 and 2012. The third one is a collection of
personal, small-scale observations, collected between 2001 and 2010, that
concerns the way Chinese characters behave when they are located in
alphabet-encoded devices, such as mobile phones, Web pages, or printed
documents.
The first part of this book, which follows right after this short introduc-
tion, is a general presentation of the research. It comprises considerations
about STS and Chinese studies; I try to show how these two disciplines
share a common ground on the question of physical objects. The second
part is a presentation of the case studies involving Chinese electronic musi-
cians and their equipment. Each case discusses one technical object and its
environment, together with an analysis of how the data provides insights
on the issue of technology and cultural difference. My goal is to build,
using a bottom-up approach, an account of observations closely connected
to the data that provides enough material for sketching up the main theo-
retical argument of the book. In the third part, I test the ideas developed
during the study of electronic music devices by applying them to a case
study of the social networking site Happy Network and then to the obser-
vations of computer encodings. In the concluding fourth part of this book,
Introduction 7
the theoretical and methodological findings are summarized, and I suggest

how the arguments could be pursued in further research.
Throughout the book, Chinese studies and STS frameworks are used in
conjunction to analyze observations with a focus not on science or tech-
nology but on Chinese culture. For instance, when a Chinese DJ plays
a German techno song in Beijing, where a sociologist of science might
want to consider the agency of the German producer through the record
(together with the many other human and nonhuman agencies around it),
I am paying attention to what sinologists call the German culture inside the
vinyl disc.
When presenting the case studies, I also provide a discourse closer to
a description, as opposed to an explanation, of what I understand from
them. By this, I attempt to avoid using abstractions and, instead, tell sto-
ries, because I believe that stories often do a better explanatory job than
logical explanations can.3 These descriptions are both thin and thick at the
same time. Thin because, for each presentation, I concentrate on specific
aspects of the interactions between one human and one technical object
and deliberately neglect other interactions. Thick (in the sense defined by
Geertz [2000]) because, at the same time, I provide information about the
larger environment of each case under study, my encounter with it, and my
understanding of it, before developing a fine-grained analysis of the role
played by a single technical object I select in the observations.
In each case, my goal is to grasp the activity of one technical object with
respect to one individual in one specific situation. In this regard, it is impor-
tant to keep in mind that this book neither attempts to discuss the devel-
opmental process of a technology, nor to analyze an assemblage made of
humans and nonhumans entities interacting (although I do believe such
theoretical frameworks are useful ones, and I rely on them for producing
the thick description). Like a chemist who analyzes the content of a bottle
of orange juice and does not pay much attention to the graphic design of
the sticker on the bottle, I will focus on one small piece of data and try to
get something specific out of it.
In observing various people and situations in China, my aim is to research
the following questions: What is a technical object in today’s China? How
does it act? How to describe the relationship between “technology” and
“culture”? By contrasting the observations, I hope to come up with state-
ments that have a certain degree of generalization power.
This book can be read in two different ways. One, suitable for readers
who are mostly interested in China, is to concentrate on the observations
of electronic musicians in Beijing (part 2) as well as the Chinese social
8 Chapter 1
networking site and the computer encodings (part 3). The details of every-
day life in China are not common knowledge in the West, and I certainly
hope that this book contributes to mutual understanding between the two
worlds; for this reason, I tried to keep these sections somewhat independent
from the rest of the text. The second way to read this book is from begin-
ning to end. Read in this way, the book provides readers with an inductive
theoretical journey; in the following chapter, I will discuss what this means.
2 An Inductive Theoretical Journey
This book relies on a bottom-up, inductive style of presentation. This is

because it is partly intended for an audience interested in sinology and
Chinese studies—a community not necessarily familiar with the scientific
literature that constitutes the basis of the theoretical arguments discussed
herein. By bringing up a selection of classic questions and answers in sci-
ence and technology studies, mixed with new propositions and topics
closer to the work of China specialists, and by accumulating arguments
while moving from one case study to the other, I hope to make the overall
discourse accessible to a wider audience while simultaneously maintaining
its value for these two scientific communities.
Recent difficult experiences by local and international communities in
the Middle East, as well as in Afghanistan, Russia, China, Korea, and Japan,
to name just a few, illustrate the urgent need for adequate methodologi-
cal tools to deal with cultural difference in the present (as opposed to a
historical perspective). If I had to summarize the objective of this book
in one formula, I would say it is, on the one hand, to understand how
cultural difference can be integrated into STS research, and, on the other
hand, to figure out how sinologists can work on the present of everyday
things in China: not ancient texts, ceramics, sculptures, or paintings, but
present-day, mundane artifacts. In addition to these two goals, I also hope
that my observations dealing with electronic music will contribute to the
new field of sound studies (perspectives from science and technology stud-
ies on music production1), with a special focus on the question of cultural
difference.
The starting point of the book is materiality: the idea that there are no
immaterial objects and that everything and everyone are always closely
related to its/his/her own materiality. In this perspective, I aim to con-
tribute to the materialist turn that came during the last decade in various
scholarships as a reaction to social constructivist approaches (materialist
10 Chapter 2
return might be more appropriate, as these are old questions, and readers
will notice that I still actively rely on social constructivism). In short, Chi-
nese culture exists because there are Chinese texts, Chinese people living
and thinking, and Chinese artifacts throughout the world that constitute
its existence.
The theoretical line followed in this book is an attempt to touch on
the old dichotomy of nature versus culture through a reflection on the
idea of “culture.” The perspective is embryonic and paradoxical: embryonic
because the concept of culture has been scarcely discussed in the science
and technology studies frameworks I rely on (I will come back to this later)
and paradoxical because the concept of culture is one of the most discussed
concepts ever in the social sciences. The theoretical movement in this book
consists of sketching up the beginning of an idea while building up and
discussing its links with a selection of the existing literature in science and
technology studies and other disciplines.
As many authors in humanities and social sciences argued during the
last three decades, the separation between the two concepts of nature and
culture does not make much sense anymore, nor does any form of theo-
retical dichotomy. Most scholars agree that everything and everyone are
interrelated, and the question that remains is how to understand these
interrelations and how to use dichotomies or categories while knowing that
these are perfectible. Contemporary phenomena, such as climate change or
the development of the Internet, bring to the fore a reality that appears as
a constant mix of natural and cultural entities (see Latour 1993 for a philo-
sophical discussion on the nature/culture debate). From a methodological
perspective, after dissolving the dichotomies, the question is whether to
bring them back or how to proceed without them (see Collins and Evans
2002 for an STS-informed point of view).
Technical Objects
How does the use of technical objects influence the ways of life and ways
of thinking of humans? What is “culture” with regard to “technology,” and
vice versa? These two questions are so broad they easily take us back to the
origins of science. I will come back later to the concept of culture; for now
I will briefly focus on how this book discusses technology.
The book deals almost exclusively with artifacts as physical objects and
not with methods, ideas, or procedures. I am interested in a scientific cross-
roads where social sciences and humanities meet up on a common ground:
material culture. On the one hand, by working on technical objects such
An Inductive Theoretical Journey 11
as texts, paintings, sculptures, ceramics, or almost any kind of artifact,

the humanities have made material culture their principal object of study
for a long time. On the other hand, social scientists—sociologists of sci-
ence at the end of the 1980s in particular—developed a special interest in
nonhumans (with the debate centered on the actor-network theory (ANT)
discussed in the next section). It is this focus on the nonhuman physical
object, the cultural artifact, that is at the core of this book.
Looking at material culture with both a humanistic and a social science
perspective, one question that comes to mind is whether it is possible to
consider artifacts alone, or if it is mandatory to consider a broader network
of things and people that interact. For sinology and Chinese studies, which
benefit from a long tradition of studies based on texts, images, sculptures,
and other kinds of physical objects, a study of an artifact alone is fine.
For STS—a scholarship that argues that an object without a human being
does not mean much—a perspective limited to a technical object is not
appropriate. The sociologist of technology Wiebe Bijker, for instance, using
the history of the bicycle as an illustration, emphasized the complexity
of human beings’ internal reality, noting that the high-wheel bicycle of
the early twentieth century was at the time considered macho by some
people and unsafe by others. Bijker used these observations to demon-
strate that “there is no universal time and culture-independent criterion
with which to judge whether the high-wheeled bicycle was working or not”
(Bijker 1995, 75).
In the same way, another question at the crossroads of sinology, Chinese
studies, and STS is the difference between what relates to culture or seman-
tic content, as opposed to what relates to agency and human action. Tra-
ditionally, sinology—especially traditional sinology in Europe—has been
more concerned with the former and STS with the latter.
Because of these differences between two scientific traditions that are
equally important for the forthcoming discussion in this book, it is neces-
sary to present briefly what I mean by physical objects as an object of study.
The focus of the book relates to the old idea of technological determin-
ism.2 Not the concept that technological developments are located outside
society and develop independently of social, economic, and political forces
(an assumption that was disputed successfully by STS scholars), but the
idea that technological change can cause or determine social change. To
use rhetoric familiar to STS, I am interested in the role of technological
objects as explanans (explanations) and not explanandum (what has to be
explained). I am interested in analyzing under which conditions techno-
logical objects enter accounts as explanans—without denying that under
12 Chapter 2
different conditions they have a status of explanandum3—and how this spe-

cific cause-to-effect relation, whenever it is observable, can be understood.
Similar to the way that “interpretative flexibility” was demonstrated by
sociologists of science in battles over scientific facts (Collins 1985; Pinch
1986) and, later, by the “new sociology of technology,” which discussed
how people think of artifacts and how artifacts are designed (Bijker et al.
1987), I am interested in the flexibility of how technical objects “think” or
“interpret” people and other artifacts. It is the idea that the usage of technical
objects is open to sociological analysis, but turned on its head: not on the
human side, but on the side of physical objects. I pay special attention to
how the technical “content” of an artifact can be observed outside the same
artifact. I am not paying much attention to how it is seen through the eyes
of a user or a relevant social group. I choose to focus on how I, as a scientist,
see this content coming out in the actions of the users I observe.4
My main methodological point here is that, in a similar way to social
constructivists of technology, who used unsuccessful machines to show
that the “closure” of a technical design was the result—and not the cause—
of a machine becoming a successful artifact and that users (and nonusers)
were integral to the establishment of its meaning and success (Pinch and
Bijker 1984; Bijker et al. 1987; Bijker 1995; Oudshoorn and Pinch 2003), it
is possible to use China, as a non-Western environment, to question the
cultural content of technical objects.
Here is an illustration of how the approach works, using a common situ-
ation: a text message displayed on a mobile phone.
My Siemens 3618
In June 2004, I received a text message from Lao Dong (the musician dis-
cussed in chapters 8 and 9), on my Siemens 3618 mobile phone. In the
text message, he commented the performance of the Greek team during
the European Soccer Cup: “You’re right, they’re very stable, their defense
is awesome.”
As displayed in figure 2.1, details of the punctuation are especially inter-
esting. In the Chinese script, although the use of different types of punc-
tuation is almost as old as the script itself (about three thousand years),
the signs people use nowadays often relate to the shaping of modern Chi-
nese language at the beginning of the twentieth century, when their usage
was influenced by their Western counterparts. For instance, the juhao ⎍⎟,
“ˤ” placed at the end of Lao Dong’s comment, is the Chinese final dot
used in Mandarin today. It looks like a small circle and is graphically dif-
ferent from the small black dot used in English. It can be found in texts as
Figure 2.1
“You’re right, they’re very stable, their defense is awesome.” Segment of a text mes-
sage from Lao Dong. Beijing, June 2004.
early as those from the Song dynasty (960–1279) and seems to have been
chosen later, instead of the Western dot, because of its “visibility” 愺䚖
(ᷕ⚥⣏䘦䥹ℐḎ宕妨㔯⬎⌟ 1988, 20–21).
In figure 2.1, we see that the two commas in Lao Dong’s message are
positioned midway vertically, at the level of the center of the Chinese char-
acters on their right and left; this is often the case in Chinese texts, because
characters are supposed to be at the middle of invisible regular squares (i.e.,
one square per character).
Now, compare this sentence to another one I received on the same
phone, a couple of months before. (The lighting of the screen in figure
2.2 is slightly different because I didn’t use the internal light of the phone
when taking the photograph.)
In figure 2.2, the punctuation is Western: the commas are positioned
at the bottom of the line, as they would be for an English message. And
the final dot is a black one, different from the juhao found in Lao Dong’s
message (figure 2.1). Why are there two different punctuation systems on a
single mobile phone?
In 2003–2004, I spent about six months taking pictures of the text mes-
sages I got from people in Beijing and questioning my friends about the
various models of mobile phones they were using. I worked on a corpus
of about 600 text messages received on my Siemens 3618, from which I
selected about 150 that I then analyzed in detail. I also made comparisons
using the mobile phones of friends and colleagues—who knew about my
research and helped me to test the devices—from the Department of Sociol-
ogy at Peking University.
I eventually understood one thing: the difference in punctuation marks
depended not upon users but on the type of mobile phone that had been
14 Chapter 2
Figure 2.2
“I wish you a Happy New Year, happiness in your life, and all things be fine.” Text
message from a student friend. Beijing, January 2004.
used to write the message. A text with Western punctuation had most likely
been written using a Motorola, Samsung, Siemens or LG mobile phone,
and one with Chinese punctuation (e.g., commas located at the center of
characters, juhao, and other specificities) had most likely been written with
a Nokia or a Sony.
The explanation for these differences of punctuation marks was sim-
ple: users of the mobile phones had no choice. Each company provided,
through the internal software of the device for the input of Chinese char-
acters, one and only one system for the punctuation. In the first group,
engineers had integrated Western punctuation, available even when the
user entered Chinese characters. In the second group of mobile phones,
other engineers had integrated Chinese punctuation, available in a similar
manner whenever the user entered Chinese characters.
Upon reception, my mobile phone displayed, in the first case, a message
in Mandarin with a Chinese punctuation, and in the second, a message
in Mandarin with a Western punctuation. Using its own system of format
management for different languages (which allowed me, among other
things, to write in both English and Chinese), my phone reproduced on its
screen the nuances that had been originally programmed by the designers
of the devices used by my correspondents.
One year later in 2005, this interesting punctuation phenomenon had

already completely changed. When I went back to Beijing for the sum-
mer, new Motorola mobiles now included Chinese punctuation. Some
other phone brands did not, but the overall picture between companies
was different.
Although I don’t believe that this aspect of the design of mobile phones
in Beijing is essential to understanding mobile culture in China, from a
theoretical point a view I find it interesting for two reasons. First, it shows
that there are things related to technical objects, and to technical objects
only, that have something to do with cultural diversity. In the text message
punctuation example, it doesn’t matter much why the messages were sent
or what people said in the messages. The punctuation relates to the input
system inscribed in the device that was used to write the original text, no
matter who used it to write or what was written.
Second, the text message punctuation example illustrates the impor-
tance of something STS scholars discussed in length during the 1980s about
the agency of nonhumans (see Callon 1986 for what is arguably the first
paper of the series, with scallops playing the role of nonhumans), and what
Madeleine Akrich theorized as the script of the designer, when it comes to
cultural difference.
Using Akrich’s conceptualization (see chapter 1), we can consider that
the designers of the input system decided on the punctuation of the mobile
phones. If we schematize the process of writing a text message, we distin-
guish three steps: (1) The user writes a sign of punctuation, say a comma, (2)
the engineer decides—we note that this decision occurs before the decision
of the user who is writing on the phone, but intervenes after it—to position
this comma either on the line or midway, at the level of the Chinese char-
acters, and (3) the device on which the message is received displays it as the
result of the collaboration between the two preceding interveners (the user
of the phone and the engineer/designer of the input system).
As pointed out by Steve Woolgar, from a designer’s point of view, users
don’t necessarily know best, and “configuring the user involves the deter-
mination of likely future requirements and actions of users. Since the com-
pany tends to have better access to the future than users, it is the company’s
view which defines users’ future requirements” (Woolgar 1991, 75; see also
chap. 1, n. 2, on Akrich).
Although Akrich’s concept of script and Woolgar’s arguments about
configuring the user are useful for looking at how designers inscribe their
predictions about the world in technical objects, the framework waves and
16 Chapter 2
forms (sketched in chapter 1) provides another perspective. We can say that

the forms “Western punctuation” and “Chinese punctuation” circulate from
the mobile phone of the sender to the receiver. Other forms circulate as
well—for instance, the Chinese characters in the sentences being sent. In
these two cases—the punctuation, the characters—the circulation processes
occur with conservation: the forms’ transfer from one medium to another
modifies neither the choice of characters nor the punctuation formats.
However, interestingly, although the choice of Chinese characters can be
freely decided by the users, the punctuation format cannot.
In other words, and as I will argue in more detail later in this book, what
we observe in this type of setting is the sketch of a law of waves’ circula-
tion that relates to technology and possesses a degree of predictive power:
Whenever a technical object (1) is used and (2) its respective waves’ con-
tent cannot be modified by the user, then (3) the same waves’ content will
invariably be present in the output of the collaboration between the user
and the artifact. In Beijing, in 2003–2004, if a mobile was used to send a
text message, the punctuation would become either Western or Chinese,
according to the model of phone that sent it.
As Akrich (1987, 1992) emphasized, different cultural contexts allow
researchers to understand more about technical objects that have become
standards, where the norms by which the tools have been developed have
already disappeared from the debate.5 In other words, if I had observed
mobile phones in Switzerland, this process would probably have remained
invisible. Traveling to China to look at a mobile phone helped me under-
stand things about it.
This is basically the story of this book: observing, in China, electronic
music devices, social networking sites, and computer encodings to see what
can be learned. As in the case of the Siemens mobile phone, I observe tech-
nical objects that I’m already familiar with. Specifically, and contrary to tra-
ditional field work in anthropology, in which scientists observe and study
unfamiliar situations, I enter fields in which I already have a level of exper-
tise and am close to a full-blown participant in—I have a “contributory
expertise,” in Collins and Evans’s terms (Collins and Evans 2002). I then
rely on this existing knowledge to help me conduct analysis.
Biographical-Level Observation
In a well-known book on the sociology of art, the American sociologist How-

ard Saul Becker discusses what he calls conventions in art that, he empha-
sizes, are often embodied not only in human beings but also in physical
objects. Becker points out that shared knowledge (e.g., music chords, laws
of perspective, poetic forms) provides a point of contact between humanists
and sociologists: humanistic scholars, such as art historians or musicolo-
gists, may rely on it to explain artists’ ability to make art works that evoke
an emotional response in audiences, and express sociological ideas such as
norm, rule, shared understandings, and so forth (Becker 2008, 29–30). In
a more recent publication, Becker goes one step further by explaining how
different kinds of material (a novel, a phone book, a photograph, a map),
can be considered as reports or analyses of the functioning of society, simi-
lar to the works that sociologists produce (Becker 2007a).
In connection with Becker’s point of view on how to understand human
society, a scientific tradition close to what this book attempts to perform
is the one described by the British anthropologist Alfred Gell in his last
opus, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (Gell 1998). Gell unfor-
tunately died at the time he completed the first version of this work—
he certainly would have wanted to modify parts of the text if he had
had more time—but the rough text, written with striking intelligence, pro-
vides a particularly frank and detailed discussion of the differences among
the disciplines of sociology, cognitive psychology, anthropology, and art
history.
In short, Gell acknowledges that anthropology is a broad church only
ambiguously distinct from other disciplines such as history, sociology, social
geography, or social and cognitive psychology. He argues that “anthropol-
ogy is, to put it bluntly, considered good at providing close-grained analyses
of apparently irrational behaviour, performances, utterances, etc.” (emphasis
in the original), a task it performs by “locating or contextualizing behaviour
in the dynamics of social interaction seen as a real process, or dialectic,
unfolding in time” (Gell 1998, 10). He situates anthropological theories at
what he calls a “biographical” depth of focus and opposes it to (historical)
sociology as being often “supra-biographical” or to cognitive psychology as
“infra-biographical.”
Anthropology therefore tends to focus on the “act” in the context of the “life”—or
more precisely, the “stage of life”—of the agent. . . . This time perspective (fidelity
to the biographical) dictates just how close to and how far away from the subject
the anthropologist stands; if the anthropologist studies (say) cognition at the micro-
scale typical of much laboratory cognitive psychology, the biographical perspective
is lost and the anthropologist, in effect, is just doing cognitive psychology; converse-
ly, if the anthropologist’s perspective expands to the degree that the biographical
“life cycle” rhythm no longer delimits the scope of the discourse, he or she is doing
history or sociology. (Gell 1998, 10)
18 Chapter 2
It is this biographical depth of focus that I retain to present the case stud-
ies, wherein most observations concern individuals and their immediate
environment. I do not discuss, for instance, considerations about the state
of institutions of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) at the moment of
the observations, the development of Information and Communications
Technologies (ICT) at the end of the 1990s, or elements of Chinese cul-
ture as parts of a traditional corpus of ways of thinking and ways of living
of people in China. I focus on seizing, or rather attempting to seize, the
close interactions between Beijing electronic musicians and some of their
devices. In the case study of the social networking site, I concentrate on my
own interactions with the Web pages and how I saw the pages changing.
When discussing computer encodings, I rely on face-to-face contact with
the various software and hardware objects I encounter. I am preoccupied
with the immediate, heterogeneous network of relationships surrounding
some of the people, technical objects, and artwork I select and contrast.
Another close relation with the anthropological tradition concerns the
defamiliarization, and relativization, of the notion of “humans.” Reading
Gell’s work, one can only marvel at the similarities to publications in sci-
ence and technology studies, especially those of the actor-network commu-
nity, published a dozen years prior to Gell’s work. Intriguingly, Gell doesn’t
mention authors such as Michel Callon, Madeleine Akrich, Bruno Latour,
John Law, or Howard S. Becker (whose work was known in the sociology of
art at that time), although the approaches are strikingly close.
One reason for this absence of references to sociological works is prob-
ably that anthropology is a pioneer in dealing with nonhumans. Alfred Gell
did not need to import theoretical frameworks from technology studies.
Animism, as the attribution of life and sensibility to plants, animals, and
inanimate physical objects, always challenged anthropologists to deal with
the separation between humans and nonhumans. In his own scientific tra-
dition, Gell considers a species of anthropological theory in which “persons
or ‘social agents’ are, in certain contexts, substitute for art objects” (Gell
1998, 5; emphasis in the original). He defines his anthropological theory
of art as (roughly) “the ‘social relations in the vicinity of objects mediating
social agency’,” in which “an idol in a temple believed to be the body of
the divinity, and a spirit-medium, who likewise provides the divinity with
a temporary body, are treated as theoretically on a par, despite the fact that
the former is an artifact and the latter is a human being” (Gell 1998, 7; see
also 96).6
Although I discovered Gell’s Art and Agency after finishing this study,7
I have to confess that sometimes I suspect its influence on my analysis is
deeper than I realize. As I will discuss later, Gell’s theory on a specific type
of relation, which he uses to describe interactions between humans and
artifacts, together with his use of the word circulation and his emphasis on
“agency, intention, causation, result, and transformation” (Gell 1998, 7), are
close to the framework I establish in the book with the concept of waves.
This said, there are important differences between what I attempt to
do in this book and Gell’s perspective on art works. Mainly, I do not try
to explain why people behave as they do, and, where he discusses mostly
visual art, I rely mainly on observations of music activities. As I will con-
sider in the conclusion, the gaseous form that music often takes when it
travels through the air makes it a very unusual object of study when com-
pared to other kinds of artifacts.
Going back to the comparison between Gell and the STS tradition, gen-
erally speaking, one can say that approaches in STS at the time that Gell
wrote Art and Agency varied in being slightly anthropocentric (as in the new
sociology of technology or the social construction of technology [SCOT]) or
slightly nonhuman-centric (as the actor-network theory, or ANT, was often
accused of being). Interestingly, Gell describes his approach as “action-
centered,” and he opposes it to the alternative of a semiotic approach. He
considers the former “more anthropological . . . because it is preoccupied
with the practical mediatory role of art objects in the social process, rather
than with the interpretation of objects ‘as if’ they were texts” (Gell 1998,
6). We can see here a common ground between STS and Gell’s work—in the
blurring of the boundaries between living persons and physical objects—
by considering a network in which things and people merge seamlessly.
This similarity is most obvious if one looks at the actor-network tradition,
especially in Michel Callon’s work in the 1980s (quickly followed by Mad-
eleine Akrich, Bruno Latour, John Law, and Antoine Hennion), in which
the distinction between human actors and natural phenomena is broken
down.8 Of course, the causal agency of physical objects, of nonsocial things
and processes, played an important role in social sciences long before the
works of Gell or the STS authors. But Callon’s principle of general symmetry
(which expanded David Bloor’s principle of symmetry—I will come back to
this later) was new because of the need it expressed to pay specific attention
to the role played by artifacts.
Michel Callon, by describing networks of heterogeneous associations,
relied on terms different from those previously used by sociologists. For
him and his colleagues at the Centre de Sociologie de l’Innovation in Paris
during the late 1970s and the early 1980s, sociological and technical con-
siderations needed to be linked and not dissociated. The similarity with
20 Chapter 2
Alfred Gell’s claim that “in relevant theoretical respects, art objects are the
equivalent of persons, or more precisely, social agents” (Gell 1998, 7) can
hardly be clearer. Both series of work insist on the need for a better treat-
ment of things in social sciences (and one reason why this book discusses
the issue once again is that the debate is still going on).
So, to summarize the converging and diverging aspects, this book relies
on anthropology’s biographical depth of focus on a subject matter, which
can be called “social relationships” or “culture,” by looking at relation-
ships between humans and physical objects—but with a focus on techni-
cal objects. I agree with Gell and other British anthropologists that culture
has no existence independent of its manifestation in social interactions.
I explore how to analyze “culture” as something materially located inside
artifacts or inside human beings and along a timeline. Using frameworks
imported mainly from authors in science studies listed two paragraphs back,
I attempt to theoretically define the nature of these locations. Although I
use a framework that puts humans and nonhumans at the same level of
analysis, I also believe that there is a fundamental difference between arti-
facts and human beings, and that it can be defined if one treats both kinds
of actors in terms of the same analytical vocabulary.
Art as Collective Action
So far, I have explained that this book is about culture and artifacts, and
that both the data and the analysis are presented inductively with a close
distance between the two in order to keep theoretical arguments grounded.
I underlined the focus on physical objects throughout the study (for which
I use the word artifacts in an exclusive way), and I mentioned my choice
to work at a biographical level, anthropology-like, of observation. I also
emphasized that the analysis is not about social relationships in general
between humans and artifacts, but about social relationships between an
artifact and something or someone outside it.
In this section, I would like to briefly discuss how I ended up using this
approach. A basic idea, derived from my own practice of computer music,
is that art is about doing. Art is certainly about many things, and I wouldn’t
contradict someone who puts the emphasis on meaning, but as an amateur
composer and performer I always saw strong similarities between what I
was doing in music and what I was doing in other situations of my life.
I remember feeling uncomfortable when reading publications on art that
focused on abstract meanings or individual “genius” explanations about
the birth of works of art.
For instance, compared with my scientific activity as a specialist of China,

computer music is about testing and writing software, recording sounds,
rehearsing, and then giving a performance in front of an audience, whereas
sinology is about reading and writing, editing information, rehearsing, and
then giving a lecture in front of an audience. The difference between the
two is not very big. Besides, the audience, mostly people in their twenties,
looks the same, and the feeling of accomplishment after having either writ-
ten a song or an article is similar.
Maybe for these reasons, I have often paid attention to comparisons
between art and science. I found it interesting that Alexander Graham Bell,
in an emotional letter to his father, compared the invention of the photo-
phone to the birth of a baby (see the section titled “Male Birth and Baby
Machines” in Sterne 2003, 180–181), and that an African carver mentioned
by Alfred Gell considered he had borne children by making a mask (Gell
1998, 46). I also saw similarities between scholars who emphasized the
idea of art as an act of doing, such as Gell or Becker, active respectively in
the anthropology of art and the sociology of art, and STS scholars such as
Callon and Latour, who wrote about science in action and published their
analyses within the same period of time.9
The new sociology of technology’s founding book (Bijker et al. 1987) and
Becker’s major work on the sociology of art (Becker 2008), read together,
present strikingly similar argumentation. Both discuss their arguments in a
way that suggests that what is being discussed is not limited to technologi-
cal knowledge or art, but can be applied to other systems of professional-
ized knowledge.
In Art Worlds, Becker insists on the idea of art as collective action (Becker
1974, 2008) and the heterogeneous functioning of this kind of organiza-
tion. He demonstrates how any work of art is always the result of collec-
tive action. As mentioned earlier, Becker discusses what he calls conventions
and how patterns of forms of cooperation make art activities possible; most
interestingly, he shows how this type of knowledge is embedded in physi-
cal objects and helps people to act together. He also shows that this way of
organizing human activity is not limited to art worlds by illustrating his
arguments with, for example, conventional symbols for men’s and wom-
en’s toilets in the chapter on conventions (Becker 2008, 44).
At about the same period of time, sociologists of technology borrow
insights from the sociology of science in order to move “away from the
individual inventor (or “genius”) as the central explanatory concept, from
technological determinism, and from making distinctions among techni-
cal, social, economic, and political aspects of technological development”
22 Chapter 2
(Bijker et al. 1987, 3).10 SCOT scholars insist on using “a ‘multidirectional’

model, in contrast with the linear models used explicitly in many innova-
tion studies and implicitly in much history of technology” (Bijker et al.
1987, 28);11 Becker says art should not be treated as “relatively autonomous,
free from the kinds of organizational constraints that surround other forms
of collective activity” (Becker 2008, 39).
Here is Becker’s general statement, centered on the concept of “art
worlds.”
Art worlds consist of all the people whose activities are necessary to the production
of the characteristic works which that world, and perhaps others as well, define as
art. Members of art worlds coordinate the activities by which work is produced by
referring to a body of conventional understandings embodied in common practice
and in frequently used artifacts. The same people often cooperate repeatedly, even
routinely, in similar ways to produce similar works, so that we can think of an art
world as an established network of cooperative links among participants. . . . Works
of art, from this point of view, are not the products of individual makers, “artists”
who possess a rare and special gift. They are, rather, joint products of all the people
who cooperate via an art world’s characteristic conventions to bring works like that
into existence. . . . Art worlds do not have boundaries around them, so that we can
say that these people belong to a particular art world while those people do not. I
am not concerned with drawing a line separating an art world from other parts of
a society. Instead, we look for groups of people who cooperate to produce things
that they, at least, call art; having found them, we look for other people who are
also necessary to that production, gradually building up as complete a picture as we
can of the entire cooperating network that radiates out from the work in question.
(Becker 2008, 34–35)
Here again, where Becker illustrates the fact that his model can be used
even in the case of an individual artist such as a writer (Becker 2008, 1,
23–24, 192–194), Bijker shows how, even in the case of an individual inven-
tor, social constructivist analysis produces fruitful results (Bijker 1995,
101–197).
Another example is how sociologists of science noticed that scientists’
accounts of scientific activity were concealing the nature of the activity
that gave rise to research reports, in the same way that sociologists of art
noticed that artists often lie about their work. In many ways, the introduc-
tory remarks in Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar’s STS classic Laboratory Life
can apply to artistic activities: “The fact that scientists often change the
manner and content of their statements when talking to outsiders causes
problems both for outsiders’ reconstruction of scientific events and for an
appreciation of how science is done. It is therefore necessary to retrieve
some of the craft character of scientific activity through in situ observations

of scientific practice” (Latour and Woolgar 1979, 28–29). The necessity of
showing how craft practices are organized through in situ observations is
obvious in both fields.
I now consider briefly two older frameworks, which preceded those just
mentioned in sociology of art and sociology of technology: respectively,
the strong program of David Bloor and the grounded theory of Barney Gla-
ser and Anselm Strauss.
Truth, Falsity, Chinese, and Non-Chinese
Most of the STS publications I have discussed so far can be seen as exten-
sions of David Bloor’s “strong program.” At the beginning of the 1970s,
Bloor stated that sociologists needed to be impartial to the truth or falsity
of beliefs related to science, and that the same type of explanation had to be
used in both cases (Bloor 1976). Before then, there was a tendency toward
explaining beliefs in terms of the way in which they were perceived by
social scientists as corresponding to reality: true beliefs were true, and false
beliefs were to be explained by psychological or social factors. In Bloor’s
words,
The main feature of the Program is the so-called “symmetry postulate.” Both true
and false, and rational and irrational ideas, in as far as they are collectively held,
should all equally be the object of sociological curiosity, and should all be explained
by reference to the same kinds of cause. In all cases the analyst must identify the
local, contingent, causes of belief. This requirement was formulated in opposition to
an earlier prevailing assumption, still defended in many quarters, which has it that
true (or rational) beliefs are to be explained by reference to reality, while false (or
irrational) beliefs are explained by reference to the distorting influence of society.
(Bloor 1999, 84)
Michel Callon’s proposition of general symmetry, mentioned earlier, is a

generalized version of Bloor’s principle of symmetry. Callon states that the
same type of explanation must be used for all elements of a heterogeneous
network (devices, social groups, natural forces), without any a priori prefer-
ence given to one kind of element (Callon 1986, 1987). The same applies
to Pinch and Bijker’s arguments that sociology of technology should treat
“technological knowledge in the same symmetrical, impartial manner that
scientific facts are treated within the sociology of scientific knowledge . . .
The success of an artefact is precisely what needs to be explained. For a
sociological theory of technology it should be the explanandum, not the
explanans” (Pinch and Bijker 1984, 406; see also Bijker 1995, 75).
24 Chapter 2
Generally speaking, during that period of time, sociologists of sci-

ence and technology were getting rid of dichotomies. The idea of limit-
ing relationships to a restricted range of sociological categories had to be
abandoned (Callon 1987, 95), and problem solving had to encompass the
recognition of what counts as a problem together with the methodologies
used to solve it (Bijker 1987, 168). Today, it is largely accepted that science
and technology are studied in an integrated way without a priori distinc-
tions. Differences that may exist gain contrast during the study, and not
before doing the research.
For specialists of China, the question of symmetry and the unsettling
of binary oppositions (through the reconstruction of the practices through
which these divisions emerged) is reminiscent of a difficulty in distin-
guishing what is “Chinese” and what is not. It is a problem that is China’s
own—that is, what representations it has of itself—but it is also an issue for
scientists working in sinology.
At the moment, sinologists often rely on this a priori distinction—
Chinese versus not Chinese—to decide what is “related to China” and what
is not, which also implies what they will be studying and what they will not
be studying. If such decisions make sense at a practical level (one cannot
study everything), the closer China scholars get to contemporary China,
the more difficult this position becomes. For instance, if one considers cli-
mate change, an issue STS scholars often use as an illustration, we see how
it challenges the divisions of human and nonhuman, nature and culture,
and subject and object, but also the division of West versus China, “us and
them,” when local policies in terms of environmental protection also affect
other countries.
As I will come back to these questions later, I would like to briefly discuss
why I believe the time has come for sinologists to join, more thoroughly
than they have done until now, the scholarship of social constructivism in
interrogating the boundaries between the most foundational categories of
our scientific practice. In order to perform this task, insights from two other
traditional frameworks in social sciences, the grounded theory (GT) and the
actor-network theory (ANT), are useful.
In a nutshell, grounded theory was developed at the end of the 1960s
by Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss (Glaser and Strauss 1975). Contrary
to the impression the name gives, it is not a theory but the idea that theo-
ries should be grounded: the data and the explanations one is producing
about the data must remain closely related. The publication of Glaser and
Strauss’s now classic book was a reaction to a tendency in sociology to begin
with hypotheses that were to be verified by data collection. GT insisted
on inductive processes of research and argued that data collection should

precede (as much as possible) the formulation of any kind of theoretical
arguments about it.
Actor-network theory is an approach that was developed at the end of
the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s by scholars in the field of science and
technology studies, led by the Centre de Sociologie de l’Innovation (CSI) at
the Ecole des Mines in Paris.12 ANT emphasized the idea that, in explana-
tions of technological change, the social should not be privileged, and it
provided a new kind of social theory with a specific interest in the agency
of nonhumans (see, for instance, Callon 1986 on scallops; Akrich 1987 on
photoelectric lighting kits; Latour 1988 about a door-closer).13
Although GT and ANT were initially developed in different settings at
different moments, they share common viewpoints that are visible, for
instance, through their references with the Chicago School of sociology14
(later, their respective achievements were also brought together in the social
worlds framework of STS; see Clarke and Star 2008 for an overview15). Both
share the word theory, although they are not theories in the proper sense of
the term but specific kinds of methodological approaches. GT is “a style of
doing qualitative analysis” (Strauss 1987, 5), and ANT tells us “how to study
things . . . [But] it says nothing about the shape of what is being described
with it” (Latour 2005, 142).
As I will illustrate later in the book, sinologists can have a good start by
blindly following the original strategic advice of GT and ignoring, as much
as possible, the literature of theory and facts on the area under study16 (Gla-
ser and Strauss 1975, 37), or by using Michel Callon’s generalized version of
the principle of symmetry from Bloor and not giving a priori preference to
one kind of element: it is not the job of China specialists to decide what is
Chinese and what is not, or what is important to Chinese culture and what
is not. First, one chooses a topic (I would say anything related in one way or
another to China is fine), then, at a second step of the research process, as STS
scholars did with true beliefs and working technology, differences that may
exist will gain contrast during the study and not before doing the research.
In other words, part of what this book will attempt to do is to imitate
the way STS moved from science in theory to science in practice, in order to
get closer to Chinese culture in practice. The questions of “Chineseness”
or the importance of the research topic are to be discussed not before the
research starts but during the research process and then included in the final
report. Although these remarks may appear basic to many social scientists,
they imply that many China specialists need to organize their researches
differently.
3 Science Studies and Cultural Difference
If sociologists of science and technology have appropriate methodologi-

cal frameworks for sinology and Chinese studies, why don’t they use it to
research the issue of culture? The answer is a two-sided coin: on the one
side, the object of study of the discipline designated by the generic name
of “science studies” is traditionally, as the name indicates, science; it is not
culture (which is traditionally the object of study of, among others, anthro-
pology, sinology, Chinese studies, or cultural studies). On the other side,
the very idea of culture is at the core of what science studies are doing, and
this is the reason why their theoretical and methodological frameworks are
so useful to China scholars.
The broader aim of STS, in a nutshell, is to understand science as culture.
It can be seen “as a way of shifting the frame of analysis—our own as well as
that of our research subjects—from the discovery of universals to the ongo-
ing elaboration and potential transformation of culturally and historically
specific practices to which we are all implicated, rather than innocently
modest, witnesses” (Suchmann 2008, 153–154).
The common goal of sociologists of science and technology—to ques-
tion science in its relation to ideas about society, culture, or politics—can
be observed in many ways. For instance, the official journal of the Society
for the Social Studies of Science is entitled Science, Technology, and Human
Values, and presents itself as a “multidisciplinary publication containing
research and commentary on the dynamics of science and technology,
including their relationship to politics, society, and culture.”1 Roughly,
STS specialists pay attention to the idea that nature and culture cannot
be separated, that there is always some culture in the nature and some
nature in the culture. In a way, one can say that culture—here in the most
general meaning of the word, that is, that which relates to people’s ways
of living and thinking—is a concept tool wherein science is the object of
study.
28 Chapter 3
Similar remarks apply to subfields of STS; for instance, sociologists of

technology, often quoted in this book, have been using such concepts to
deal with the idea of cultural difference for a long time. They stress, for
instance, “the malleability of technology, the possibility for choice, the
basic insight that things could have been otherwise” (Bijker 1995, 280; empha-
sis in the original), which coexists with the idea that technology can also
be sometimes hard and fixed.
Another example is the historian of technology Thomas Hughes, who
discusses a notion of “technological style” to express the idea that tech-
nological systems differ from time to time, from region to region, and
from nation to nation. Hughes deals with the question of cultural differ-
ence understood as related to the contents of technological systems: for
example, how systems such as electricity-supplying power plants can be
different in London from those in Paris, Berlin, or Chicago (Hughes 1983;
1987, 68–70). In this regard, Wiebe Bijker also suggests the idea of “techno-
logical frame,” which he defines as the concepts and techniques employed
by a community in its problem solving (as a broad concept encompassing
the recognition of what counts as a problem, the strategies to solve it, and
the requirements for a solution;2 Bijker 1987, 168). Interestingly, Bijker’s
technological frame comprises “social and material elements” and is meant
to apply to all relevant social groups (not only to engineers, as in Hughes’s
concept of technological style; Bijker 1995, 126). Bijker also proposes
the concept of “inclusion in a technological frame” to indicate to what
extent the actor’s interactions are structured by that technological frame
(Bijker 1995, 143).
If we rely on these two theoretical perspectives, Chinese culture can be
seen as some kind of technological frame that works at a higher level of
aggregation, or as a technological style that includes humans and nonhu-
mans outside engineering circles, built up during a long period of time,
where the problems to solve are how to live, how to communicate, and
so on.
Another illustration of how the idea of culture is used in STS is the recent
work by Harry Collins and Robert Evans in the program known as Stud-
ies of Expertise and Experience (SEE). The authors’ emphasis on language,
and their attempt to redefine knowledge, how it is transferred, and what
makes the difference between groups of experts, deals with issues similar
to those anthropologists have been discussing under the banner of “cul-
ture” (see Kuper 1999 for an overview). The connection between anthro-
pology and SEE is especially visible in Harry Collins’s recent book on tacit
and explicit knowledge. Building upon Michael Polanyi’s work and other
Science Studies and Cultural Difference 29
authors, Collins redesigns tacit knowledge (“knowledge that is not expli-

cated”) by segmenting it into three subcategories that he defines as rela-
tional tacit knowledge (RTK), somatic tacit knowledge (STK), and collective
tacit knowledge (CTK). According to Collins, if there are sorts of knowledge
that are not explicable because of physical limitations (such as not hav-
ing enough resources, or not having the right material structure—this con-
cerns RTK and STK respectively), there is a specific kind of tacit knowledge
that remains out of reach of the explicit because it concerns what makes
humans different from nonhumans entities: the ability to learn and act col-
lectively (CTK) (Collins 2010).
In order to emphasize the role played by what he defines as language,
Collins discusses the difference between animals and humans by underlin-
ing, for instance, the fact that there are no groups of vegetarian dogs, and
that domestic animals exposed to human society as human babies are do
not similarly absorb the ways of living and thinking around them (Collins
2010, 124). However, while doing so, and even when discussing how expe-
rience varies from country to country (see chap. 6 in Collins 2010), Collins
focuses on knowledge and doesn’t refer to anthropology, cultural or area
studies, nor does he mentions the messy notion of “culture” (which is often
used to describe that which makes humans different from animals3).
If the questions raised by Collins are old ones for humanists and anthro-
pologists, what is extremely interesting and groundbreaking in his mag-
isterial demonstration on the nature of knowledge is that he manages to
measure this specific ability of humans to learn from each other—the ability
that the humanities and anthropology call by the name of “culture”—by
comparing one human being to another using an adaptation of the Turing
test that he calls the Imitation Game.
Here is an excerpt where Collins describes the methodology he relies on,
using an example in which he imagines two experienced tennis players and
a person in a wheelchair who has never physically experienced a game of
tennis. One of the experienced players acts as a “judge” and has to guess, by
asking the two other persons (whom he or she cannot see), which person
possesses the specific knowledge of playing tennis and which does not.
We imagine that a person who has played tennis all their lives asks questions about
tennis of the person in the wheelchair and another person who has played tennis
all their lives. The “judge” has to work out who is who from the answers to ques-
tion such as “In the case of a fast serve, roughly what sort of distance from point of
bounce to line makes it difficult to decide on whether the serve was ‘in’ and ‘out’?”
or, “What does it feel like when you hit a hard serve really sweetly?” If the judge
cannot distinguish the wheelchair-bound person from the tennis player we say the
30 Chapter 3
wheelchair-bound person has exhibited practical understanding even though he

or she could never actually make a line call or execute a serve. We say that the
wheelchair-bound person is as good at making practical judgements in discursive
settings as the tennis player. (Collins 2011, 273)
By using an external judge to evaluate the difference between a person with

practical experience of a certain domain and another person pretending to
have similar practical experience, Collins touches on the question of the
cultural content of humans. Where he and Robert Evans test participants
with knowledge of gravitational wave physics, blind people with knowl-
edge of the ability to see, or women pretending to be men and vice versa,
we can imagine performing the same test with a Chinese person and a
specialist of China pretending to know about Chinese people’s ways of liv-
ing and thinking. In other words, Collins’s methodology provides a natural
science-type tool (involving testing and verification procedures) to measure
the amount of culture (which, in this case, he calls “interactional exper-
tise”) located in one human being.4
In order to have a better idea of what culture means to STS as a scien-
tific community, I looked at the use of the term in the 2008 edition of the
Handbook of Science and Technology Studies (Hackett et al. 2008), presented
by the Society for the Social Studies of Science as “a comprehensive and
authoritative overview of the field.”5 The word “culture,” or its adjectival
form “cultural,” is mostly used by authors in its general meaning: as the
ways of living and thinking of humans, and specific to group identification
(something that connects to the idea of shared knowledge, as in Western
culture6) or specific to art (as in cultural industries7).
Contributors to the handbook also often used “culture” in opposition
to other concepts, such as nature, the social, the institutional, the histori-
cal, the political, or the technical.8 For instance, the word is employed to
address what relates to humans and their complexity, in opposition to what
relates to nature, science, and what is considered as predictable or what can
be falsified.9 In a few contributions, it is used in a polysemic way, reminis-
cent of how the word “culture” is used in common language, which makes
it difficult to understand scientifically what it means, a phenomenon that
illustrates the large scope of ideas it relates to.10
To conclude this section, I briefly discuss how the notion of culture con-
nects with the one of artifacts. The social constructivist approach, advocated
by authors such as Wiebe Bijker and Trevor Pinch, assumes that artifacts are
best seen as the constructions of individuals or collectivities. People have
differing interests and resources; therefore they have differing views of the
material structure of artifacts. Accordingly, the stabilization (or closure) of
new technical objects is explained by referring to the capacity of groups to

mobilize resources in the course of debate and controversy. Although the
ultimate goal of sociologists of technology is more often the study of the
making of artifacts rather than their everyday use, we see that the cultural
question of the contents of artifacts is central to their concern: it is the very
story of the creation of the contents of artifacts, and their perception by
their users (and nonusers), that is paid attention to.
An illustration of this type of approach is the case of the high-wheel
bicycle mentioned earlier (see “Technical Objects” in chap. 2), where Bijker
deconstructs the high-wheel bicycle into not one, but two artifacts: the
“macho bicycle” and the “unsafe bicycle.” He knows that there existed not
two but one bicycle in this case, and this somewhat extreme formulation is
useful for him in order to emphasize the “working” or “nonworking” of the
technical object whenever different social groups have different representa-
tions of it (Bijker 1995, 75). However, as this example illustrates, Bijker is
not concerned much with what happens with artifacts themselves during
their everyday use, because his focus is on the human side and the stabiliza-
tion of the innovation process.
Similarly, the work of Harry Collins on tacit knowledge, discussed earlier
as well, starts by considering nonhumans and humans as undifferentiated
entities (Collins 2010, 15), but his aim is to pull them apart and define what
makes a human being special if compared with machines or animals. Col-
lins is not concerned with artifacts specifically, and considers that sociology
should be principally the study of the human realm11 (Collins 2011, 285).
As illustrated with the few examples just cited, taken from classic works
in STS, if scholars in science studies produced critical definitions of sci-
ence and its practices, technology and its practices, and detailed arguments
on the interactions between science, technology, and knowledge, they
haven’t produce yet a detailed discussion about the concept of culture itself
(although Collins and Evans are clearly moving in that direction12).
In the following pages, I will discuss the successes and failures of certain
knowledge cultures, as STS studies often do, but I will do it from the point
of view of the artifact and with a focus on the idea of cultural difference. I
will consider mundane technical objects and pay special attention, to use
an expression of the late Susan Leigh Star, to the study of “boring things”
(Star 1999).13 Methodologically speaking, I will discuss the idea that the
stability and form of artifacts can be seen “as a function of the interaction
of heterogeneous elements as these are shaped and assimilated into a net-
work” (Law 1987, 113). I will get back to a microdescriptive model close
to ANT (i.e., similar to Thomas Hughes’s system-building perspective, at a
32 Chapter 3
lower level of observation) and Gell’s biographical level of analysis, before

moving back to a macro level close to SCOT (e.g., comparable to the one of
Bijker’s technological frames), this time with concept tools that will allow
for a different framework to discuss the influence of artifacts on other arti-
facts and human beings.
From Sinology to Chinese Studies
If it is important to know about the status of artifacts and the concept of

culture in STS, the same question applies to sinology and Chinese stud-
ies. In this section, I briefly discuss how our field traditionally deals with
these two aspects, before presenting how we can benefit from importing
STS frameworks. As many readers are probably not familiar with the labels
sinology, Chinese studies, or China studies, I start with a quick overview
that I illustrate with materials taken from recent conferences in disciplines
that study China and Chinese culture. Then, I share a reflection on the cur-
rent practice of China specialists regarding the study of artifacts, compared
to what STS has been doing during the last three decades.14
The first thing to know is that “culture,” in the sense of what is related to
shared knowledge and what is specific to a group of people, leading to the
notion of “cultural difference,” is one of the core ideas used by sinology and
Chinese studies. What the Chinese do, or what they have been doing, that
is different from what Westerners did and have been doing, is the central
concern of China scholars.
Without going too much into the details of the history of sinology, one
can say it is a practice that has its origins in Europe in the sixteenth century,
when Jesuit missionaries traveled to China and wrote about their observa-
tions. Later, during the nineteenth century, it developed into a modern
science. Works focused on the study of ancient China, and the practice
of producing such works was called sinology. At the beginning, scientists
and scientific journals were mainly located in Europe, although there were
also a few specialists in the United States. During the twentieth century,
especially after World War II, the study of China grew dramatically in the
United States, where the use of new methodologies was emphasized. There
was also a shift to more modern topics, including history since the Opium
Wars. The resulting practice, a mix of European sinology and of historical,
political, and social sciences approaches, was called Chinese studies.15
Today, the terms “sinology” and “Chinese studies” are often used inter-
changeably. Although the nuances of each term persist (sinology is closer
to philology, Chinese studies are closer to cultural studies), both are used to
designate the broad field of the study of China. In European universities,

departments of sinology or Chinese studies are usually located in faculties
of humanities, and the task of sinologists is similar to what other human-
ists (historians, literature specialists, historians of art, historians of religion,
linguists, philosophers, musicologists, and so forth) are doing, except that
sinologists maintain a privileged link with China through their ability to
read modern and classical Chinese. The fact that it takes about ten years to
reach a professional level of proficiency in Mandarin (not to mention the
dialects), together with the specificities of China’s history and the immen-
sity of Chinese culture, make sinology a discipline characterized by the
materials it pays attention to. In the United States, the situation is slightly
different, with Chinese studies departments having a closer relationship
with social sciences. In addition, US research activities on contemporary
China are often more developed than their European equivalents.
China itself has a long intellectual tradition of research too, but since
the use of the comparison with other countries was never much developed
there (the situation has been changing recently), and considering the his-
tory of the discipline together with the amount of publications (mainly
in English), most Western sinologists consider fair to say that sinology, or
Chinese studies, is a Western science that started in Europe and is now most
developed in the United States, with the usual partners (such as Japan or
Australia, with their own specificities, which I do not discuss here).
From a methodological and theoretical point of view, sinologists do not
rely on a specific framework but usually mix their understanding of China
with methodologies and epistemologies imported from other disciplines. A
sinologist is a sinologist-historian, a sinologist-linguist, a sinologist-historian
of religions, a sinologist-philologist, a sinologist-philosopher, a sinologist-
sociologist, a sinologist-musicologist, and so on. The reverse situation also
occurs sometimes: historians, philosophers, anthropologists, sociologists,
political scientists, and economists have scholars in their departments who
focus on China, and these people sometimes label themselves sinologists.
Quite often humanists, because they spend more time studying the writ-
ten language, have excellent skills when it comes to reading Chinese char-
acters. Respectively, anthropologists, sociologists, economists, and others
related disciplines spend more time studying methodology and theory and
often have better analytical skills. The term “China studies” is sometimes
used to describe the general community of social scientists working, in one
way or another, on China.
To illustrate some issues our discipline is facing at the moment, I now
present two anecdotes relating situations that happened to me when I was
34 Chapter 3
a teaching assistant at our unit of Chinese studies in Geneva University,

Switzerland, at the beginning of the 2000s. In the last section of this chap-
ter, I discuss the contents of the Book of Abstracts of the annual conference
of the European Association of Chinese Studies organized in Paris in Sep-
tember 2012.
Anecdote 1: What Is Important?

At the end of the year 2000, as a young teaching assistant just hired by the
unit of Chinese studies of the Faculty of Humanities in the University of
Geneva, I was struggling to find a topic for my future PhD dissertation. My
checklist looked something like this:
1. My advisor gave me complete freedom as long as I could convince him

and the Professors’ College that my choice made sense.
2. I was mostly interested in art-related things.
3. I had no interest in ancient China. I wanted to do something about
contemporary China.
4. According to several professors, and the kind of courses our unit of Chi-
nese studies was providing at the time, my job later would be to teach and
do research on Chinese literature. The conclusion was obvious: I would do
my Ph.D on Chinese contemporary literature.
I eventually fixed my choice on Wang Shuo 䌳㚼, a famous Beijing writer

who had sold millions of books at the beginning of the nineties, and whose
vulgarity and satirical style I enjoyed very much. Wang Shuo was still active.
Born in 1958, he seemed to be only at the middle of a successful career. He
was very productive: besides writing lots of novels, he was also doing scripts
for the movie industry and television. Since I also had a personal interest in
new media and popular culture, he looked like a perfect choice.
To my surprise, when I started telling my colleagues that I would write
a dissertation about Wang Shuo, I noticed several people didn’t share my
enthusiasm. As I finally understood after a couple of weeks, many were
wondering if Wang Shuo was important enough for a PhD thesis. This ques-
tion was often raised with the following argument: What if after, say, ten
years, no one in China cared about Wang Shuo’s books anymore? That
could easily happen to a popular writer whose audience wasn’t exactly the
intellectual elite. Then, as a consequence, no one would be interested in my
dissertation. In the worst of scenarios, if I hadn’t found a secure position
by then, this choice could even bring my career in the academy to an end.
Although the argument may sound ridiculous—it is common for histori-
ans or sociologists to work on unknown people—it did make sense to us at
the time and, in a way, it still does today. Most China specialists are known
among peers according to their past research topics. Someone is a “specialist
of the Laozi,” or “the person who wrote that book on Chinese intellectuals
in the eighteenth century.” Being “the person who did his PhD dissertation
on that writer that no one talks about anymore” is far from a good start
if you are looking toward a professorship. (Ten years later, as I write these
lines, Wang Shuo is indeed less popular than he was at the time.16)
The point I am interested in here is the question of the “importance”
of the research topic in humanities and the semantics we connect to this
word. In sinology and Chinese studies today, seen from the European tra-
dition, in most cases the importance of a topic has been determined by
history. It is not me who decides that the Laozi is an important book, that
Confucius is central to understanding Chinese thought, or that the Opium
Wars had a deep influence on the relationship between China and the West
in the nineteenth century, but the hundreds of millions of people who,
long before, have experienced these events, have read or written about
them, discussed and selected things related to them.
In other words, when the process of the passage of time selects some
objects (texts, photographs, sculptures, paintings, movies, records—
anything that constitutes an archive of human activity), it leaves us with a
remaining portion of things among which I, as a sinologist, was supposed
to choose my appropriate research topic. For anyone working on the pres-
ent, none of this is available because the selection process is still underway.
Anecdote 2: “Where Is China?”

Eventually, for many reasons, I gave up on Wang Shuo and decided to do
my PhD on electronic music devices in Beijing at the beginning of the
twenty-first century. I read a couple of books in social sciences, asked an
anthropologist to be coadvisor of my thesis, and went to China. In January
2005, back in Switzerland after thirteen months of field work and ready
to write the first draft of my thesis, I was asked to present the data I had
collected in a doctoral seminar at our university. The seminar was a joint
meeting for all graduate, postgraduate, and PhD candidates and teachers
in Asian studies and was mostly attended by colleagues from our faculty of
humanities.
I was proud of the information I had managed to collect, and so I
inflicted a two-hour detailed presentation of Chinese electronic musicians’
activities on my colleagues. Since I had borrowed a digital camera and a dig-
ital recorder, I was able to show pictures of the objects, people, and places I
had visited and to let my audience hear the music the artists were making.
36 Chapter 3
After four years of work at the faculty, I knew all thirty or so people in the
room. Because of friendship, and maybe also because my topic was unusual
in our discipline, I remember most of them were interested in seeing and
hearing what I had been doing.
The presentation went fine, and, with the help of the pictures displayed
on the screen, the audience was captivated. However, when I eventually
reached the end, everybody burst out into comments. The first one, rep-
resentative of the general feeling, came from one of the professors: “I am
very worried for this PhD thesis. Where is China? I didn’t see China in this
presentation.”
True, there was something unusual (for sinologists) about the musicians
I had presented, in the fact that two of them were producing music they
were referring to as German minimal techno. In other words, they were
not doing something “Chinese.” Also, most of the devices they were using
(computers, synthesizers, or software) came from Western countries or
Japan. The discussion that followed my presentation that day continued
during lunch and coffee and lasted about three or four hours. I remem-
ber my colleagues were interested in the observations I had presented, but
while ideas were flowing like water, everybody, including myself, was feel-
ing a little bit confused.
A couple days later, the professor who had raised the “where is China”
issue invited me for lunch. He told me he had had some thoughts about the
other day. He concluded that his remarks didn’t make sense. He said it was
an on-the-spot reaction, not aimed at me, and that he wasn’t worried about
my work. Well, I was. I could feel there was a real problem there.
At that time, I had read a book about grounded theory that insisted on
the use of comparisons for analysis (Corbin and Strauss 1998). So I decided
to use this method to help me organize my thoughts. I sat down at my desk
and compared my research with a colleague who was working on ancient
Chinese calligraphy. I tried to imagine a calligrapher from the Song dynasty,
sitting in front of a sheet of rice paper, brush in his right hand, the inkwell
full of black ink next to him. Then I started the list. “The guy is Chinese.
He was born in China, he lives and works in China. The paper was made
of rice stalks, the rice was cultivated in China. The ink and the inkwell are
traditional Chinese tools, nothing to worry about here. The brush is made
of bamboo—Chinese bamboo—the hair of the brush is made of wolf’s hair,
the wolf was killed in China by Chinese people. 100 percent Chinese. Every-
thing is under control.”
“Now me. The musician is Chinese. He was born in China, he never
traveled abroad. Fine. His English is bad, he comes from a Chinese village
in the countryside, all his family members are Chinese, he studied Chinese
traditional arts in China as a kid. He works in Beijing, Beijing is the capital
of China. So far, everything is ok. And now he uses . . . a Macintosh com-
puter. This is bad.”
At this point, in January 2005, I remember sitting in front of my own
laptop, a Mac too. As happens to me sometimes, I spontaneously talked
to it, to complain: “You are the problem. You are not Chinese.” Hey, wait.
Not Chinese? I turned it over, looked at the back panel. Design by Apple in
California. Assembled in Taiwan.
At that point, I remember feeling that the questions of what is Chinese
and what is not, what is important enough for Asian studies and what is
not, were more complicated than I had imagined. In these two cases—
an ancient calligraphy and a Macintosh computer, both material objects
born inside the geographical boundaries of China—one was clearly con-
sidered as an object of study for China specialists, where the second one
was not.
The Present of Things
While considering these two anecdotes, it is important to keep in mind

that, at the time, my colleagues and myself knew about social sciences, cul-
tural studies, and even digital humanities. No one thought the topic of my
research didn’t make sense. The problem was only that something didn’t fit
into our work structure.
I remember the anthropologist coadvisor of my PhD, not involved in
the two situations above, hearing my stories and commenting blankly,
“You wouldn’t have these reactions at the Center for Chinese Studies at
the University of California Berkeley” (where she had graduated). For sure,
some reactions were extreme and didn’t represent what all departments of
Asian studies in the world were doing, especially those with a high level of
multidisciplinarity (which is usually the case in the Anglo-Saxon tradition).
But I realized later that another part of the research didn’t fit in our faculty
of social sciences either. Social scientists, upon hearing about my research
topic, had another problem: they were really disturbed by the idea of study-
ing music devices in China if that meant ignoring the human beings who
were using them.
To understand the specificity of these questions, it is necessary to look
briefly at the current state of sinology and Chinese studies with regard
to the broad scientific traditions in humanities and social sciences. First,
as mentioned earlier with the example of climate change, sinologists’
38 Chapter 3
achievements in philology, history, literary studies, cultural studies, and

the like, even though impressive, do not answer many of today’s questions
regarding China. I am not thinking of the criticism we often hear these
days that some disciplines in humanities are not profitable enough, but of
the act of looking at the newspaper and see that China, India, Japan or the
Middle East are discussed by almost everyone on a daily basis, even though,
not so many years ago, these topics used to be the protected territories of
Oriental studies.
An object such as a mobile phone, for instance the Siemens 3618 dis-
cussed in chapter 2, illustrates the problem well: if texts are studied by
specialists of literature, paintings by art historians, music scores by musi-
cologists, mobile phones are generally not studied by humanists. Or—after
all, there are humanists who work on the history of technology, computer
literature, and other research topics related to mobile phones—so as to add
nuance to this affirmation, they are studied by many fewer humanists than
for the other above-mentioned categories of artifacts.
There are academic disciplines that study mobiles phones, such as com-
puter science, human-machine interaction, marketing specialists, infor-
mation and communications studies, and sociologists of technology. But
these disciplines are usually not hosted in a faculty of humanities, and their
scientific point of view is different. Cultural studies, or the more recent
digital humanities, have an interest in this sort of topic too, but they are
mostly interdisciplinary fields where technical objects are not really the
focus (this aspect is particularly striking with digital humanities, where,
even with computers at the core of the debates, the focus remains on tradi-
tional materials).
In what ways do a mobile phone, a television set, a piece of computer
software, an mp3 file, a fork, a video game, or a car in China differ from a
sculpture or a literary text? Does this kind of object deserve, or not deserve,
the attention of China scholars?
To circumscribe the issue, it is worth reformulating the question bluntly
by asking about work habits in a faculty of social sciences versus a faculty
of humanities. It is certainly not an easy question. In many universities,
the two are actually one, and a detailed answer would require a few thou-
sand pages. This said, from a macroscopic perspective, I believe it is fair to
argue that, from a practical and concrete point of view, most of the time
the social sciences study human beings and the humanities study physical
objects. Social scientists focus on groups of people, observe them often in
real time, conduct interviews, write, and submit and analyze questionnaires
filled out by people who are still alive. Humanists focus on material objects
such as texts, paintings, sculptures, music scores, movies, or buildings, and

write analyses based on their observations.
Of course, there are humanists who do research involving interactions
with human beings (e.g., interviews with authors in contemporary litera-
ture, or directors and actors in cinema studies), and there are social scien-
tists who work on physical objects (e.g., historical sociology). There exist
also hybrid fields, such as media studies or cultural studies, that openly
present themselves as interdisciplinary. But the broad division I sketch here
relates to a general separation, for good methodological reasons, that can be
observed if one compares courses of each discipline on university websites,
or research projects of these two macro categories of scientific practices.
Regardless of the history of the development of universities in the West
(where social sciences can be considered as much younger than the human-
ities), such division makes sense as the scientific activities that consist of
interrogating an object or a person, and the techniques one needs to mas-
ter in order to be able to perform such tasks, are by nature different. The
question is an old one—Plato raised it by underlining the fact that if one
can ask a question and get an answer by talking with a human being, the
same interaction process is not possible with a written document17—but, as
I will illustrate in a moment, reformulating it here can help us understand
what is going on between artifacts and human beings within the scope of
humanities and social sciences as they are generally practiced in universi-
ties nowadays.
Another broad difference is temporality: humanities focus mainly on
the past, whereas social sciences focus more on the present. This can be
observed in the psychic moves we operate when we go from humanities
to social sciences and from physical objects to human beings. When work-
ing on the past, since the human beings we want to observe are dead, it
is not possible to ask them for interviews, to submit questionnaires, or to
use participant observation to get involved in their activities and analyze
them. It is one of the reasons why humanists usually limit themselves to
physical objects. What I mean is that if there are disciplines that focus on
human beings from the past—historians almost always talk about human
beings after all—this task is accomplished via material objects such as books
or other kinds of archives. Objects do not die, or at least, they do so less
systematically than humans.
Reciprocally, and hopefully this is where this discussion stops being a
list of tautologies, when working on the present we experience difficul-
ties in focusing on artifacts while the humans who made them and use
them are still alive. This situation probably relates to the old trope of
40 Chapter 3
anthropocentrism. Similar to the way that we needed a long time to accept

the idea that the earth goes around the sun and not the opposite, or that
ethnocentrism was, and is still today, one of the main problems of Oriental
studies (Said 1978), the idea that objects could be as important, or more
important, than humans generates spontaneous resistance (Woolgar 1991).
Consequently, humanists often lose sight of their object of study when live
humans are around and proceed to leave it to other disciplines.
Then there is the question of popular versus elite culture. Although there
has been much improvement since the postmodern turn in the 1980s,
humanities are traditionally interested in elite culture: literature, art his-
tory, musicology, linguistics. Cultural studies had a hard time, in Europe
especially, making their way to faculties of humanities. The situation is
different in social sciences, which have a traditional interest in popular
culture: life conditions of workers in factories, popular rituals of far-away
tribes, accountability practices, and so forth. Although both humanities
and social sciences share some resistance in paying attention to mass cul-
ture (the academia is a school for the elite after all), it is fair to say that
social scientists are usually more prone to be interested in mass culture than
humanists, with social history being a sort of a common ground.
After these rough and general considerations, in order to make some
aspects more salient, I now extract on this basis three pairs of dichotomies
that I apply to concrete data.
Dichotomy 1: The opposition between past and present. The past is what
existed between the origin of the universe and yesterday. The present is
what exists today and now.
Dichotomy 2: The opposition between human beings and physical objects
(for clarity’s sake I leave aside animals, plants, and the rest of the material
world).
Dichotomy 3: The opposition between the elite and the mass. The elite is
what concerns the upper class, the mass is what concerns the lower class, in
the general meanings of these two terms.
Using these six rough categories, if we go back to anecdote 2 involving a

computer as an object of study, we note the following elements: (1) It is a
physical object, (2) it is an object located in the present, and (3) it is part of
mass culture. Comparatively, if we consider a piece of calligraphy from the
Song dynasty, (1) it is a physical object, (2) it is an object located in the past,
and (3) it is part of elite culture.
We can move a little bit further. If we imagine a sociologist interested in
how Chinese users work on their computers, the object of study becomes
this: (1) It is a human being, (2) the person is living in the present, and (3) the
person is part of mass culture.
Now, a study on everyday-use ceramics from the pottery center Jingde-
zhen 㘗⽟擯 in China at the beginning of the twelfth century (leaving aside
the elegant, unique pieces made for emperors): (1) It is a physical object, (2)
it is an object located in the past, and (3) it is part of mass culture.
This short list of examples of imaginary and real studies tells us about
how China is studied today in the academy. Are ceramics in Jingdezhen
at the beginning of the twelfth century an object of study for sinology?
Yes. Are computers in Beijing at the beginning of the twenty-first century
an object of study for sinology? No. By playing with these categories and
examples, we observe that humanities are often concerned with the past of
physical objects, and social sciences are often concerned with the present of
human beings. The past of human beings may be of concern for both humani-
ties and social sciences, for instance in the case of a research on World War
II that would involve interviews with veterans. The past of physical objects is,
for example, what historians and historical sociology are dealing with. But
what about the present of physical objects?
I will now focus on physical objects and use the two remaining cou-
ples of dichotomies—elite versus popular, past versus present—to set out the
question.
For scholars working in faculties of humanities in Europe, such as
myself, objects of study located at the crossroads of elite and past categories
are the main part of our job: classic literature, eighteenth century poetry,
nineteenth century novels, Renaissance paintings, or ancient ceramics. We
also work on elements concerned with the elite and present: contemporary
literature, cinema studies, or contemporary art. Popular and past culture has
representatives too: war manuals or cooking recipes from the Middle Ages,
popular iconography in the eighteenth century, propaganda posters from
the Communist period, and so forth.
As usual when working with categories, it is easy to find counterex-
amples. For instance, linguistics is not divided between past and present,
and these days historians do not pay much attention to the distinction
between elite and mass culture. Film is a mass medium and doesn’t fit in
the “elite” category (depending on the kind of movies and audiences one
considers), nor does popular literature. Cultural studies—with a contested
nature and little agreement about what it is for—has influenced the way
many humanists work, and it constitutes a concrete part of the activities
of humanities departments (traditionally focused on literary works). But
still, I believe these rough categories tell us something about the way the
42 Chapter 3
academy considers, in general, the study of artifacts. The intriguing point is

the crossroads popular-present.
If we keep playing against these categories and, again, imagine a col-
league who does research on computers in Beijing in 2012, we imagine s/he
analyses them in the same way humanists analyze literature or paintings. I
feel that such a research would take place in our Asian studies departments
only with extreme difficulty. The idea itself looks silly. It looks much better
at a department of sociology or ethnology. Colleagues there would analyze
how Chinese people interact with computers, and how their use differs
from that of users in Europe. The latter doesn’t look silly—on the contrary,
it sounds interesting.
In other words, what is striking when one considers material objects
such as computers, television series, cooking recipes sold in supermarkets,
hip-hop graffiti on the walls of the cities of Beijing, New York, or Geneva,
music files on the Internet, or mobile phones, is that the object of study
suddenly doesn’t relate to humanities but to social sciences. As if, when
humanists reach this place, they are asked to put physical objects down and
move on to human beings.
Intriguingly, if we imagine a colleague interested in computers one cen-
tury later, in 2112, “Computers in Beijing in 2012” becomes suddenly an
interesting topic of research: to study the development of informatics in
China at the beginning of the twenty-first century, and its impact on Chi-
nese society during that period, is clearly the task of a sinologist-historian
of technology. The problem is: if this topic makes sense in 2112, it should
also make sense in 2012. Maybe even more so considering the accessibility
of the information—and even if some historians prefer less information
because it is then more intelligible.
In order to have a concrete picture of what China specialists are doing
at the moment, I applied the classification above to the Book of Abstracts of
the Nineteenth Conference of the European Association for Chinese Stud-
ies in Paris. I read the 388 abstracts of the presentations which had been
accepted, and I arranged them in a table using the above categories. I also
added an elite-mass culture category for the disciplines where the division
elite versus mass didn’t seem to work well, such as linguistics or history.
I found that roughly 60 percent of the presentations focused on the past
and 40 percent on the present (which I decided arbitrarily to categorize
as the period of time from the 1990s until now). I also noted that among
the 40 percent concerned with the present, more than half of the speakers
focused on humans beings rather than physical objects (mostly these were
from presentations I labeled as related to political science, economics, lin-
guistics, or social sciences).18
Table 3.1
Classification for the Book of Abstracts of the Nineteenth Conference of the European
Association for Chinese Studies in Paris (2% of the abstracts are uncategorized).*
EACS Conference Elite and mass

2012 Elite culture culture Mass culture
Study of the past 42% 15% 4%

Literary studies, Historical Mundane
philology, history of studies (religion, artifacts
art, history of politics law, economics)
Study of the 12% 21% 4%
present Literary studies, Linguistics, Mundane
cinema studies, political science, artifacts
contemporary art social sciences
*Based on the June 14 version of the Book of Abstracts. The exact numbers are
162–58–16 and 45–83–14 by rows, from left to right, with a total of 388 abstracts,
including ten uncategorized. I labeled “uncategorized” abstracts for which I couldn’t
understand what the data used for the research had consisted of, and abstracts which
discussed tools used by the researchers (such as the panel of the European Associa-
tion of Sinological Librarians).
Table 3.2
Classification for the Book of Abstracts 2.
EACS Conference 2012—Physical objects Elite culture Mass culture
Study of the past 80%

Study of the present 15% 5%
Then I moved back to the former version of the table limited to physical
objects. I removed from the second row (study of the present) the presenta-
tions which focused on human beings rather than on artifacts. I carefully
kept those that focused on physical objects, even if they labeled themselves
with a category I expected to remove (for instance, an abstract labeled
“sociology of consumption” analyzed a selection of public advertisements
and billboards from the 2000s, so I counted it in the category study of the
present-mass culture).
I considered the rest as a global amount of studies focused on artifacts
and started anew. I decided the categories elite versus mass culture didn’t
make sense when studying the past because historical studies are often a
mix. So I grouped them. I ended up with 80 percent of the presentations
focused on the past, 15 percent for the study of the present-elite culture, and 5
percent for the study of the present-mass culture.
44 Chapter 3
What I am trying to illustrate, by playing with these dichotomies and

categories, is that the issue of the present of things in sinology and Chinese
studies is difficult to grasp because it is located in an empty space between
social sciences and humanities. I also believe it is something specific to
traditional academic disciplines in universities and probably less seen in
design and art schools. As the classification of the Book of Abstracts of the
Nineteenth Conference of the European Association for Chinese Stud-
ies illustrates (see also note 18 about the Association for Asian Studies),
although cultural studies made several breakthroughs in the second half of
the twentieth century by researching television series, popular music, and
the like, the present of things is absent from most research on China today.
To the point that it is difficult to imagine what actually can be achieved
in this context. I see colleagues becoming really excited about a few ancient
objects found in archaeological excavations and what can be understood
from them, but confused when confronted by billions of Web pages, as if
there were a specific difficulty to finding something relevant about them.
Using Bijker’s words, one might argue that the problem relates to China
specialists’ technological frame. His quote from a publication of Leo Bake-
land, the inventor of synthetic plastic, illustrates the phenomenon:
I found, to my astonishment, that people who were proficient in the manipulation

of rubber, celluloid or other plastics were the least disposed to master the new meth-
od which I tried to teach them or to appreciate their advantages. This was principally
due to the fact that these methods and the properties of the new material were so
different in their very essence from any of the older processes in which these people
had become skilled. This rather unexpected drawback is so true that even today the
most successful users of bakelite are just those who were not engaged in plastic be-
fore, this simply for the reason that they did not have to divorce themselves from the
routine of older methods, and were willing to listen patiently to suggestions from
newcomers in the field. (Bakeland 1916, 155, quoted in Bijker 1987, 176)
It is normal for any scientific activity to adjust its working methods once in
a while. The study of the present of things is certainly different from a study
of objects of the past in many ways (e.g., sinologists would probably experi-
ence difficulties if they attempted to excavate recent tombs in China).
Sinology is aware of where it comes from, and sinologists are currently
discussing the future of their field, but, to my knowledge, no specific strat-
egy has been agreed upon yet.19 One of my hopes with this book is to help
China specialists find an appropriate way to handle a task I see as especially
important now that the world is going through a period of major societal
and political change. As discussed by Geremie Barmé and others,20 Chinese
studies are confronted with a situation that is relatively new to them: resis-
tance toward the object of study, as I exemplified with the two anecdotes.
Interestingly, STS went through a similar transition in the 1970s when

sociologists started to analyze communities of scientists. The groups of
workers, Gypsies, religious activists, or distantly located tribes that sociolo-
gists and anthropologists were used to observing never had the opportunity
to contest (often even simply to read) the conclusions of the reports they
were the subjects of, but Western scientists went on to read the conclusions
of their sociologist colleagues—and they did not agree with their conclu-
sions. A debate started that had an important influence on the development
of social sciences, and eventually lead to fascinating new discoveries.21 One
hopes that the current situation will have an equivalent positive effect on
the fields of sinology and Chinese studies.
To Sum Up
I have explained that this book is about artifacts and about the concept of
culture. I showed how I believe science studies and sinology can benefit
from each other—by applying theoretical frameworks from the first to an
object of study of the second. Through this process, STS may gain a better
understanding of the notion of culture, which is at the core of its activities,
and sinology can learn a new way of dealing with artifacts that may open a
road for future research.
I mentioned that this book presents both the data and the analysis
inductively in order to keep arguments grounded. Relying on the perspec-
tive that art is about doing, I discussed my choice to work at a biographical
level of observation and how I see the activities I observed as collective
actions, with an emphasis on social relationships between an artifact and
something or someone outside it. Finally, I argued that this approach can
be considered as located at the crossroads of humanities and social sciences
because of its focus on the present of physical objects.
The theoretical frameworks discussed in this introduction are mainly
sensitizing concepts; they are not theories that explain or predict the struc-
tures of people, things, and the interactions between them, but methodolo-
gies that allow one to flesh out relevant points.22 Similarly, the goal of this
book is to sketch a method for a better understanding of the relationship
between artifacts and culture.
In order to give readers an idea of the main argument of the book, in a
way that will hopefully make things clearer during the presentation of the
case studies, in the next chapter I will provide a slightly more detailed pre-
view of the conceptualization involving waves and forms.
4 Culture and Materiality
Until now I have used the word “culture” in various expressions, as a noun
or in its adjectival form (“Chinese culture”; “elite versus mass culture”;
“cultural difference”), sometimes with quotes to indicate that the meaning
was unsecured, sometimes without quotes when I considered the expres-
sion common enough to be clear. I also discussed how the idea of culture is
used in STS, where I argued that it is mainly a concept tool for talking about
the human side of technology as well as something to contrast with other
entities, such as the social, the political, or the economical.
Then I presented culture’s use in sinology and Chinese studies, where
I argued that the idea of culture is mostly a way to speak about what is
specific to the Chinese people, touching on the idea of shared knowledge
and group identification and on the broader issue of ways of living and of
thinking of people. In this section, I go a little deeper in the conceptualiza-
tion attached to the term and provide a snapshot of the main argument of
this book.
Culture is famous in social sciences and humanities for the difficulty
of its definition. Although it is the concept around which the discipline
of anthropology arose, even anthropologists themselves have difficulty
agreeing on what it actually means. Many simply avoid using the word
at all. Through the years, the issues that connect with the notion of cul-
ture and that need to be taken into account have been made clear, but the
central question remains: What do we mean exactly when we speak about
“culture”?
The first metaphorical use of the Latin word cultura (“agriculture”) for
the cultivation of the mind goes back to Cicero in the first century BC. It
then disappears, and reappears during the late thirteenth century. At the
beginning, it is used to describe the state of a material object, namely a
plot of cultivated land. During the sixteenth century, its meaning changes
to describe the action of cultivating a field and, later, the education of the
48 Chapter 4
mind. At the end of the eighteenth century in Europe, the word describes
the state of a cultivated and educated mind.1
During the Enlightenment, in France, “culture” points at what is specific
to the human species by comparison with other animal species. Culture
is understood as the sum of knowledge accumulated and transmitted by
humans through the ages. In Germany however, at about the same period
of time, “culture” is used in opposition to “civilization,” the latter being
equated with the German aristocracy (who speak French), while the former
is equated with the dynamic German bourgeoisie.2
The publication of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species, in 1859, has
a profound impact. The possibility that differences could be explained
in biological terms causes the development of a new understanding of
“culture”—in opposition to the biological. Culture becomes what marks
human beings off from other animals, as well as nations from other nations.
It aims to describe what is not transmitted biologically, but acquired, learned,
or transmitted.3
In Germany especially, intense debates attempt to clarify the methodol-
ogies and objects of study of the sciences of the mind versus the sciences of
nature. Some argue that the idea of generalization is specific to the natural
sciences, and that the idea of individualization is specific to the sciences of
culture. In parallel, the idea of culture understood as the sum of knowledge,
close or equivalent to the one of civilization, remains.4
In 1871, Edward Tylor publishes a book in which he defines the concept
of culture in terms that mark, in the opinion of most experts, the birth of
anthropology as a science: “Culture, or civilization, taken in its wide ethno-
graphic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art,
morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man
as a member of society” (Tylor 1871, 1).
Looking at culture through Tylor’s definition, we see that anthropology,
from its birth, draws a line between nature and culture. Culture, indicated
here as similar to civilization, is the distinctive character of the human
condition.5 This concept allowed anthropologists to describe what they
saw as an accumulation process and to compare different societies on the
basis of what they understood as the degree of accomplishment of their
institutions.6
While Tylor’s definition had an indisputable originative power, through
the years it became clear that it wasn’t theoretically powerful enough. At
the end of the nineteenth century, Franz Boas, influenced by the discus-
sions that took place in Germany, introduces the idea of culture as what is
specific to a group of people. The United States, as a nation of immigrants,
Culture and Materiality 49
has a special interest in social science tools that allow one to discuss the
specificities of different communities. Through Boas’s writings, the per-
spective of anthropologists—that of measuring the degree of distance from
Western civilization—is replaced by a synchronous view of the habits and
customs of different communities, and gives birth to American cultural
anthropology.
Culture may be defined as the totality of the mental and physical reactions and activ-
ities that characterize the behavior of the individuals composing a social group col-
lectively and individually in relation to their natural environment, to other groups,
to members of the group itself and of each individual to himself. It also includes the
products of these activities and their role in the life of the groups. The mere enu-
meration of these various aspects of life, however, does not constitute culture. It is
more, for its elements are not independent, they have a structure. (Boas 1944, 159)
Despite these important scientific contributions (and many others not

mentioned here), the debate between the universal—the laws of nature—
versus the particular—the human, the specific, the individual—continues.
Other propositions follow, and, in 1952, two leading figures of American
anthropology, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn, make a milestone
attempt to circumscribe the concept by collecting more than 160 different
existing definitions of culture and suggesting a synthesis.
Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior acquired and
transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievements of human groups,
including their embodiments in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of
traditional (i.e., historically derived and selected) ideas and especially their attached
values; culture systems may, on the one hand, be considered as products of action,
on the other as conditioning elements of further action. (Kroeber and Kluckhohn
1952, 181)
At that time, most scholars in sociology and anthropology are looking for a
methodology to discuss patterns and invariants. Talcott Parsons and Alfred
Kroeber, for instance, make several attempts to solve the problem of the
universal versus the particular by positioning it between, on the one hand,
the concept of society—for patterns of interaction—and, on the other
hand, culture—for symbolic meanings. Although Parsons and Kroeber’s
work has an important impact, they are themselves aware of the limita-
tions of their approach and of the overlaps between the two conceptual
spaces they define.7
In 1973, Clifford Geertz publishes an influential book, The Interpretation
of Cultures, in which he explains why he considers the task of finding an
appropriate definition for culture useless. Geertz suggests focusing instead
50 Chapter 4
on an interpretative task. Here is an excerpt where he discusses Kluckhohn’s

approach in terms that are particularly revealing about the issue at stake.
The conceptual morass into which the Tylorean kind of pot-au-feu theorizing about
culture can lead, is evident in what is still one of the better general introductions
to anthropology, Clyde Kluckhohn’s Mirror for Man. In some twenty-seven pages
of his chapter on the concept, Kluckhohn managed to define culture in turn as:
(1) “the total way of life of a people”; (2) “the social legacy the individual acquires
from his group”; (3) a “way of thinking, feeling, and believing”; (4) “an abstraction
from behavior”; (5) a theory on the part of the anthropologist about the way in
which a group of people in fact behave; (6) a “storehouse of pooled learning”; (7)
“a set of standardized orientations to re-current problems”; (8) “learned behavior”;
(9) a mechanism for the normative regulation of behavior; (10) “a set of techniques
for adjusting both to the external environment and to other men”; (11) “a precipi-
tate of history”; and turning, perhaps in desperation, to similes, as a map, as a sieve,
and as a matrix.
In the face of this sort of theoretical diffusion, even a somewhat constricted and
not entirely standard concept of culture, which is at least internally coherent and,
more important, which has a definable argument to make is (as, to be fair, Kluck-
hohn himself keenly realized) an improvement. Eclecticism is self-defeating not be-
cause there is only one direction in which it is useful to move, but because there are
so many: it is necessary to choose.
The concept of culture I espouse, and whose utility the essays below attempt to
demonstrated, is essentially a semiotic one. Believing, with Max Weber, that man
is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture
to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore one in search of meaning. It
is explication I am after, construing social expressions on their surface enigmatical.
(Geertz 2000, 4–5)
Geertz puts his finger on the specificity of the idea of culture, which is that
it seems to concern everything in any possible situation. The problem of
finding a definition for a concept is certainly not limited to the concept
of culture—many other words have a long and complex history in social
sciences and humanities; think of “technology,” “science,” “power,” “art,”
“politics”—but culture has the specificity of being a really broad concept.
It is this broadness, I think, that makes the idea of culture special. Chop-
sticks may be labeled as “technology,” but probably not as “art” or “poli-
tics”; a French person speaking in a café about the new government of
France can be labeled with “power,” “politics,” or even “art,” but not really
with “science” or “technology”; a painting of a landscape or a cooking rec-
ipe would be labeled with “art,” “technology,” but in most cases not with
“power,” “science,” or “politics.” Interestingly, “culture” applies to all of
these situations.
Geertz’s suggestion—to give up with the task of defining the concept—is

an elegant solution. His argument also resonates with the last few decades
of research in social sciences and humanities, in which a large corpus
of diffusionism/constructivism work demonstrated that categories and
dichotomies didn’t work and could be dissolved. As Geertz’s arguments
illustrate, a similar process occurred within anthropology itself: the idea of
an internal human nature was progressively removed as the explanation
for what happens in history and was replaced by external factors. Unfortu-
nately, such a perspective also abandons what used to be the very task of
anthropologists. Maurice Bloch has written an enlightening paper about
the current situation from the point of view of anthropology.
Anthropology began by assuming that human history could be written as the natu-
ral history of human beings, as though we were an ordinary kind of animal whose
behaviour was governed by the same kind of natural laws as that of other forms of
life. This tenet was then apparently totally neglected by the emphasis on culture,
the product of constitutive communication, the producer of unpredictable histori-
cal particularities. . . . Anthropology could not anymore have human nature its sub-
ject because there was no such thing. Like history, social and cultural anthropology
could then only be an assemblage of anecdotes about this and that. (Bloch 2005, 8)
Interestingly, Bloch’s argumentation rejoins the one of STS scholars Harry

Collins and Robert Evans. Bloch considers the difficulty of the deformation
of information that occurs when culture is transmitted from person to per-
son, which he believes is what makes the search for laws impossible, but he
regrets that anthropologists, “quite simply, by taking so many things into
account and refusing to separate them, because they are not separate, [risk
to find themselves] unable to say much except noting how complicated
and interconnected everything is” (Bloch 2005, 17). Collins and Evans, for
STS, comment that “sociologists have become so successful at dissolving
dichotomies and classes that they no longer dare to construct them” (Col-
lins and Evans 2002, 239).
I believe, and this will be the main theoretical argument of this book,
that it is possible to conciliate the works of the various authors quoted
above and to redesign the idea of culture so that its overall complexity can
be integrated without making the concept self-defeating.
Waves
My starting point is a simple one: culture must have at least some kind
of connection with materiality. I disagree with the idea that culture is
unphysical, although I agree that there is a real challenge in how to grasp
52 Chapter 4
its physicality. If I have a French book, which most people will agree is a
part of “French culture,” and I burn this book, the “French culture” that
used to be inside this physical object will be gone forever. If all the French
people die, all the French books are burnt, and whatever/whoever connects
to the broad category of “French culture” is destroyed (e.g., if we imagine
that the earth collapses after a nuclear war), then French culture may disap-
pear in the same way that some ancient cultures disappeared in the past. If
I certainly do not wish for something like this to happen (if it did, I would
be gone too), this imaginary case is useful in that it underlines the simple
fact that culture is located, at least, somewhere.
This means that if we can manage to find out what this specific location
is, and what makes it so special, then we should be able go further than the
pot-au-feu theorizing described by Geertz.
My proposition is a concept I call waves, a term I derive from sound
waves and that relates to the case studies on electronic musicians presented
in chapters 5 through 10. A decisive input to this formulation is a recent
publication by John Baldwin, Sandra Faulkner, Michael Hecht and Sheryl
Lindsley (Baldwin et al. 2006) wherein the authors attempt an update of
the ideas in the famous Kroeber and Kluckhohn book. Baldwin and his col-
leagues searched for existing definitions of the concept of culture, collected
them in a wide array of disciplines, and increased Kroeber & Kluckhohn’s
number of 164 definitions to more than 300 (they also explain that these
are actually saturations of an even larger corpus).
One specific strength of the book is that it gives a large picture of the
current use of the word “culture” across the disciplines. Interestingly, the
authors reach the conclusion that they should not add a new definition
themselves. Rather, they state the complex character of the concept and
the different ways of thinking about it, before “throwing the ball back to
the reader” (Baldwin et al. 2006, 72). According to them, the term “culture”
is “a vessel . . . an empty sign that people fill with meaning from their own
academic backgrounds or personal experiences. . . . Those who choose to
define it should ground their definitions in a fuller, multidisciplinary and
historicized account of the world” (Baldwin et al. 2006, 24).
Upon reading this book, I was struck by the huge number of definitions
and the feeling of being lost that it conveyed. I had learned from symbolic
interactionism and the sociology of the Chicago School that people use
words in different ways (in this perspective, “culture” is an operational con-
cept, its meaning depending on the structure, function, or process it relates
to, as well as on the people who use the word), but the problem appeared
so big that I started to wonder whether the answer could not be as big as
the problem—if there could exist a very obvious, straightforward solution.

I ended up relying on a metaphor close to Geertz’s criticism of Kluckhohn’s
Mirror for Man quoted above.
I share this intuitive reasoning before coming back to a structured, step-
by-step argumentation in the rest of this book. The first thing to do is to
pay attention to the laundry-list type definition of culture, as described
by Baldwin et al., “with so many elements that it provides little guidance”
(Baldwin et al. 2006, 63). The authors discuss the synthesis of Kroeber and
Kluckhohn of 1952, and also this one from Larry Samovar and Richard
Porter.
For our purposes we define culture as “the deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs,
values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial rela-
tions, concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions acquired by a
group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving.”
(Samovar and Porter 2003, 8, quoted in Baldwin et al. 2006, 208)
I tried to reproduce the problem with another concept for which there
already existed some kind of a solution. I imagined I had to give a defini-
tion of “matter” (in its general meaning), without knowing about atoms.
I would come up with a definition like this one:
What we call matter is sometimes solid, sometimes liquid, sometimes in gaseous

form, of homogenous or heterogeneous consistence, can be found in a living being
but also in inanimate objects or artifacts, on earth or in outer space, and is usually in
motion but can sometimes be immobile.
The laundry-list look of this imaginary definition of “matter” struck me as

being similar to the definitions of “culture.” Reading Baldwin et al., I also
had the impression that when people use the word “culture” in publica-
tions, in newspapers, or in everyday conversation, they are actually point-
ing at a specific set of phenomena. I wondered if the word culture was used
so frequently because it was the expression of a situation where everybody
refers to the same kind of phenomena, which is observed from different
angles and in different states.
I started to work on an appropriate concept for the “atoms” of culture:
a unit of discrete information in cultural systems, and the old idea of
finding natural laws that would address the specific ability of humans to
imitate and borrow information and then pass it on to one another by non-
genetic means—lower-level elements that could be located inside artifacts
(e.g., a book, a movie, a computer, a fork, a cable, a vinyl record) and also
inside human beings (e.g., language, habits, beliefs, notions of space, and
so forth).
54 Chapter 4
I eventually thought of the idea of the shape of matter. The concept of

sound waves that is used in sound engineering, as well as studies of wave
physics at high school, were an important source of inspiration, because
both the idea of sound and the concept of waves in general (I come back
to this question later in the book) designate a disturbance that circulates
from one medium to another. “Sound waves” is a concept not used to
describe something material per se, but the shape that something material
takes momentarily or permanently.8
Waves, as the units of discrete information of shape that matter can take,
is the main theoretical and methodological argument this book discusses—
first with a focus on technical objects, and then briefly, in the last part, in
the context of the human brain, with the help of a couple of publications
in neurosciences. The question I raise is whether the set of phenomena we
describe with the word “culture” is characterized not by its final manifesta-
tion (such as group identification, communication, institutions, artifacts,
knowledge, beliefs, art, etc.), but by the circulation of waves that preceded
and constitute them. I will also use the related concept of forms to talk
about aggregates of waves such as words, pictures, songs, and any other
group of waves that we identify for the purpose of an analysis.9
My goal with these two concepts is to allow a movement between fine-
grained analysis that explains the creation, conservation, or dissipation of
waves, and higher level, broader concepts (such as Bijker’s technological
frame) that provide room for larger observations.
To state it clearly, I am attempting to provide a positivist view of culture.
I am not trying to get back to the old ideas of universal truth, but I am
trying to locate some kind of “third world” where some sort of objective
knowledge resides (Popper 1972). However, my suggestion is not some-
thing that is beyond practice but in relation with it. I believe there are signs
that a general theory of the stabilization of collectives of humans and non-
humans in specific forms of practices is in sight.
Throughout this book, I will discuss similarities and differences between
this conceptualization and other theoretical frameworks. I will rely mainly
on STS, sociology, and anthropology, but I will also make brief incursions
into other frameworks of cultural studies and media studies, as well as neu-
rosciences and, for popular science, memetics.
Electronic Music Devices, SNS, and Computer Encodings
The remaining pages of this book are centered on an inductive process of

presentation. I start from the data, and I connect bits together while mov-
ing from one observation to another. To do so, I will rely on three series of
case studies. The first, and the longest one, consists of descriptions of musi-
cians’ activities in Beijing (chaps. 5–10). Then, I discuss the Chinese social
networking site Happy Network (chap. 11), and after that a few smaller
cases involving computer encodings (chap. 12).
One of the difficulties facing this book is the heterogeneity of the idea
of culture discussed in the previous section. Considering the study of tech-
nology, Bijker, Hughes, and Pinch emphasize the importance of identifying
strategic sites for conducting analyses.
Unlike the case of science, in which it is possible to identify communities of prac-

titioners who produce and ratify scientific knowledge, in technology there is a va-
riety of groups involved. . . . One can find individual inventors, research scientists,
designers and design engineers, production engineers, sales and marketing teams,
bankers and financial advisers, lawyers, politicians and state officials, and, of course,
consumers—whether individuals, firms, or state agencies. . . . Technology is such an
integral part of modern life that virtually every aspect of an industrialized society
intersects at some point with technological issues. Clearly, part of the task of the
emerging new field of technology studies is the identification of research sites at
which the complexity of the seamless web is manageable but which at the same time
serve to capture key aspects of technological development. We call such locations
strategic research sites. (Bijker et al. 1987, 191)
The same situation occurs with the study of cultural difference, where it
is even more acute than with technology. For this reason, it is crucial to
limit oneself to a specific set of data in a way similar to what sociologists of
technology did in the 1980s. Those I selected for this book provide infor-
mation on cultural industries (“culture” as related to artistic activities) and
on cultural difference, because China and Western artifacts are concerned
(“culture” as related to shared knowledge). For each group of case studies, I
focus, on the one hand, on technical objects and, on the other, on cultural
difference: what is going on in terms of cultural difference when technical
objects are involved?
In order to answer this question, the Chinese musicians, the social net-
working site, and the encodings are presented as attempts to use ethno-
graphical data to gather observations about the role(s) played by technical
objects. In this sense, the aim of each case study is more theoretical than
ethnographic. For instance, when discussing in detail a musician’s activity
involving the agency of various devices, I shift the focus at the end of the
description to a smaller part of the interactions I observed to question the
role of one artifact.
Each time, the issue is not the contents of the artifacts, or the context
and actions of the users, but the articulation between the two. In the case
of electronic music, I selected four different Chinese electronic musicians
56 Chapter 4
living and working in Beijing and four different sets of devices: a synthe-
sizer used by a rock band member; vinyl records and a software plug-in used
by a DJ; the Max/MSP software environment used by a computer musician;
and, finally, headphones and a digital studio workstation used by an experi-
mental musician.
The overall perspective is reminiscent of Akrich’s work, in which she
points out that “technical objects and people are brought into being in a
process of reciprocal definition in which objects are defined by subjects and
subjects by objects. It is only after the event that causes are stabilized. And
it is only after the event that we are able to say that objects do this, while
human beings do that” (Akrich 1992, 222). In the case of Chinese musi-
cians and their instruments, it means that we need to “‘follow the instru-
ments’ in the same way that in the early days of STS we learnt to ‘follow
the actors’” (Pinch and Bijsterveld 2004, 639) because “the way to find the
meaning of an instrument is in its use by real musicians—in state-of-the
art recording studios and home basements, on the stage and on the road”10
(Pinch and Trocco 2002, 10).
Many readers of this book probably enjoy reading about China and
music and would like to know whether the artists’ songs discussed in Part II
were beautiful, if the local people liked those songs, whether parts of their
activities were specific of China, if compared to Europe or North America.
Although I mention these aspects as often as possible, it is necessary to keep
in mind that the conditions in which the devices were used—in China, at a
moment of tremendous social, cultural, and economic change11—is analyti-
cally precious because it helps us see familiar “Western” technical objects in
a different way. Not discussing China allows us to spend more time on the
devices and, hopefully, understand more about them. By switching quickly
between musicians with different backgrounds and instruments and mak-
ing comparisons, I will not aim to cover a higher amount of data or produce
a larger theory but to improve theoretical sensitivity (Strauss 1987, 17).
So there we are: technical objects and culture, seen at the crossroads of
Chinese studies and STS, observations of electronic musicians, a social net-
working site, computer encodings; an inductive approach to present obser-
vations at a biographical level; and a forthcoming concept of waves and
forms to see whether we gain something useful in our understanding of the
seamless web of interwoven physical objects and physical human beings.
II Electronic Music Devices in Beijing
I think it is safe to say that there is virtually no contemporary music that does not
make use of some kind of electronic technology, whether or not listeners can dis-
cern it.
—Taylor (2001, 139)
Electronic music devices are everywhere. In China, in the West, and in most
parts of the world, people listen to music that is either produced or broad-
cast by means of equipment designed for this purpose. Thinking of music
devices as technological artifacts and musicians and their audiences as the
users of these technologies brings sound studies within the domain of tech-
nology studies (Pinch and Bijsterveld 2004, 638).
In this first series of observations and analysis, I rely on the context
of the emerging electronic music scene in Beijing at the beginning of the
2000s to question the interaction between a musician and a device, or,
more precisely, between a device and a musician. Most of the equipment
used by the artists I observed was designed in the West, and the idea is to
use the “Chinese context” to contrast the relationship between a technical
object and a user with regard to the concepts of culture and artifacts. Over-
all, the theoretical objective is to bridge a gap between Chinese studies and
science and technology studies (STS).
A common trick in social sciences, used in order to understand social
structures, is to pay attention to unexpected or unusual events. For instance,
a car accident gives precious data about the driver, the car, and the inter-
action between the two that would have remained invisible without this
unfortunate event. In sociology of science, this methodology is applied
through the analysis of scientific controversies, wherein different perspec-
tives between scientists provide information about the mechanisms in the
making of science.1 Similarly, with electronic music in China, the most
interesting situations are those involving either failures and mistakes—or
58 Part II
a high-degree of “cultural difference.” Such types of observations provide

data that allow for comparisons between situations that have things in
common and that differ, and they bring to light what is going on between
the tools and their users.
Unsurprisingly, doubts, mistakes, failures, and shames are among the
most difficult information to get when doing field research on artistic work.
To get an artist to speak openly and thoroughly about her or his work is
not an easy matter. Although most artists are willing to explain how they
succeeded in creating a new work of art, many are reluctant to explain
how they failed to perform certain tasks, especially when they believe the
explanations behind the failures would give them a bad image. To achieve
this task, it is necessary to spend a lot of time with the artists while they are
working, and to talk with them as often as possible in order to understand
what they are actually doing.
This situation is similar to that of scientists whose work procedures often
conceal the nature of the activities that gave birth to research reports. For
instance, in Wiebe Bijker’s analysis of the invention of synthetic plastic at
the beginning of the twentieth century, the inventor’s “skillful rhetoric” in
a published paper contrasts with his laboratory notebooks from the same
time, when many crucial elements were still unknown (Bijker 1995, 152,
160). In the case of Chinese electronic musicians in Beijing in the 2000s,
since there was no historical perspective that could be used to intersect
information at different periods of time, the need for in situ observations,
as well as some basic knowledge of the technology involved, was especially
important.
To be able to put my hands on this sort of data, and to avoid artists
trying hard to give a special image of themselves and their work or hid-
ing difficulties and technical peculiarities, I repeatedly told my informants
that my research was on technical objects, not artists, and that their names
would never appear in a book or article (consequently, all names of musi-
cians and bands used herein are fictitious).
For the same purpose, I selected artists that I felt could become real
friends. Within a close friendship over a long period of time, one does
not pay much attention to giving a certain picture of oneself, because
one knows that the other will not give away “harmful” information. This
method both furthered and held back the research: some musicians com-
municated intimately with me, sharing inner thoughts, personal difficul-
ties, and life situations; but then, knowing the information was going to
be published, how could I use it? I collected precious information working
this way and censored valuable data while writing down the observations,
because I do not want to harm my friends in any way.
Part II 59
Two aspects of my previous studies have been enormously helpful. As I

had graduated in Chinese studies, I was already close to fluent in Mandarin
at the beginning of the field research. Most of my interviewees were not
able to communicate well in English, and our discussions were conducted
in Chinese. Also, since I had studied and practiced electronic music in Swit-
zerland, many musicians were interested in exchanging thoughts with me
as soon as they knew that I was “a musician too.” As a tech lover (I belong
to the minority few who enjoy reading user manuals from cover to cover),
artists I met were interested in my technical knowledge. Our discussions
often focused on devices. “What software do you use?” “Did you try this
particular synthesizer? What do you think about it?” This aspect was rein-
forced by the fact that Westerners were well regarded in Beijing’s art circles,
and many attended Beijing clubs on a regular basis. Speaking and exchang-
ing ideas with a European at the beginning of the 2000s in the capital of
China was not something exceptional.
Although I was mostly interested in technical objects, I tried to take seri-
ously the principle of symmetry borrowed from STS by allowing both my
categories and interpretations, as well the actors’ concepts and theories, to
inform the accounts. In the case of the electronic musicians, I gave them
access to the data I collected (I sent them the first draft of this book, and I
double-checked the data by telling them about it and asking if it was accu-
rate. I also discussed the parts of the analysis that concerned them).
I asked each musician individually whether they would prefer that I use
their real name, and all answered negatively. I understand this negative
response, from people who are close friends but also well-known artists
in their country, as a positive sign for this research. To me, it illustrates
the fact that I managed to reach places located deep inside the musicians’
practices—places where it doesn’t make sense to discuss whether the music
is great or not, or whether the person who created it is awesome, because
we are already entangled in the question of how music is being done. Places
that are characterized not only by the high level of skill displayed (most of
the artists discussed in this book are extremely gifted individuals), but also
by their banal aspects, which constitute, I think, the great majority of situ-
ations artists in the world are experiencing.
5 The Band and the Roland MC-505 Groovebox
To understand even the simplest sonic or musical practice, we have to open it out
into the social and material world from which it comes. . . . We should wonder less
at the purportedly revolutionary aspects of new sound technologies and more at
their most banal dimensions. It is those elements that seem most obvious, least
likely to draw our critical attention, that may tell us the most about the central
components of sound culture in our own moment.
—Sterne (2003, 338)
Sanlitun
August 2001, it’s Tuesday and about 9 p.m. in Beijing as I enter Club Vogue.
It is located in Sanlitun ᶱ慴Ⱇ, the famous night quarter of the capital,
well-known for hosting most of the foreign legations and embassies and
also for its “Bar Street” 惺⏏埿 where many expatriates and locals go out.
Club Vogue, considered by many Chinese and foreign partygoers as one of
the best clubs in Beijing, is separated into two zones, so that its size can be
modulated according to the events it hosts. Packed full, it handles a crowd
of one thousand according to one of the managers. Tonight, the second
part of the club has been closed and the club is empty, except for the band
that is performing live onstage.
Vogue reminds me of clubs I have seen in Paris, something between the
Bains-Douches and the Buddha Bar. It has red curtains, red sofas, and a
small lounge on the second floor. During the summer 2001, as I visit the
club almost every day, it remains empty most of the time, except for a few
days when it hosts events for private companies who rent the space, and
also some evenings, when there are well-promoted parties organized by the
managers, a young Chinese lady and an Australian guy, both hired by the
group of Chinese investors who own the club.
62 Chapter 5
Figure 5.1
The band QU onstage.
According to posters that can be seen in various places inside and out-
side the club, the band—I will call the band QU—performs tonight. Indeed,
there are four musicians playing onstage, but there is no audience. The situ-
ation doesn’t seem to be a problem for anyone. The musicians keep playing,
and I sit in the back. I listen to their music, watch the employees and a few
people coming in and out of the club, and start taking notes about what I
see and hear.
QU is composed of one guitar player (on the left in figure 5.1), one bass
player (on the right), and two others musicians playing with a bunch of
electronic devices arranged on two tables placed at the center of the stage.
All four are men, which is not a surprise; women are known to be few on
Beijing’s rock scene, where masculinity prevails.1 Behind them is a DJ desk,
with turntables, CD players, and a mixer.
Having played in a rock band myself several years earlier in Switzerland—
before eventually turning to sampling and laptop-computer performances—
QU’s musical performance looks strange to me. Most surprising is the fact
that the gestures of the bass and guitar players are those of people who have
been playing for many years in a professional band (more than ten years, as
I will learn later). But those of the two musicians with the synthesizers are
very imprecise. I can hear obvious mistakes, such as clumsy adjustments of
bars and rhythms, or back-and-forth choices of sound effects on the main
tunes.
My lack of understanding of the performance reaches a peak an hour
later, at the moment when the bass player leaves the stage to go to the
restroom. The musician playing sample loops on the Roland SP-808 work-
station, whom I had labeled in my notes minutes ago as a “poorly talented
amateur who plays synthesizer for the first time in his life,” picks up the
instrument of his mate, and starts to play the bass. Without a doubt, he is
The Band and the Roland MC-505 Groovebox 63
one of the best bass players I have heard in my life! Later I will learn that
he is a well-known musician in China who has been playing with the most
famous rock bands in the country for several years.
What was going on at Club Vogue that made QU look so strange to my
eyes? During the following days, interviews with the musicians provided
information that explained the configuration I observed that first day, and
which repeated itself during my five weeks of field research in Beijing.
One important thing to know was that the club was in decline. It had
been successful some time ago, but that was not the case anymore. The
manager (who happened to be the girlfriend of one of the main investors)
was struggling to find ways of having musicians, DJs, or live bands play in
the club without paying them too much. After she had tried various for-
mulae with several bands, one member of QU suggested that they play for
free during weekdays, taking only the money of the entrance tickets (which
were bought only by people who were not known customers of the club—
regulars never had to buy tickets). People like me, for example, paid 50 yuan
(US$6 at the time).
In other words, for Vogue’s manager, the band provided some kind of
entertainment to the few customers present, and for the musicians (who
later explained to me that they had just started playing together a couple of
months before), the club was an opportunity to practice and compose. In
short, Club Vogue was a rehearsal space for QU. This was one of the reasons
why the music wasn’t very good and why the musicians didn’t care about
having no audience. This aspect also explained why they often moved up
and down the stage to say hello to friends, or went to the toilets while the
other members were still playing. The show wasn’t exactly a show.
Even though the “show” was not that good, these were still music per-
formances going on at Vogue, which was then considered one of the best
clubs in Beijing. A club (pronounced julebu ᾙ᷸悐 in Chinese), as referred
to by the local people, was a place where people met, drank, and danced,
especially on Friday and Saturday evenings. There were only about a dozen
clubs in the city in 2001 (though by 2008 there were more than thirty, and
there are many more than that today2). Most were located in the neighbor-
hood of the Bar Street, which was considered by most Chinese and foreign-
ers I talked to as the place where the nightlife of the capital took place.
This particular club nightlife in Beijing was, in size as in kind, somehow
similar to the nightlife of my hometown, Geneva, in Switzerland. As such,
there was a contrast in that the population of the two cities has a ratio of
60 to 1. The low turnout at the clubs could probably be explained partly by
the fact that most local Chinese people seemed to prefer singing at karaoke
64 Chapter 5
bars rather than dancing, and also that dance culture was still something
new in the People’s Republic of China, which had started its policies of
“reform and opening” 㓡朑⺨㓦 twenty years before, following thirty years
of Maoism.
I stayed about five weeks in Beijing and went to Vogue almost on a daily
basis. QU’s performances lasted until my return to Europe at the end of the
summer. As such, they provided many useful observations, which I will
now present and discuss briefly. In this case, I focus on one of the synthesiz-
ers the band was using on stage: the Roland MC-505 Groovebox.
China’s Firsts
Between 2001 and 2011, I noticed in Beijing several events labeled “China’s
First” ᷕ⚥䫔ᶨ. For example, I noted the “First Lesbian Movie in China,”
the “First Rock Festival in China,” the “First Open-air Rock Festival in
China,” the “First Experimental Music Festival in China,” the “First Elec-
tronic Music Festival in China,” and the “First Open-air Music Festival in
China.” Similar observations can be found in publications from colleagues
doing field research on music in China at the same period. Nimrod Bara-
novitch mentions a “China’s First Unplugged Pop Concert” (Baranovitch
2003: 92), Wang Qian notes the “First Environment Protection Rock Festi-
val” (Wang 2007, 325), and Anouska Komlosy has an intriguing “China’s
first musician to incline towards postmodernism” (Komlosy 2008, 53), as
well as a “China’s first rap group” (Komlosy 2008, 58).3
At Club Vogue, “China’s firsts” discourse could be observed in various
contexts. A Chinese DJ once introduced himself to me as “China’s first
underground DJ” (he had started DJing at the end of the 1980s). And when
I had the chance to talk with one of Vogue’s investors, a Chinese man
who had spent some time in Australia,4 he explained proudly that a bar he
owned (located in the Bar Street of Sanlitun) had been the “first in Beijing”
to prepare real cappuccino. According to him, bars and restaurants in Bei-
jing used to prepare cappuccino with milk, and didn’t know that a cappuc-
cino had to be prepared with mousse de lait.
If we consider “China’s firsts” as the general idea of the importation
of Western culture to mainland China, QU’s performances also had their
share. It is interesting to see how this phenomenon related to their musical
activity, including the devices they were using. As mentioned earlier, the
band’s music didn’t sound particularly interesting to me, and neither was it
to the ears of the people I met at Vogue. When asked informally about the
music, local Chinese told me they didn’t care much about the music (most
came to see friends or be with friends), while foreigners (French, English,

Americans, Australians) didn’t like QU’s music, which some of them labeled
“cheesy.”
Asked about their compositions, QU’s synthesizer players told me they
were trying to make “electronic music” 䓝⫸枛᷸. They enjoyed listening to
albums from Western artists such as the English band Portishead, and they
wanted to make music similar to theirs. After some inquiries among friends
and on the Web (the first synthesizer player had an American girlfriend,
and the second an English wife, who probably played a role regarding this
part of the process of making music), they had come to the conclusion
that making music like Portishead’s meant playing with synthesizers. The
second musician also explained to me that he was a longtime friend of the
guitar player. They had known each other since they were kids and had
become interested in music at the same time: when they heard a tape of the
Australian band AC/DC’s Who Made Who album.5
In other words, records by Western musicians, especially from the bands
Portishead and AC/DC, played an important role in QU’s musical activities.
Although not formulated in this way, QU’s objective was to become what
one might call “the first electronic music band in China.”6 Before coming
back to records in the next chapter, I would like to show how the influence
of far-away actors could be observed in the devices the musicians of QU
were using.
The Roland MC-505 Groovebox
An intriguing thing about QU was the comparative musical backgrounds

of each member of the band and the way their backgrounds related to the
structure of their songs. Although the guitar player, the bass player, and
the second synthesizer player had more than ten years of musical experi-
ence (the three of them were actually playing in some of the most famous
rock bands in China7), the other synthesizer player had only six months of
practice on his synthesizer Roland MC-505 Groovebox (see Tjora 2009 for
a discussion on amateur use of the MC-303, predecessor of the MC-505). A
former dance student, he made a living as a model and had started to play
music recently.
The six months of synthesizer practice of the first musician (I’ll call him
EM1, short for “Electronic Musician number 1”) brings to light informa-
tion about what devices do when it comes to music. As anyone who has
ever studied music knows, with traditional instruments, such as piano or
drums, at least two to three years of practice (for the talented) is required
66 Chapter 5
to become a member of a band composed of full-time professionals. How

did EM1 manage to end up playing with such highly qualified musicians in
such a short period of time?
When I asked him about the Roland MC-505 Groovebox synthesizer he
was using, EM1 mentioned two things. First, he wanted to make “electronic
music” 䓝⫸枛᷸, and second, he didn’t know how to play other instru-
ments. Bijsterveld and Schulp (2004, 655) note in their study of innovation
in classical music instruments that amateur players are sometimes more apt
to try out a new instrument. EM1 seemed to fit in this category.
Then, from the idea of doing electronic music, he had come to the idea
of getting a synthesizer such as the MC-505. Since the MC-505 was not
available in China at that time, he had borrowed one from a friend who had
bought it in Japan. Then he had been confronted with some difficulties.
First, the user’s manual was in Japanese. If he could understand some
words (written Japanese is partly based on the Chinese script), he did
not understand most of it. Second, the MC-505 was complicated to use. I
haven’t seen the Japanese version of the manual, but the English version,
which can easily be found on the Web, is 258 pages long.
After several tries at creating his own rhythmic and melodic tunes, EM1
eventually reached the conclusion that it was easier for him, rather than cre-
ating his own sounds, to rely on the prerecorded sequences—in electronic
music language these are called presets—already available in the machine.8
When I witnessed QU’s live performances, EM1 was basically playing the
presets of the MC-505. These were partly constituted of recorded musical
sequences that could run in a loop indefinitely; he would choose one and
then, for example, adjust some parameters on the effects panel.
Here, it is important to know that this way of using the MC-505 was
not at all unique to EM1. On the contrary, the use of presets is a common
practice for electronic musicians who play synthesizers, and this practice
certainly goes beyond the scope of electronic music. During the summer
2008, for example, I observed a young Chinese artist who was learning
to be a video jockey (VJ). He had downloaded a pirated version of the VJ
software Modul8 and was playing presets in a new club downtown Beijing.
The audience’s lack of in-depth knowledge about real-time video perfor-
mances allowed him, much like QU at Vogue, to perform without worrying
what the audience might think about what exactly he was doing with his
computer.
Paul Théberge, in his pioneering book Any Sound You Can Imagine, dis-
cusses the coevolution of the music industry and musicians from the 1970s
to the 1990s. He shows how synthesizers became instruments designed, not
only for the production of sounds, but also for their reproduction (which
he conceptualizes as consumption, with musicians as a new type of con-
sumer; see Théberge 1997, esp. 72–90). As an early 1980s advertisement
in the Yamaha DX synthesizer brochure for sound presets illustrates: “You
Don’t Have to Program to Play” (Théberge 1997, 76).
The somehow extreme configuration of QU, with such a wide spectrum
of musical experience among the band’s musicians, makes this practice (of
playing preset recordings) revealing of certain aspects of the interaction
between a device and a musician, or between a music device and an audi-
ence. The working scheme of EM1 had a specific impact on the composi-
tion process of QU: many, if not most, of QU’s musical creations started
from a preset chosen by EM1.
Since EM1 wasn’t a skilled musician, he wasn’t able to adjust the speed
and other parameters of his device on the fly. Although he had some musi-
cal training through his previous dance studies, timely tempo adjustment
in a band setting is generally something that only musicians with several
years of training can achieve. Since EM1 couldn’t musically follow others,
the others were following him. He would play a loop, and the other musi-
cians of QU would add musical structures on top of that loop. In other
words, instead of having the most experienced musician leading the band,
it was the least experienced musician who was acting as band leader.
To my ears, QU’s songs, especially the synthesizers’ lines, sounded ste-
reotyped. Indeed, as a look at the list of the presets of the MC-505 indicates,
its prerecorded sequences follow standards of musical styles in the West.
This aspect can be observed directly from the presets’ names, listed in the
user manual, which are grouped by genre: Trance, Minimal Techno, Detroit
Techno, Rock, Industrial, Drum ’n’ Bass, Hip-Hop East, and so forth.
The Past in the Present
QU’s synthesizer players were mostly interested in the musical style drum ’n’
bass (the rhythm structures of the English band Portishead can be consid-
ered as close to drum ’n’ bass). Interestingly, this type of dance music was,
according to the local DJs (both foreign and Chinese), “too underground
for Beijing.”
They used the word underground in a way that I understood as being close
to, but at the same time different from, the way it’s used in clubs in Europe
or North America. For example, in England at the beginning of the 1990s,
as described by Sarah Thornton, “the term ‘underground’ is the expression
by which clubbers refer to things subcultural. More than fashionable or
68 Chapter 5
trendy, ‘underground’ sounds and styles are ‘authentic’ and pitted against
the mass-produced and mass-consumed. Undergrounds denote exclusive
worlds whose main point may not be elitism but whose parameters often
relate to particular crowds” (Thornton 1996, 117). In Beijing, in the 2000s,
underground was more a synonym for avant-garde.
The DJs I spoke with told me that no DJ could play drum ’n bass in the
clubs, because the audience would not like it. One example they mentioned
of this kind of problem was the story of a foreigner who was a resident DJ at
Club Vogue. This DJ had a hard time getting the local crowd to appreciate
his DJ sets because he played new school breaks songs with rhythmic struc-
tures that were unknown to the local audience.
However, as we saw in the previous section, even if drum ’n bass was
considered too underground by the DJs, the MC-505 featured drum ’n bass
presets, and EM1 was playing them at Vogue. Indeed, drum ’n bass had
emerged at the beginning of the 1990s in England, and Portishead’s famous
first album Dummy had been released six years before, in 1994. In other
words, if this type of music was too avant-garde to be played in Beijing
clubs in 2001, it was at the same time already classic enough to be embed-
ded in a Japanese synthesizer.
There are several ways in which the situation of the MC-505 in QU’s
performances can be discussed. If we focus on efficiency, the machine does
its job. As the French intellectual Paul Virilio pointed out, technology is
often about speed (Virilio 1995). By using the MC-505, EM1 is able, after a
couple of weeks’ practice, to play music that would take years of practice to
master on a conventional musical instrument: he is faster enabled to play
in a band. Or we could consider, in the words of the American historian of
technology Melvin Kranzberg, that where “the older mechanical devices
had taken the burden off man’s back; computerized devices also take the
burden off man’s mind” (Kranzberg 1985, 40).
Looked at from the perspective of cultural difference, the MC-505
deserves other considerations. Using the terminology of actor-network
theory (ANT), we can consider nonhumans at the level of humans. This is
Michel Callon’s generalization of the principle of symmetry, discussed in
chapter 2, which states that the same kind of explanation may be used for
all elements, human and nonhuman.
In the ANT perspective, nonhumans have agency, and they act in ways
similar to those of humans. By playing with a version of this concept as for-
mulated by Bruno Latour—“every time you want to know what a nonhu-
man does, simply imagine what other humans or other nonhumans would
have to do were this character not present” (Latour 1988, 299)—we can
consider that QU was not composed of four musicians, but five. The fifth
player is the person who wrote the presets played by EM1.
From this point of view, QU’s music, made up of the MC-505 presets,
manipulated effects, and guitar and bass lines, is a mosaic composed of
elements coming from various sources. The bass and guitar lines are the
result of the work of musicians 3 and 4, the synthesizers lines are the work
of musician 5, and the aftereffects and added samples over the synthesizer
lines are the work of musicians 1 and 2 (this list could continue with other
nonhuman instances, but the main point is clear enough to stop here for
the moment).
ANT’s approach to nonhuman entities is useful in dealing with the idea
of cultural difference between the West and China and the role played by
technological devices, in that it provides a more complete description of the
composition of the real band playing onstage by adding nonhuman actors.
What we have is a mix of real and what we can call virtual players—the
engineers inside the black boxes. Without musician 5, musician 1 (EM1),
unskilled and therefore unable to play, could not manage to produce such
complicated music sequences. Also, the presence of virtual players explains
the somewhat stereotyped final musical output. Musician 5, who plays
nothing but standard rhythms and melodies, contributes largely to making
QU’s compositions a pastiche of well-known electronic music tracks.
The agency of nonhumans, as understood by authors such as the ANT
scholars or the English anthropologist Alfred Gell (discussed in chap. 2), is
relational and context-dependent (i.e., not classificatory and context-free):
the presets of the MC-505 have agency when they are used by the band
through the modality in which the music is affected by the presets.
Interestingly, this creates a connection with the idea of cultural differ-
ence. One can say that the agency of the presets (or of the engineers who
programmed them) is part of QU’s performance (together with the agencies
of the other musicians, the State, the electricity, the building, the audience,
and so on), but also that Japanese culture (or English, or German, or Ameri-
can, or a mix of several of these entities, depending on which source is used
by EM1 and which one is considered in the analysis) is part of QU’s concert.
As I will discuss in the following chapters, the accent on materiality is
crucial in helping us distinguish between concepts of agency versus culture.
If we were considering, as in Alfred Gell’s anthropological theory of art,
what/whose agency is dominant (for instance, Gell considers, in the case of
an influential person who has his portrait made by an artist, whether the
agency of the former or the latter is predominant; Gell 1998, 53), we would
not be able to decide for certain whether that would be EM1 or the preset,
70 Chapter 5
because it would depend on the point of view of the analyst, who subjec-
tively decides to focus on one actor (or several actors) specifically.
But, from a material and temporal point of view, we see that the presets
were written first, by engineers in Japan, and then selected and played by
EM1 in Beijing, at which point the presets’ sounds went out of the MC-505
and through the air up to my ears. The overall journey of the recorded
sequence was complex and certainly hard to trace back, but at the same
time it remains a unique path that can be followed from the performance
at Vogue to its embodiment in the synthesizer in Japan. Seen from the per-
spective of the artifact, it doesn’t matter whether we label this embodiment
with the signposts “agency” or “culture”—both work well.
As I mentioned earlier, EM1’s situation is not something rare. On the
contrary, the practice of relying on presets is common in electronic music,
and the reproduction of sound can even be considered as one of the main
characteristics of this form of art (Théberge 1997). It can be observed in
the case of highly skilled musicians too. Georgina Born, in her study of
the renowned French Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/
Musique (IRCAM) provides similar observations involving IRCAM’s high-
end synthesizer’s 4X (a complex hardware real-time digital sound processor).
4X designer’s BU said that one day, for fun, he had used the 4X to churn out a
pseudo avant-garde piece in just twenty minutes—a “piece of cake,” he said. A senior
visiting composer had come into his studio, listened to it, and was most impressed,
asking who made it, how, and so on. BU laughed hilariously at this and ridiculed the
hallucination of avant-garde music with me. (Born 1995, 217)
The use of presets can also be seen in the case of a piece of music too dif-
ficult for humans to play.
Early in his career this man had written a string quartet, but he found no quartet
able to play it. Having become involved some years later in computer music, he was
finally able to hear his quartet “accurately” for the first time by programming the
computer to pay it in its full complexity, a task that had defeated human musicians.
(Born 1995, 225)
Beyond situations involving musical activities, the process of embodying

a technical device with human action, which will then be “played” in the
context of the use of the device, is common to most technological pro-
cesses, and this process always implies a shift of the action in time. In the
case of the Roland MC-505 used by EM1, there is an engineer who has
written musical sequences in Japan before they are used by local musicians
in Beijing. This situation is similar to the one involving mobile phones
described in chapter 2: we observed engineers who had decided before about

the punctuation of text messages that were written after by users.
To better comprehend the role of the MC-505 in QU’s performances at
Vogue, we can take the metaphor of the virtual player one step further and
compare it with actual foreigners playing in Chinese bands. According to
publications on popular music in China, such configurations, at that time,
were quite common. For instance, Nimrod Baranovitch, commenting on
the rock and pop music scene, notes the central role played by foreigners.
Until late 1989 and early 1990 rock music on the mainland was extremely marginal,
and it was performed mainly in small nightclubs, bars, and hotels patronized by for-
eigners. Most of these venues were located in Beijing’s northeast foreign-embassies
region, where most of the foreigners work and live. Also associated with the emer-
gence of rock in China were Chinese universities, which during the 1980s saw in-
creasing numbers of foreign students. Most of these students resided in Beijing.
Foreigners, mainly but not exclusively Westerners, played a central role in the intro-
duction of rock to China. They not only introduced foreign cassettes and patronized
emerging local rock but also participated in the performance and production of this
early rock. One of the earliest rock bands in China was formed by foreigners, and
many others included foreign members. (Baranovitch 2003, 31)
Jeroen De Kloet makes similar observations for hip hop.
In China’s Hip Hop culture, foreigners play a conspicuous role. Only one out of Yin
Tsang’s four members is Chinese: MC Webber is a Beijing resident, two members are
white Americans, one is an overseas Chinese from Canada. However, all of the Yin
Tsang band members seem eager to perform a Chinese identity by using a Chinese
name and by rapping in Chinese. The lyrics of Yin Tsang clearly focus on everyday
life in Beijing. (De Kloet 2007, 139)
As De Kloet emphasizes, the role played by foreigners is somewhat disturb-

ing because it looks like one culture pretending to be another. The MC-505,
because it performs tasks that EM1 is not able to do, ends up with a special
status in a culture that is, after all, not the MC-505’s own. A PhD thesis
from a Chinese student who graduated from the University of Liverpool in
2007 contains revealing quotes. Here, the author discusses an American-
born Chinese musician who played in one of the main rock bands in China
at the time:
It can be argued that the majority of Chinese rockers were not qualified musicians
in the early 1990s, but nobody could judge them. Kaiser Kuo admits: “Staying in a
musical instrument shop at any major American cities for one hour, I can definitely
meet at least fifteen guitarists who are absolutely much better than me, so I have to
72 Chapter 5
admit that I was really lucky [to become a member of Tang Dynasty] when I came
to China in the late 1980s.” (In Lu and Li 2003, 128, quoted by Wang 2007, 161)
In the words of another American-Chinese bassist, playing in another

famous band, talking about his life and career in China:
It is very nice. I was just a carpenter working at a factory in the United States, and it
is unimaginable for me to make a living as a professional musician, but in China, I
am playing with the top bands. Life is wonderful! (Wang 2007, 164)
As we can see more clearly now, whether foreign agency/culture is

embodied in a human being who plays music in China or embodied in
a technical device, such as EM1’s Roland MC-505, the situation is similar:
both are welcomed by the Chinese audience and the local Chinese musi-
cians because they provide rare skills from more advanced countries. These
skills would probably not be used in a similar context in the United States
or in Europe, but they are useful in a local context that is in a process of
appropriating musical styles it relates to.
Regarding the question of cultural difference and artifacts, what the
case of EM1’s Roland MC-505 Groovebox teaches us is that humans and
devices have a similar kind of cultural impact, because what we can provi-
sionally call their respective “cultural contents” produce the same kind of
results. In a nutshell, China’s present, in 2001, had something to do with
the West’s past, and the concept of agency has something to do with the
one of culture.
The next study, about the vinyl records of a Beijing disc jockey, provides
a complementary set of observations in a similar setting.
6 The Vinyl Records of Xiao Deng
Records are the pivot around which dance cultures have come to revolve.
—Thornton (1996, 65–66)
The Dancer
In August 2001, as I spent most of my evenings at Club Vogue observing

the activities of the band QU, I met there most of the musicians who would
later become part of this study. That was the case with Xiao Deng, who had
been introduced to me by an Australian man working as a manager and
occasional DJ for Vogue. Xiao Deng, he said, was the best local techno DJ
(here I refer to techno not as a generic term for electronic dance music, but
as a specific dance music style1).
Although I didn’t know much about DJing at that time, I remember being
struck by Xiao Deng’s movements at the DJ desk. He seemed extremely self-
confident; he was almost disdainful of the faders, knobs, and switches he
manipulated at a fast speed without any visible or audible mistakes. He
seemed especially skilled when contrasted with the musicians of QU, who
touched their synthesizers with much hesitation and rearranged rhythms
and tunes several times before getting them right.
Two years later, in 2003, when I came to Beijing again and stayed for
about a year, Xiao Deng became one of my closest friends in China. I learned
that he had been trained, since the age of eleven, as a professional dancer at
the Beijing Dance Academy—the best dance school in the People’s Republic
of China. His precise gestures at the DJ desk were well known by his peers
and were obviously influenced by this former apprenticeship.
In this chapter and in chapter 7, I will rely on my close contact with
Xiao Deng between 2003 and 2010 to discuss, in detail, the vinyl records
he played as a DJ and (in the next chapter) some of the software he used as
a music producer. In order to help readers get a general idea of his personal
74 Chapter 6
background and his overall activity as one of the leading DJs in Beijing at
that time, I start with a few biographical elements and a short description
of the local dance music scene.
Xiao Deng was born at the end of the 1970s, in a province located in
the north of China. His father was an actor, his elder brother a musician,
and his mother had some experience as a Chinese opera singer; as a child,
he benefited from his family’s orientation toward art. At the age of eleven,
he passed the examination for the Beijing Dance Academy, and therefore
moved to Beijing, where he studied traditional Chinese dance and went to
the academy’s high school. Upon graduation, two departments asked him
to continue his training in their respective professional sections, but he
decided to quit the school and get a taste of real life.
He moved to the south of China, where he worked in a bar as a go-go
dancer. He quickly became interested in the activities of the local DJs
(who, Xiao Deng insisted when telling me this story, were not mixing but
only “playing” compact discs [see the description of mixing in “The Vinyl
Records,” this chap.]) and eventually started to DJ himself.
Armed with the musical knowledge acquired during his dance studies,
he quickly learned the basic skills of DJing and started making a living at
it. The timing was auspicious: in the mid-nineties there were not many DJs
in China, and from the start lots of people were willing to hire him. He
worked mostly in discos and clubs, and he moved from one province of
China to another with a friend who was working as MC (short for master of
ceremony, a person who talks to the audience while people dance).
They traveled to various places in China, including one club in the
Hunan province (in the south of China) where Xiao Deng’s monthly sal-
ary went up to 7,000 renminbi (RMB)—about US$843 at the time, a huge
amount of money) together with free lodging in a four-star hotel (belong-
ing to the owner of the club who hired him). After some time, Xiao Deng
eventually settled down in the city of Shenzhen (south China, close to
the Hong Kong border). His monthly salary had reached 15,000 RMB—
about eight times the salary of a taxi driver in Beijing. This period coin-
cides with the peak of dance events in China—a time often referred to with
nostalgia by Chinese DJs, as they were very successful then. A few years
later, Xiao Deng would be happy if he could earn half that amount of
money.
In 2000–2001, Xiao Deng moved back to Beijing and started working
in a club as a resident DJ (i.e., a disc jockey who works for a club on a
regular basis—in Xiao Deng’s case, up to six days a week). At that time he
made friends with a Japanese student who eventually became his flat mate,
The Vinyl Records of Xiao Deng 75
promoter, manager, and, through frequent trips to Japan, his supplier of

vinyl records and electronic music devices.
In the Clubs
From August 2003 to August 2004, when I observed his activities in detail,
Xiao Deng was among the few DJs of the capital regularly invited to play
in other provinces as well as at most of the local clubs (other DJs were only
playing in their own circles). Apart from his DJing activity, he composed
songs at the request of various backers (I noted three: a beer company, a
soccer event, and a Japanese producer). Although he had been a resident DJ
in the past, during these twelve months he worked as an independent disc
jockey not attached to a specific club. His Japanese friend took care of the
larger part of the administrative work related to his DJing performances,
including contact with the club owners, financial deals, promotion of the
events (through posters and flyers), and so on.
His status as a disc jockey was established by several facts. He mixed
once or twice a week in clubs, mostly those where the entry price was the
highest in the city—RMB 50, about US$6 at the time (other clubs had an
entrance fee ranging from RMB 10 to 30). (Thornton [1996] and Taylor
[2001] describe club cultures as transcending differences in matters of social
class. This was clearly not the case in Beijing at that time: dance music clubs
were extremely expensive and attracted mainly wealthy customers.)
Xiao Deng’s coming to an event was often announced several days in
advance by various posters and flyers displayed in the clubs and other
places in the city (e.g., shops, bars, or foreign-student dormitories at the
universities2). His competence as a DJ, stressed by his peers, centered on
his body movements. As I mentioned in the previous section, this particu-
lar skill seemed related to his previous training as a professional dancer,
since the necessary competence is much the same: listen to the music and
move one’s body accordingly. Although he did not practice scratch (the art
of accelerating or decelerating a record with one’s hand to create pitching
effects3), he was making various kinds of changes and sound effects, in con-
trast to most of his fellow DJs, who concentrated instead on the choice of
records only.
Xiao Deng’s monthly income varied quite a lot according the number
and kind of dance parties he participated in. In 2003–2004, I estimated it
at about 4,000 RMB (US$482), ranging from a high of 15,000 to 20,000
(US$1,807 to US$2,409) for a busy and successful month to nothing during
periods without work opportunities (e.g., during the winter, especially Chi-
nese New Year, when people don’t go out much). Most of this income came
76 Chapter 6
from the mixes and from collaborating on the organization of parties with
the Japanese promoter, plus rare additional amounts when he composed
music on request.
He often complained about the pressure of not having a regular income
and not knowing what tomorrow would bring. He also had to get involved
in promotional work and wasn’t happy with that. Such work, for example,
consisted of going to foreign students’ dormitories at Peking University and
Beijing Normal University (in which case my presence was a plus, because a
Caucasian face made it easier to get past the security guards at the entrance),
running up and down the floors, and slipping party flyers under the door of
each room. Xiao Deng stressed the fact that organizational work for dance
parties took a lot of time. It was not rare that, after some promotional activ-
ities on the very day of a party, he would be completely exhausted when he
had to start his mix. He complained that doing such tasks didn’t leave him
enough time to write songs.
Xiao Deng and most of his disc jockey friends listed themselves under
the banner of the dance music subgenres techno and house (with their many
variations, such as techno-house, deep house, etc.). Techno was the term
most often used by Xiao Deng to categorize his work: he was, in his own
words, a techno DJ. He also used this description to express a difference
between what he was doing and hip hop, a subgenre he had mixed some
years ago and that was played in other clubs by DJs who did not socialize
much with Xiao Deng and the people around him.
It is worth noting that neither Xiao Deng nor the other members of his
team argued much about the status of techno compared to other musical
genres, or about the need to be “authentic,” as is often discussed in studies
about rock music in China. If there was an argument, it usually focused on
how to bring as many people as possible to the parties and how to get more
local people interested in this new style of music. In other words, how to
make sure they could earn enough money to keep it going.
When he was not mixing or otherwise in the clubs, listening to other
DJs’ sets and meeting friends, Xiao Deng stayed at home with his girlfriend.
He smoked, drank beer, and described himself as a slacker who had enor-
mous difficulty in motivating himself to act if not under pressure (e.g., if he
was to compose a song, he needed to have a fixed order, with a deadline).
My observations confirm his personal diagnosis.
The average audience of the parties he played was composed of people
between twenty and thirty years old,4 mostly Chinese, but with a substan-
tial minority of foreigners. The proportion of Westerners varied between
10 to 80 percent of the crowd (the percentage would shift upward during
events such as the World University Games, held in Beijing in 2001, or the
2008 Olympic Games, as well as every summer, when the Chinese language
courses for foreigners start at Beijing universities).
The total amount of clubbers varied between a few dozens and a few
hundred, and club managers moved the club’s furniture accordingly so
that the place would always look as full of people as possible. The parties
were mixed and mostly straight (gay crowds had their own clubs in the
city5), with many people flirting. Organizers, DJs, and the like were pre-
dominately male. I didn’t spend much time in the field paying attention to
gender issues, but I would say the situation was similar to the one at clubs
in England in the 1990s, as described by Sarah Thornton (Thornton 1996,
56). Although there were many exceptions, most Chinese girls seemed to
be attempting to be sexy, and men tried, through money or fame, to be
powerful.
For instance, it was common to see one man with several younger girls,
for whom he bought drinks. This phenomenon was referred to by Xiao
Deng and his friends as a “big brother-little sister” type relationship ⣏⒍-
⮷⥸. The young ladies who were unofficial girlfriends of such men were
sometimes referred to as “fruits” 㝄⃧, and the equivalent for young men
with powerful older ladies was “grandsons” ⬁ or “ducks” 淕⫸.
Contrary to what I saw in other clubs, there were few or no prostitutes.
A couple of times in one club, where Xiao Deng played in 2008, I noticed
a group of girls arriving early with the other staff, who told me they were
students hired to improve the women-to-men ratio. But they didn’t seem to
be involved in activities other than dancing and drinking.6
The main activity, as seen by an external observer, consisted in getting
together on Friday and Saturday nights to dance and drink alcohol.7 From
the point of view of the managers, the goal seemed to be to get in as many
customers as possible, who were hopefully going to spend as much money
as possible. This objective, except in the case of a few very successful clubs,
was hardly ever reached. Most Beijing clubs at that time were sometimes
crowded during weekends, but stood empty most of the time. Perhaps for
this reason, most clubs I visited had an average life expectancy of one to
two years.
The criterion of crowd size was used by everyone to quantify the suc-
cess of an event. Crowd size mattered to the managers, to the public atmo-
sphere, and to Xiao Deng, whose income and fame depended on it. The
usual question received by someone inside a club on a mobile phone, from
someone calling or texting from outside, was “Are there many people?”
Ṣ⣂⎿? If the importance of the question for a manager—whose income is
78 Chapter 6
usually related to the amount of money spent by the audience—could be

easily understood, it was more difficult to understand the importance of
crowd size for club customers and potential customers.
The explanations given by those I met in the clubs where Xiao Deng was
playing were as follows: the employees were bored if the crowds were thin;
even though there was less work to do in such a case, they preferred an
active and “lively” 䂕斡 atmosphere (the question of job loss didn’t seem to
be an issue, maybe because other club jobs were easy to find, according to
a manager I spoke with). The people in the audience, who I asked about a
comparison of club-going with sightseeing (a situation in which most peo-
ple, in China or Europe, seem to prefer not to be in the middle of a crowd),
spoke about their desire for “being with other people” 嶇⇓Ṣ⛐ᶨ崟. Finally,
DJs insisted that, to make a good mix, it was necessary to “communicate”
Ṍ㳩 with the audience. Xiao Deng in particular stressed the importance
of interaction with the crowd, because, he said, “the feeling is different”
デ奱ᶵᶨ㟟 when compared to mixes he performed alone at his home for
practice.
All together, there didn’t seem to be a ready-made formula for making
people come to a club on a regular basis. Success—the continuous presence
of a numerous audience—depended on a subtle mix of many elements:
location of the club in the city, design of the place, management of entrance
fees8, style of music and disc jockeys, promotion, financial resources, rela-
tionships with the city authorities, the managers’ friend circles and level
of personal fame, the personae of owners or DJs, staff management, trend
changes, flow of information on the day of the party through mobile
phones and Internet forums, reputation of the club, period of the year, and
weather conditions.
Dance parties in Beijing were also playing the obvious role of meeting
place for the arts and entertainment community.9 Musicians were but a
subgroup of a larger community that included personalities from the movie
industry, video and design artists, and many others. Work discussions (con-
tracts, projects, collaborations, etc.) took place in the clubs in a systematic
way, and between entertainment industry professionals, business talk usu-
ally took precedent over dancing and flirting.
From 2005 to 2010, the number of clubs in Beijing and the number of
people going to dance parties increased by roughly a factor of five. How-
ever, Xiao Deng’s DJing activity and revenue didn’t change much. I haven’t
done much research on this issue, but I believe one explanation lies in the
fact that Xiao Deng’s work team focused on the capital’s foreign crowd.
In 2008, for example, Xiao Deng often played at White Rabbit, a small
club whose audience was about 50 percent expatriates and foreign students
and 50 percent Chinese; it looked similar to the kind of atmosphere I had
observed in detail four years before. But a few streets away, a series of new,
large clubs were hosting parties where the music style was somewhere
between techno, progressive house, and trance, with the occasional addi-
tion of Chinese lyrics (whereas Xiao Deng played minimal techno). At these
clubs, the number of attendees was about five times that of the White Rab-
bit, and a white face was seldom seen on the dance floor. In other words,
the increase in crowd size during those years seemed to be owing to the
local Chinese crowd, and this crowd looked for clubs different from those
where Xiao Deng and his friends—still considered as some kind of avant-
garde—were going.
The Vinyl Records
Records are among the main physical objects active not only in club cul-
ture, but also in musical activities in general (Thornton 1996; Ribac 2005a,
2005b; Maisonneuve 2006, 2009; Hennion 2007a, 260–261). At the begin-
ning of the 2000s, vinyl records were no doubt Xiao Deng’s most important
nonhuman collaborators. He owned about 1,500 of them, and carried a
selection of 20 to 200 every time he went to work. Most clubs and bars
provided turntables, mixers, and CD players for the DJs, so he didn’t have
to bring any equipment. Although I never saw it, I believe he probably had
a stock of compact discs too, because he had mixed CDs in the early part
of his career.
Figure 6.1 is a picture of the desk at his home in 2004, where he had
installed his two turntables and practiced his mixes. The turntables and
the DJ mixer are similar to those I saw in most clubs in Beijing at the time.
(a) One Technics 1200 turntable (secondhand, bought by Xiao Deng in

Shenzhen for about RMB 1000, US$120)
(b) One record (this one, sent by a friend from France, is a promotional
record—according to Xiao Deng, this is the reason it isn’t labeled).
(c) One DJ mixer Vestax 50A (secondhand, lent to Xiao Deng by his Japa-
nese housemate, about RMB 15,000, US$1800).10
(d) A second turntable (same origin and price as the one on the left).
(e) One pair of Sony headphones (unfortunately, I lost this model’s ref-
erence number, but I believe they were professional-quality headphones,
quite standard. These were lent to him by his Japanese flat mate but
80 Chapter 6
Figure 6.1
Xiao Deng’s home, June 2004.
belonged to another Japanese friend who was also a DJ), probably worth
less than US$180).
(f) Records could be found all over the place, including behind the first
turntable, on the second turntable, and under the desk.
A mix, called such by Xiao Deng and his friends (only as a noun, “a mix”
ᶨ᷒mix; in the verbal form, the usual way to say it in Chinese was “to put
music” 㓦枛᷸), was a musical practice similar to what could be observed at
the time in many clubs and bars in the West. Generally speaking, the word
referred to the general activity of the DJs playing in the clubs, as well as to
the transition procedure between two different musical sources that was
performed by the disc jockeys while playing.
The latter consisted in selecting recordings—mostly vinyl discs, but
sometimes also other mediums, such as compact discs, tapes, or digital files
played directly from a computer—and then “chaining” them so that there
would be no interruption in the music. Sometimes DJs adjusted pieces of
music rhythmically, so that the transition from one song to another would
be imperceptible (the audience would have the impression of one single
song lasting several hours); this would contribute to bringing the crowd
to a state of trance. At other times, DJs linked different styles or subgenres,
thereby generating special contrasts in the atmosphere and making the
structure of the whole performance sound like a patchwork. And some-
times DJs superimposed recordings and let both records play together for
more than a minute or two, so as to create completely new musical pieces.
The average length of a mix by Xiao Deng was two to three hours,
repeated two to three times over the course of an evening. For example, he
would mix from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m., then be replaced by another DJ for two
hours, and then play again from 3 a.m. to 5 a.m. According to several West-
ern DJs I talked to, this process is similar in most places where techno tracks
are mixed (major differences in this process may occur when different styles
of electronic music are involved11).
In 2003–2004, Xiao Deng carried an average of sixty to eighty records to
his shows (it would have been impossible to carry all of his records, they
were far too heavy). The music selection was done at home, which meant
that the music he mixed during the parties was limited by the fact that he
couldn’t mix a record not present in his bag. (From 2005 on, the situation
started to change as he began using mp3s and DJ software such as Traktor.
He then could play small-sized digital files directly from his laptop and
could easily transport several hundred songs.)
As I was trying to learn about the vinyl records’ agency and cultural con-
tents, I became interested in the fact that Xiao Deng’s mixes were always
mixes of the choices at his disposal: the available records in his bag, the
possibilities or impossibilities of mixing one song with another (consider-
ing their respective musical structures), plus his reading of the crowd’s reac-
tions as they called for certain styles of music, which would sometimes not
be the kind of music he wanted to play.
I remember one evening when I noticed that Zheng Dao, a well-known
local disc jockey who had just finished a set, looked particularly upset. I
asked him what had happened, and he said he had enough of “serving the
junkies” ᷢ⏠㭺侭㚵≉ (a pun on the famous communist saying “serve the
people” ᷢṢ㮹㚵≉). He complained that too many people in the audience
had taken drugs that day, such that he was forced to create a mix that would
give the crowd a feeling of “gliding” 梆 (literally “fly”), which he had no
interest in doing. (Zheng Dao was addressing me, a Western musician who
had just listened to his set. Although his remarks point out a set of prob-
lems I observed several times, it is possible that this was also his way of tell-
ing me why he had mixed one particular kind of music instead of another.
Some songs were considered by disc jockeys as “easy to mix”—Xiao Deng
82 Chapter 6
sometimes referred to “easy” songs using the term “music pleasant to

the ear” ⤥⏔䘬枛᷸—and others less so; therefore, a particular mix could
be seen as indicating the ability of the DJ to use more difficult materials
or not.)
For the audience and the disc jockeys, the choice of musical pieces con-
stituted one criterion for determining the difference between a good DJ and
a bad one. A comparison can be made to personal listening habits: if some
songs are pleasant to the ear in the afternoon, others are more likely to be
enjoyed in the morning, or in the evening, and of course such judgments
vary from person to person. In addition, a song listeners have heard many
times will not make the same impression as a song being listened to for the
very first time.
A Beijing techno DJ was, among other things, someone able to under-
stand the mood of an audience and correctly determine which kind of
music to play at any particular moment—a situation not specific to DJs
in China. For instance, even though the hip-hop scene in Japan was
quite different from Beijing’s club scene (especially because of the lyrics,
which people can memorize and sing along to), Ian Condry makes similar
observations:
Their extensive record collections are the raw material of their late-night perfor-
mances, which to a large extent involve strategies to get the audience excited (mo-
riagaru), for example, by choosing a well-liked track. If, however, a song is over-
played (dasai), the effect is dulling. An unknown song can spark interest and even
draw a few listeners up to the DJ booth to try to read the name of the artist and title
from the spinning disk. But playing too many unknown songs can alienate listeners.
(Condry 2007, 132)12
Of course, there were many criteria that went into making a DJ well known
or appreciated by his audience. Gestures and shouts at the crowd while
playing, fame, the ability to mix two records in an adequate manner, plus
many other aspects all mattered as well, and their respective importance
varied from one person to another and from one club to another.
This said, it probably makes sense to pay specific attention to the ability
of DJs to “feel the mood” and choose the right song. With the development
of DJ software, which takes care of most of the technical burden previously
required to be a DJ, this specific ability to feel seems, more and more, to be
the most important skill of the human being behind the machines. In Xiao
Deng’s case, for instance, I observed, between 2004 and 2010, his devices
and work procedures change as he moved from purchasing and playing
vinyl records on turntables to downloading and playing mp3 files from an
Apple computer laptop, and as he started using a software that synchro-

nizes songs automatically.
Having sketched out Xiao Deng’s DJing activities and environment, I
now focus specifically on the vinyl records he used between the years 2003
and 2004 and how these technical objects were involved in the mixing
activity.
Xiao Deng and Phil
As often happens with technical innovation, if we look back at the advent

of the recording industry, we see that not everyone was happy with its cre-
ation at the time. Similar to the way that blacksmiths and horse veterinar-
ians once viewed the invention of the bicycle as an economic threat (Bijker
1995, 24), musicians unions in the 1950s worried that records were taking
nightclub jobs away from musicians who played live. People argued that,
under certain circumstances (soft lights, quick-change of records), it even
made the absence of a band unnoticeable (Thornton 1996, 52). Indeed,
in the case of Xiao Deng, as in the case of the Roland MC-505 Groovebox
playing with the band QU (chapter 5), we can think of records as “humans”
working together with Xiao Deng.
For clarity’s sake, and for the purpose of mixing categories of humans
and nonhumans, I will consider in this section one vinyl record owned by
Xiao Deng in 2004. On the basis of the information printed on its cover,
I will refer to it as “I Love You,” written and produced in Belfast by Phil
Kieren. I will consider that the record being chosen and played by Xiao
Deng in his DJing activities was this one, and that it represented the virtual
presence of “Phil”—Xiao Deng’s precious nonhuman collaborator.
The first step we can consider is the one that resulted in the connection
between Phil and Xiao Deng. How did they come to know each other? In
order to bring new music to the public, Xiao Deng was regularly buying
new records. Unfortunately, there was no record shop for DJs in Beijing at
the time. For this reason, he followed a specific procedure: he visited labels’
websites, or online vinyl shops, through which he could listen to sound
excerpts and write down the names of the records he wanted to buy. In
mid-2004, he used this website: http://www.decks-records.de.
Xiao Deng usually clicked on the section “Techno-News,” located on a
tab on the upper left side of the main page of the site; he would peruse the
songs available in this section of the website. For each available song, he
could see an image of the record’s cover, the name of the artist, the record
84 Chapter 6
label, and music style information. He could also listen to a short excerpt in
mp3 format by clicking on a small loudspeaker icon.
According to Xiao Deng, this procedure helped him to instantly access
new records from the techno music subgenre. He listened to the excerpts
(about thirty seconds for each song) and wrote down a list of his choices
for future acquisition. After that, he gave the list to his Japanese promoter,
who used the opportunity of a trip to Japan to visit a record shop. Accord-
ing to Ian Condry, who was in Japan observing hip-hop artists a few years
before, at that time Tokyo indeed had “an area in Shibuya that boasts what
may be the world’s most extensive collection of new and used vinyl record
stores” (Condry 2007, 4). If the records Xiao Deng wanted weren’t sold
out (which happened quite often), he purchased them for Xiao Deng, who
then listened to them at his home and put them in storage boxes for future
mixes.13
So this is how Phil and Xiao Deng met: Phil had been selected by the
people behind deck-records.de and was waiting in line in the techno-news
section. Xiao Deng listened to an excerpt of Phil’s musical work and liked it.
It is interesting to note that Xiao Deng did not choose the vinyl he would
later own, but its contents. Phil’s virtual presence, embodied inside a vinyl,
was purchased by Xiao Deng’s Japanese friend and carried back to Beijing,
where it then spent most of its time in a storage box.
Working Together
The hiring of Xiao Deng and Phil for a dance event most often occurred
in an informal way. For example, Xiao Deng would get a phone call or an
email from another DJ or the manager of a club asking if he could mix at
a certain place on a certain date. If he said yes, the deal was concluded.
Another frequent scenario was one in which the event was organized by his
promoter, who would contact a club and offer to organize a party.
A difference between the two scenarios was that in the first situation,
Xiao Deng cared only about his work as a disc jockey (i.e., bring Phil and
the other vinyl records and mix them) and received his money in cash from
the club after his set. In the second situation, his promoter and team took
care of most of the installation and promotion for the event (the team con-
sisted of the Japanese promoter, a Chinese girl who was in charge of public
relations and wrote all texts related to the events, Xiao Deng’s girlfriend,
a second DJ and his girlfriend, plus additional staff, whose number varied
according to need). They collected the entrance fees (which the team would
keep; the manager of the club kept the money resulting from the sale of
beverages), and Xiao Deng got his share.
The days he played, Xiao Deng had to decide if Phil would come along
or not. In other words, he needed to choose which records to take with him
for his mix. Although he occasionally made the selection quickly before
leaving his house, most of the time he started either the day before or several
hours in advance. A vinyl record is not a very light object; he could carry no
more than three hundred at a time. In most cases, he carried between sixty
and one hundred. Sometimes he would bring as few as twenty (for an easy
and short party for which he was pretty sure he knew what to expect) or up
to two hundred for an important event where the audience’s taste wasn’t at
all clear to him. Phil might stay at home if his style didn’t fit in.
Xiao Deng used special DJ bags to carry Phil and his mates. One was
small, could hold about fifty records, and was slung across the shoulder.
Another one was much bigger and wheeled, and it could hold up to five
hundred records. When using this second bag, he usually also put his head-
phones and other belongings in it, next to the records.
If the event was organized by his work group, he usually arrived at the
premises around six p.m. to help install the DJ desk, set up the loudspeak-
ers if necessary, decorate, and so on. If the event was to happen in a place
already set up (e.g., a bar), or was organized by others, Xiao Deng would
arrive two or three hours before his set, drink a few beers, and wait for his
turn to mix, while Phil would wait in his bag, usually left behind the DJ
desk. Typically, a party had between two and four different disc jockeys.
The first played from, say, 11 p.m. to 1 a.m., the second from 1 a.m. to 3
a.m., and so on. The schedule varied on the basis of three criteria: the size
of the event, fame of the DJs, and audience size. Most of the time, the DJ
considered to be the most important played at the time when the audience
was at its maximum, generally between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m.
Once at the DJ desk, a double-sided process took place. On one hand,
Xiao Deng chose a record to play on the turntables. Should Phil play first,
or someone else? The techno songs had an average run time of seven min-
utes, but he rarely played them from beginning to end; a change was likely
to occur every four to five minutes. On the other hand, Xiao Deng created
different kinds of variations over the music, using the audio effects pro-
vided by the DJ mixer (e.g., volume variations, changes in equalization,
reverberation, or delay).
A set usually lasted between two to four hours. While mixing, the activ-
ity of Xiao Deng took on a cyclical form. With one vinyl playing on the
first turntable, he would take a second one, put it on the second turntable,
and listen to it using headphones and a specific volume button on the DJ
desk (so that the audience couldn’t hear the sound of the second vinyl
86 Chapter 6
being examined). He would then synchronize its speed with the first vinyl
using the pitch-tracking knob. He would locate in the musical structure
a moment that seemed appropriate to start the combination of the two
records (the one already playing and the new one) and stop the second
record at this particular spot. When the playing of the first record reached a
suitable moment, he would start the second record, and, using the control
knob on the mixer for the volume of the second turntable, operate the tran-
sition from the first record to the second one. Once the transition had been
carried out successfully, he started anew, with another record.
This operation, the mix that is, could last between less than a second if
one record was suddenly stopped and the other one started on the right
beat (imagine a relay) to a minute or two, with the two records playing
together and overlaying each other, together with various effects (especially
equalization), thus making up what is sometimes called “the third record.”
While performing these repetitive movements, Xiao Deng would observe
the audience’s reactions to the music and choose the next records to be
played accordingly.
From a technical point of view, I think the procedure Xiao Deng relied
on was more or less the same as that of most techno DJs in the world (for
studies on DJing in the West, see Thornton 1996; Fikentscher 2000; Jou-
venet 2001; Taylor 2001; Fouché 2012). However, if we focus on the vinyl
records and the issue of culture and artifacts, we can make several observa-
tions that bring to light singular elements made specific by the Chinese
context.
Xiaaaaoooo Deeeenng
During the summer of 2005, Xiao Deng and his work group organized a
dance party on the Great Wall. Starting around the year 2000,14 this kind
of outdoor event usually took place during the summer, away from Beijing,
at a location on the Great Wall where the local administration was tolerant
of raver crowds. Standing on those ancient stones, I listened to Xiao Deng’s
set. I was suddenly struck by the fact of being on one of the most famous
relics of Chinese civilization, listening to the performance of a Chinese art-
ist who could barely speak English and had never studied abroad—and all
of this would disappear in a blink of an eye. I closed my eyes . . . And what
did I hear? German techno music.
To better comprehend what was going on at the Great Wall that day in
2005, it is useful to reconsider Xiao Deng’s mixing process. We’ll imagine
that Phil is involved in the process we are listening to. At first, Phil is in the
DJ bag not doing anything. Then, carried by Xiao Deng, he moves up to the
Step 1:
Phil is in
the box
Step 2: Phil collaborates

with the second record and
Xiao Deng
Step 3: Phil plays alone
Figure 6.2
Phil and Xiao Deng’s collaboration process (1).
DJ desk and starts to collaborate with Xiao Deng and the other record that
is already playing on the second turntable.
At this point, similar to the study of QU in the previous chapter, we
have a three-person band playing onstage: Xiao Deng, Phil, and the second
record. Then, Xiao Deng removes the first record and looks for the next
one to play. While he is looking in his DJ bag for the next record, Phil is
playing alone, with the crowd rockin’ for him. The situation is similar to a
jazz jam session, where musicians sometimes play together and sometimes
take turns for solos.
88 Chapter 6
In 2004 in Beijing, I observed the variations of the agencies of Phil versus

Xiao Deng in different situations. In the same way that Phil was, at one
moment, in the DJ bag doing nothing, and then, in the next moment, quite
important (on one of the two turntables), and then very important (rockin’
the crowd), Xiao Deng had his own moments of glory versus moments of
disappearance.
For example, it was not rare, when Xiao Deng mixed at the beginning
of a party (around 10 or 11 p.m.), for no one to dance; most people arrived
around midnight, sometimes even later. If there was a competing party
the same night at another club—for example, with a famous disc jockey
from abroad—the dance floor could stay empty until 3 a.m., and then sud-
denly, whenever a load of people moved from one club to the other, be
overcrowded. In the absence of a sufficient number of dancers, Xiao Deng’s
work wasn’t very rewarding. The few people present at the club concen-
trated more on their conversations than on the music, and if a few swayed
their hips while drinking, those who crossed the dance floor did so mostly
to greet someone or go to the toilet.
The difference with a crowded dance floor, later in the evening or on
another day, was striking. Then Xiao Deng was the king, he ruled. The peo-
ple seemed to hang on his gestures: a bad choice of record (this situation
occurred once in 2004, when he decided to test one of his own songs that
I had helped him to mix; the bass frequencies were badly tuned—by me,
that is) and everybody would stop dancing. A good choice, and the enthu-
siastic dancers would raise their hands, whistle, and scream “XIAOOO
DEEENNNG!!” A few hours later, if Xiao Deng was the disc jockey in charge
of the last set and most of the crowd had already left, he would find himself
almost alone in the dance hall, with just a few drunkards who were unable
to move, a few unstoppable dancers, and employees who were already start-
ing to clean the place. In other words, Xiao Deng’s “importance” in the
overall agency of the party followed a pattern similar to Phil’s: not impor-
tant at all, quite or very important, and then not important at all again.15
At the end of spring 2004, by dint of following Xiao Deng to the parties,
I started to become familiar with the tunes of the records he mixed on a
regular basis and his musical feeling through the mix. I also started to be
friends with some of the other people around, such as DJs, dancers, and
the employees of the clubs. One night, a group of regular customers was
present, among them a guy—let’s call him Guo—I knew a little bit since
we had chatted a few times. He was an enthusiastic dancer, often showing
up in the middle of the dance floor making lots of gestures and shouts.
On this night we were standing together behind a group of tall people,
TOILET
Figure 6.3
Phil and Xiao Deng’s collaboration process (2).
which prevented us from seeing the DJ desk, when Guo raised his arms and
shouted “XIAAAAOOO DEEENNG!!” The problem, as I knew from having
noticed the change a few minutes earlier when I was closer to the DJ desk,
was that it was not Xiao Deng who was mixing, but the second disc jockey
who had just started his own two-hour set.
This situation is close to the one described in the previous section where
Phil is alone onstage while Xiao Deng looks for the next record to play. Guo
didn’t notice that Xiao Deng had left because what he heard was not Xiao
Deng playing, but Phil. The absence of visual contact with the DJ desk pre-
vented Guo from knowing that Xiao Deng was not behind the turntables.
Xiao Deng, upon arriving at a club, after putting his bag behind the DJ
desk and plugging in some cables, usually drank several bottles of beer at
the bar before his mix. As a result, he often had to go to the restroom dur-
ing his set. To do so, he placed Phil on one of the two turntables, performed
a quick transition with the preceding song, and . . . went to the toilet.
During these few minutes, no human being was standing at the DJ desk.
But the crowd kept dancing, because what the people were hearing was not
Xiao Deng’s but Phil’s virtual presence, recorded in Belfast and virtually
playing in Beijing. Guo might as well have shouted when no human was
at the DJ desk.
A DJ with Good Records
I stayed until the end, around 7 a.m. [The German DJ] mixed from midnight to
about 4.30 p.m., he was very good. Then Marc took over, and he was also really
90 Chapter 6
good, I was surprised because usually Marc is not that good. I said it to Nicolas
who . . . commented . . . “Yes, Marc has very good records.” (Excerpt from a discussion
in Shanghai with a European disc jockey [February 2, 2003, field note])
Records are a category of artifact that is particularly easy to comprehend, as

they stand as “records” of human activity. Various authors since Karl Marx
have referred to technology as frozen labor or congealed human action.
For instance, among those regularly quoted in this book, Howard S. Becker
speaks of artifacts as “the frozen remains of collective action, brought to
life whenever someone uses them” (Becker 1986, 123). Alfred Gell speaks
of works of art as a “congealed ‘trace’ of the artist’s creative performance”
(Gell 1998, 33), as well as “a congealed residue of performance and agency
in object-form, through which access to other persons can be attained, and
via which their agency can be communicated” (Gell 1998, 68; in STS, see
also Latour 1991; Bijker 1995, 266; Bowker and Star 1999, 135–161).
In the discussion in the section “Working Together” (this chapter), in
which “Phil” is a virtual presence whose frozen labor is embodied in the
vinyl records, the metaphorical use of nonhumans as humans, in order to
better understand what they are doing, works well. Xiao Deng is playing
onstage with a whole bunch of musicians who take turns in performing
with him. Similar to the example, in the previous chapter, of the band
QU’s use of the synthesizer’s presets, or the example of the mobile phone
described in chapter 2, actions previously recorded on the vinyl records are
later collaborating with Xiao Deng in the process of the mix. The West’s
past is part of China’s present in Xiao Deng’s mixing activities.
In chapter 2, I mentioned Howard S. Becker’s demonstration that art—
an activity we often credit to one single human being, “the artist”—is
always the result of a collective action involving many people. A concert,
for instance, is the output of the conjugated efforts of the composer, the
musicians, the sound engineers, the employees who sell the tickets at the
entrance, and so on (Becker 1974, 2008). I discussed how this approach is
similar to the one of science studies, where the various agencies of humans
and nonhumans are considered as interacting in order to produce scientific
facts or technological innovations.
In more recent publications, Becker insists on the importance of con-
sidering processes of interaction, similar to the processes in the mix of Xiao
Deng described in the previous section:
Assume that whatever you want to study has, not causes, but a history . . . a “first
this happened, then that happened, and then the other happened, and it ended up
like this.” . . . We understand the occurrence of events by learning the steps in the
process by which they came to happen. (Becker 1998, 60–61)
What we learn from the observation of Xiao Deng’s vinyl records and their
interaction during the mixing process is that, if we link the idea of the
frozen remains of collective action together with the one of process, we
can better circumscribe what the vinyl records are doing during the perfor-
mance by adding a dynamic dimension to it. As records of human activity,
their content is brought to life when they are played, such as when Xiao
Deng plays them onstage, each in their turn. In other words, the observa-
tion of Xiao Deng’s records’ agency illustrates how artifacts come and go as
part of the overall collective action.16
An anecdote concerning a problem that occurred to one of Xiao Deng’s
friends helps us to measure the importance of records in the activity of
DJing. In 2004, Zheng Dao, a well-known and much appreciated techno DJ
in Beijing electronic music circles (see also earlier in this chapter), had an
opportunity to go on tour in Europe. Before he left China, he gave a good-
bye party to celebrate his departure. I attended, and I was fascinated: his
mix was amazing, with astonishing sounds and subtle rhythmic changes;
the audience was in a trance, subdued by the music. Zheng Dao then left
Beijing for Europe, where he performed gigs in several cities. Unfortunately,
close to the end of his tour, while he was in Zurich, the car where he had left
his DJ bag was robbed, and his selection for the tour of eighty-six records
was stolen.17
When he returned to Beijing, I went to listen to his set again, a couple of
weeks after his arrival. That night, his mix was poor, with flat sounds and
rhythms that sounded old-fashioned, even a bit steely, and his performance
clearly did not fascinate the audience. Zheng Dao wasn’t happy to be play-
ing his “old” records. However, over the following months, as his stock of
records was slowly replenished, his special relationship with his records
returned and his mixes got better and better.
If we go back to Phil and imagine that this unhappy situation occurred
to Xiao Deng, we see how important Phil is in the making of the overall
performance. Without him, the music is not the same. As it says in the
quote at the beginning of this section, a good DJ is a DJ with good records. A
disc jockey who does not have good records becomes, momentarily at least,
a bad disc jockey. In other words, “Phil”—the records and their contents—
is part of the artistic quality of the disc jockey. And when Phil comes from
abroad, part of the artistic performance of the disc jockey is performed by
foreign musicians.
92 Chapter 6
As in the previous chapter’s case study of the band QU, where I empha-
sized the close relationship between the two broad concepts of agency and
culture, the vinyl records of Xiao Deng—artifacts as “objectifications of
agency distributed in the causal milieu” (Gell 1998, 39)—are at the same
time the expression of agency (i.e., some kind of intended action), of a
localization (e.g., China, Germany, Ireland), and of specific interests (e.g.,
to make people dance), and all of these expressions unfold through a pro-
cess arranged on a timeline.
In the next section, we will see how similar observations can be made
when software artifacts are involved, using a case study of Xiao Deng’s use
of music composition tools to produce dance tracks.
7 The FM7 Software and Xiao Deng’s “TK Remix”
As Suzanne Ciani discovered, musicians came to the instrument and found a willing
partner. Malcolm remembers: “What we tried to do is to make music that was intrin-
sic to the instrument . . . In other words, the instrument dictated a lot of how we
went, rather than coming to it with pre-conceived notions.” The resulting music
was an exchange of ideas between person and machine, both contributing to the
final results. This may be why analog synthesists can readily recount feelings of love
for their synthesizers.
—Pinch and Trocco (2002, 176–177)
Writing Techno Songs
Xiao Deng didn’t see himself working as a disc jockey all his life. His plan
was to become a music producer so that one day he could make a living
without mixing in the clubs. He talked about the fact that most people
going to the clubs in Beijing were about twenty-five years old.1 If one could
imagine a disc jockey over forty still in activity (I actually met, in 2008, a
Chinese DJ in Beijing who had started in 1987, was forty-eight, and was
resident in one of the local clubs), it seemed obvious to him that at some
point one had to switch to another activity. He seemed also influenced
by his knowledge of the lifestyle of famous disc jockeys, whom he often
referred to. In particular, Richie Hawtin, a.k.a. Plastikman, who combined
the activities of mixing and composition, was, in Xiao Deng’s own words,
his “model” „⁷.
With these elements in mind, Xiao Deng had started to compose songs
in 2001—sometimes for himself, but most often at the request of others and
against payment. I noted, over the period 2001–2004, a dozen “exercise”
pieces, an entire album of fourteen titles (commissioned by a music label
in Beijing), a remix ordered by a Japanese producer2 (see the section about
the “TK Remix”), and a few short tracks or advertisement pieces ordered by
local companies.
94 Chapter 7
As discussed by Becker, people who produce a work of art usually do

not decide things afresh, but rely on agreements that have become part
of the conventional way of doing things in that art form. There are artists
who renegotiate the limits of what is possible or conventional to do (play-
wrights who write plays so long that audiences will not sit through them,
composers who write music that requires more performers than existing
organizations can pay for), but “the sculptures already in your museum
did go through the door on the loading dock, and did not fall through the
floor. Sculptors know the appropriate weight and dimensions of a museum
piece, and work accordingly. Broadway plays are of a length audiences will
sit through, and the compositions symphony orchestras perform require
no more musicians than the organization can pay” (Becker 2008, 27–28).
Artists usually make objects in order that they should be seen and heard by
a public or acquired in one way or another.
According to Xiao Deng, a techno song, a formulation he often used to
define his goal, had precisely defined technical features. It had to be of a
certain length and involved the use of well-known instruments (synthesiz-
ers of specific brands), musical changes had to occur at precise moments
(every eight or sixteen bars), it should contain certain rhythmic structures,
a certain tempo, and so on. Here is an excerpt of a conversation we had
where he commented the structure of the “TK Remix” song.
Usually, dance songs have rules [which need to be respected] . . . that is, [for ex-
ample] at the beginning and at the end [of a song] there will be some “beats,” only
“beats” so that the DJ can mix [it] easily. I made this remix for DJs . . . [when I’ll] mix
it I want to play it at the very beginning [of a party], this is why there are “beats”
only at the end [of the song].
ᶨ凔准㚚㚱ṃ奬⼳㗗 . . . ⯙㗗 intro ␴ outro Ể㚱ᶨṃ ¬ beat ¼,⯙⎒㗗 ¬ beats ¼ ᷢḮ孑
DJ ⭡㖻mixㆹ 䘬征᷒ remix 㗗ᷢḮ亁 DJ, . . . ㏕㍍䘬㖞῁䫔ᶨ᷒㓦征椾㫴,㇨ẍ⎒㚱
outro 䘬⛘㕡㗗 “beats”ˤ
Asked about where he finds drums samples,
I search [the Internet] randomly. [I] enter the words “samples and loops” on Google,
it will provide some websites [where I can find sound files]. This bass drum [that
you can hear now] is the bass drum of the [drum machine Roland TR] 808 [which I
downloaded somewhere], [then] I added some compressor and EQ, also distortion.
昷ὧ㈦,⛐ Google 慴彡ㇻ徃⍣ ¬ samples and loops ¼,⬫Ể↢㜍ᶨṃ仹䪁,恋᷒
bassdrum㗗 808 䘬bassdrum,≈Ḯᶨṃ⌳仑☐␴EQ,往㚱⣙䛇ˤ
The percussive sound mentioned by Xiao Deng in the second excerpt

clearly relates to his identification with a particular model. The Roland
TR-808 drum machine is not only a legendary instrument of the electronic
The FM7 Software and Xiao Deng’s “TK Remix” 95
music subgenre techno, but it is also an instrument closely related to the

work of Richie Hawtin, who often used this device, sometimes as the only
instrument in a whole song (such as in his famous track “Spastik”).3
If Xiao Deng was looking toward a very specific kind of music, with
precise rules and structures, he was also rejecting other styles of music. Two
anecdotes illustrate his radical stance.
In August 2001, when I visited him at his home for the first time, he
asked if I had any thoughts about the results my research would produce.
I didn’t know what to say and, after a few minutes of scratching my head,
I told him I was wondering if the fact that he had heard a lot of Chinese
music when studying traditional Chinese dance would stylistically influ-
ence the rhythm structures in his compositions. He nodded, and let me
hear some of his tracks. After the listening, he asked me whether I had
noted any “stylistic influence.” I told him I hadn’t. He smiled, and he told
me he felt relieved: he didn’t want to make Chinese music but international
music (our conversation was in Chinese, but he pronounced the word inter-
national in English, as a kind of emphasis).4
A couple of years later, in November 2003, Xiao Deng and I attended a
rock concert at a club in Sanlitun. The event was organized for the launch
of a new album by a band who had just signed with a major label in China
(and which was actually composed of two ex-members of the former band
QU, who I described in the first case study [chap. 5]). Many of Beijing’s
rock musicians attended, and everybody was listening to the music—elec-
tro-pop songs based on drums, guitar, voice, and keyboard sounds5—when
Xiao Deng suddenly turned to me. He was drunk, very happy, and he com-
mented proudly in English, “Listen! This is not Chinese music!”
As these two anecdotes illustrate, Xiao Deng was focused on Western
music—he had no interest in doing something “Chinese.” On the contrary,
he wanted to produce songs close to those of artists like Richie Hawtin,
whose works he admired. If similar examples (such as the musicians from
QU, described in chap. 5) or opposites (such as Lao Li, described in chap.
10) could be found, it is important to note that at that time many Chinese
people in the PRC talked about their country as being “backward” 句⎶.
I could often hear the word in conversations, pronounced by all sorts of
individuals, whether taxi drivers, employees, academics, or musicians. Xiao
Deng’s position wasn’t singular; it was reflective of a general feeling among
many if not most Chinese artists.
Before coming back to Xiao Deng’s composition work and the agency
of some of the software he used, I would like to tell a short story that illus-
trates the kind of interactions that occurred between us. As I wrote in the
96 Chapter 7
introduction to part II, to describe an artist’s work procedure while he is at

his home composing music on a computer is not an easy thing to do. In
order to help readers figure out how the data in this book was gathered,
I share the experience of how I came to know about one of Xiao Deng’s
songs, which is discussed later in this chapter: the “TK Remix.”
The Making of the “TK Remix”

One afternoon in October 2003, Xiao Deng called me to ask if I could help
in improving the sound of a song he was about to write for a Japanese
producer. This song was important for his career, he said, because the pro-
ducer who ordered it was a well-known figure on the Japanese music scene.
(Months later, I verified the name of this person, and he was indeed one
of the biggest music producers in Japan. He had composed and produced
many hits, and was described on the Internet as one of the top ten taxpay-
ers in the country.)
That day, Xiao Deng explained to me that he had listened to a compact
disc I had given him with some of my own songs, and he really liked the
sound of it. He told me there was no sound engineer in Beijing who under-
stood the techno sound; therefore, he hoped I would be able to help him.
The song he had to write was a remix. At the moment of this first phone
call to me he hadn’t received the sound files of the original song yet, and
therefore hadn’t started to work on it, but he already thought there would
be a problem of sound quality because he had had this problem in the
past. I had no experience of mixing other people’s music, but I was used to
adjusting sounds for my own tracks. Moreover, I had been trying repeat-
edly, since my arrival in Beijing two months before, to have a closer con-
tact with Xiao Deng, with little success. His request sounded like a golden
opportunity, and I said yes.
A couple of weeks later, Xiao Deng was still waiting for the original sound
files from the producer. He called me a second time to ask what my techni-
cal needs would be to perform the mix. In Europe or in the United States, at
that time, the rent for a professional recording studio was extremely costly.
I had visited Xiao Deng’s apartment once in 2001, and, from what I under-
stand of his living conditions, it was obvious to me that he wouldn’t have
much money to pay a studio’s fees. I also worried about being limited by
time if the recording studio charged on a per-hour basis, or if I was con-
fronted with old devices that I might not know how to use. So I told him I
just wanted to have the song in separate tracks: one with the drums sounds,
one with the bass, and so forth, so that I could adjust them separately. I sug-
gested using my own Macintosh laptop and headphones (sound engineers’
Sennheiser HD 25 headphones that I had bought in Switzerland and taken

with me in China). I was used to these devices, so there wouldn’t be unex-
pected problems that could ruin the whole operation. However, Xiao Deng
insisted that we go to a professional studio, in order to work under the best
conditions.
I was really worried. I had once visited a recording studio in Beijing in
1998. It had old equipment that I wouldn’t know how to use. In 2003,
China was not a rich country at all, and this could easily be observed in
many different situations in Beijing. I worried that Xiao Deng would spend
a lot of money, and we would end up with nothing. Facing Xiao Deng’s
question regarding my technical wishes, I finally told him about the equip-
ment I had used at the music conservatory in Switzerland: Pro Tools soft-
ware, Waves plugins, and two high-quality loudspeakers.
A couple of days later, Xiao Deng called me again: “The loudspeakers,
which trademark do you want?” I felt very uncomfortable. Pro Tools and
the Waves plugins were worth about US$30,000, but pirated versions could
easily be found on the Internet. My guess was that most Chinese studios
were using pirated software, and therefore money would not be an issue.
For the loudspeakers, the problem was different: high-quality monitors
were worth at least US$2,000. I hesitated, and eventually murmured that
if there was somewhere a pair of Dynaudio or Genelec loudspeakers, that
would be great, but I emphasized that I could also do without.
A few days later, Xiao Deng called me again: “Dynaudio or Genelec?” I
felt very uncomfortable again. This time, I told him any loudspeaker would
be fine. We eventually fixed a day for the mix and agreed that I would visit
him at his home one day before to hear the song he had just finished. Our
schedule, between the moment he got the sound material and the moment
when the song had to be sent to Japan, was very tight. Xiao Deng also told
me he had a friend working at the recording studio, so he had a special
price, but still he could only afford one single day of renting.
When I heard the “TK Remix” for the first time at his home, my feeling
was that the music was good, but the sound quality was terrible. I asked
him to remove all effects of reverberation, equalization, and compression,
which he had used on almost every track, so that I would have the rawest
sound material to start with. Then we decided we would meet again at the
studio.
The day of the mix, I woke up as usual around 8 a.m., and I waited. At
that time, I didn’t know Xiao Deng never woke up before noon. Around 2
p.m., he called me briefly to tell me he was not sure whether we would make
it for that day. At 10:30 p.m., I was convinced the meeting was canceled,
98 Chapter 7
until my phone rang. “You’re at home? You can come outside, we’ll be
there in a minute.”
Although I had noticed in 2001 that some of the artists I was observing
seemed to wake up late, I hadn’t stayed with them more than a couple of
hours, and I hadn’t noticed anything particular about their everyday sched-
ule. That day, when I got home in the morning after eight hours of work at
the recording studio, I suddenly realized that the people I was observing—
Xiao Deng and his team, but also Lao Dong (see next chapter)—worked and
lived mostly at night. As I observed during the following months, most of
them went to bed around 4 a.m. and woke up around midday.6
When we arrived at the studio, I had a big surprise. There was not one
professional audio studio, but four. The studios were well equipped, or in the
process of being equipped, with high-quality devices. Roughly, I estimated
about US$600,000 of equipment. The Pro Tools software I was offered to use
was a fully equipped workstation. The guy in charge of the studio explained
to me with a smile that, a day before, he had bought the complete package
of the Waves plugins, “since you asked for it” (the package was worth at
least US$6,000). He had also bought four Genelec preamplified loudspeak-
ers (US$4,000). When he noticed that I looked surprised, he explained that
he was “about to buy them anyway.”
(A few hours later, when we finished, he asked whether I was satisfied
with the devices at my disposal. I told him I wasn’t totally convinced by the
loudspeakers Genelec, and that I preferred to work with Dynaudio’s. A cou-
ple of weeks later, Xiao Deng would inform me that the engineer had asked
him to tell me that he had bought a pair of Dynaudio loudspeakers because
of my remarks. This said, of course, the devices weren’t purchased only for
me, but I did benefit from special status as a Western musician who had
skills and knowledge that Chinese people in the audio-engineering field
believed was valuable. This is similar to the foreign musicians’ situation
described in chap. 5.)
I was introduced to the studios’ local employees. I was told the studio
belonged to a company that specialized in audiovisual editing, which
explained the huge quantity of equipment. I sat in front of a Macintosh G4
equipped with a brand new Pro Tools system, and I started to work on the
mix. Xiao Deng was quite nervous because he was very satisfied with his
song and hoped we would be able to make a good mix. Behind us stood a
group of about five managers and employees of the studio, who, I believe,
had come to observe how I worked.7
I stop here and do not detail my work in the studio, which is of little
interest for the purpose of this book. Roughly, Xiao Deng and I stayed in
the studio from 11 p.m. until 4 a.m. The people standing behind us slowly
went back to their own business. Because of a metallic closet in the studio
that affected considerably the balance of sound in the room, I eventually
decided to do the last part of the mix with my Sennheiser HD 25 head-
phones that I had brought with me.
Xiao Deng and I were satisfied with the final mix. A few weeks later, he
told me he had decided to mention my name as sound engineer next to the
track’s name. Later, the “TK Remix” was released in Japan. It didn’t have
any effect on Xiao Deng’s career, but he got paid US$2,000 for doing it.
People interested in hearing the “TK Remix” can download the final track
at http://www.842.ch/dl/TKremix.m4a. This version is the one composed
by Xiao Deng and mixed by myself.8
Inside Xiao Deng’s Computer
Remixing—the rewriting of an existing song—is a standard practice in elec-

tronic music. According to Xiao Deng, the producer he was working for had
first asked a music label based in Paris and Hong Kong to create the remix
that became “TK Remix.” The producer wanted remixes of the original song
in different styles, and he had contacted this label—which specialized in
techno music—in order to have a techno remix. Xiao Deng knew the label’s
main artist, a French DJ living in Paris, whom he had met in China some
time ago. They had agreed that Xiao Deng would sometimes collaborate
with the label. So after he had listened to the original song, the French DJ
had suggested that Xiao Deng do the remix.
The song behind the “TK Remix” was the music from a TV series. At the
time he received the audio files, Xiao Deng more or less knew the name of
the singer, whom he thought was based in Hong Kong, but he had no idea
who composed the music. What was important for him was the famous
Japanese producer who had hired him to do the remix.
A couple of days before going to the recording studio, Xiao Deng was
feeling helpless. He had just heard for the first time the four sound files
that had been sent to him (the voice track, the drum track, and one stereo
file with all the remaining sounds).9 He did not like them and he didn’t
know what to do. He eventually started by changing the pitch of the voice
track from 120 beats per minute (bpm) to 130, to make the song’s tempo
closer to the one of techno songs (usually between 130 and 140 bpm). Then
he had used the plugin GRM Tools BandPass to modify the sound.10 After
that, he wrote a rhythmic melodic part and then the remaining parts of the
song.11 The last step of the composition process was done with me at the
100 Chapter 7
Figure 7.1
“TK Remix” arrangement window. Screenshot taken on Xiao Deng’s computer on
June 3, 2004.
studio. The illustration in figure 7.1 shows the “TK Remix” in Xiao Deng’s
computer after the song was finished.
The screenshot in figure 7.1 shows a Cubase arrangement window, com-
monly used in music software so that the user can have a global view of
the structure of a song. We see horizontally, in different color shapes, the
names of the different tracks (voice, drums, synthesizers, etc.), which are
read from left to right by the computer at a given speed (the tempo) while
it plays the sounds related to the corresponding data inside the tracks.
To be able to say something about the software Xiao Deng used, it is nec-
essary to slice it down into two main categories so that we can describe more
easily what is going on inside the computer. I will consider the recorded
sound files first and then the virtual instruments. The first category con-
sists of sounds such as, for example, the voice of the female singer, which
can be seen on the top left corner of figure 7.1. It is a sound file read by
the computer, in the same way that a tape recorder reads music on a tape,
although computer technology makes it much easier to modify the sound
file in various ways (e.g., cut, copy, paste, add sound effects), as Xiao Deng
himself did when he used the GRM plugin.
The second category, the virtual instruments, looks like a paper music
roll where patterns of square-shaped elements replaced patterns of holes.
Tracks are made of these elements, which information is sent to another
part of the software located in another section, where another part of the
software generates the sounds accordingly. Xiao Deng created musical struc-
tures, displayed in square shapes inside each track, by mouse-clicking inside
the computer window. Their length indicates duration, and their location
on the screen indicates pitch. Colors, as well as thin vertical squares at the
bottom of each window, indicate the velocity (the attack speed of each
note, which makes the difference, for example, between a piano key that
is pressed slowly and the same one pressed quickly) attributed to each
element.
When the user presses the command “play,” the computer takes charge
of a complicated process. Sound files and notes in the arrangement window
are read from left to right and corresponding commands are activated. The
notes can be freely assigned to different instruments (the series in figure
7.1 could as well be commanding drum sounds, or a virtual saxophone, a
virtual piano, etc.) In this specific case, the notes corresponding to the hori-
zontal track named MIDI 01 (top down on figure 7.1) command a virtual-
instrument plugin loaded inside the host software, which is called FM7 and
commercialized by a company called Native Instruments. I will now take a
closer look at FM7.
Xiao Deng and Peter Krischker
A lot of collaborative work involving artifacts went on while Xiao Deng sat
in front of his computer. Using the metaphor of virtual presences, such as
in the previous two chapters on QU and Xiao Deng’s records, we could say
that the engineers behind the Cubase software worked hand-in-hand with
those of Native Instruments who designed the FM7 plugin,12 and that the
group of them collaborated with Xiao Deng on the “TK Remix.”
102 Chapter 7
Figure 7.2
Segment of the FM7 window. Screenshot taken on Xiao Deng’s computer on
June 3, 2004.
In order to understand how this work process took place when Xiao
Deng interacted with his computer, it necessary to have an even closer look
at the technical details. When I asked him how he used the FM7 plugin,
Xiao Deng told me he had started by trying the different presets provided
with the software (a process identical to the one of EM1 in chapter 5). He
had chosen one he liked, which he had then slightly modified.
I will now consider the FM7’s internal window by looking at the section
of the plugin where the user can choose among the presets provided by the
manufacturer, which is where information about the preset chosen by Xiao
Deng is displayed.
As we can read in figure 7.2, the preset Punchy Percsynth, selected by
Xiao Deng, was created by Peter Krischker13 on Wednesday, the 14th of
November, 2001, at approximately four in the morning. A glance at the
internal settings of the virtual synthesizer FM7 helps us to understand what
Peter Krischker’s work looks like.
Punchy Percsynth is made of a complex series of parameters that were
set by Peter Krischker using the internal parameters of the software FM7.
In the parameters window (not displayed here), I could read that he
chose a level of 30, a pan of 0, a velocity sensitivity of 54, and so on. In
order to consider with a maximum of precision the collaboration between
Xiao Deng and Peter Krischker, we can think of “Peter Krischker’s work”
as one of the parameters—say the velocity sensitivity—with “Xiao Deng’s
work” as the MIDI sequence 01 from the “TK Remix” mentioned earlier
(figure 7.1).
The velocity sensitivity parameter, set by Peter Krischker, indicates some-

thing we can consider as the degree of response of the FM7 synthesizer
to the velocity of the notes. For example, the velocity 30 of one note, a
D written by Xiao Deng was scaled by the sensitivity factor of 54 , and
the timbre was then modified accordingly by FM7’s parameters. A G note,
positioned lower on the screen, whose velocity was about 60, had its own
corresponding modification, and so on. Without going into detail, we note
that this process is similar to a function of “velocity” multiplied by “veloc-
ity sensitivity” equals “final result.” Therefore, by replacing the term veloc-
ity by “work of Xiao Deng” and the velocity sensitivity by “work of Peter
Krischker,” we get the following relation: “work of Xiao Deng” multiplied
by “work of Peter Krischker” equals “final work.”
For clarity’s sake, we can rely on the standard mathematical terminol-
ogy for functions, which most of us studied at high school: y=fx, where y
stands for the final work, x is Xiao Deng’s work, and f the function which
represents Peter Krischker’s work. We know that Xiao Deng has decided of
the main component of x (the velocity), and that he also knew the final
result of the operation (since he could hear y, the resulting sound). For each
x value, Xiao Deng considered the result y and then modified the value x
until he liked what he heard. Here, Xiao Deng is undoubtedly the main
decision-maker, and in the same way that he chose the vinyl records that he
bought and used when DJing (see chapter 6), he selects something among
the works of Peter Krischker.
The Blurring of Categories
Why are the details related in the previous section interesting? The encoun-
ter between China and the West that we observe between Xiao Deng and
Peter Krischker appears in the form of go-and-return trips between a user
and a technical object. Indeed, as noted by Timothy Taylor, it is now pos-
sible to create entire worlds of sound while alone with a computer, and it is
no longer necessary to be with other people to do so (Taylor 2001, 139); but
at the same time, music remains a social activity by means of the interac-
tions between musicians and artifacts. As in the case study involving Xiao
Deng’s vinyl records (chapter 6), we can imagine a jam session involving
both humans and nonhumans: Xiao Deng playing with his teammate Peter
Krischker.14
However, we note that there is an important difference if this process is
compared with a band composed mainly of human beings: the collabora-
tion does not occur in real time but in what can be described as a temporal
104 Chapter 7
upside-down. Similar to my Siemens 3618 mobile phone (see chap. 2), QU’s
use of presets (see chap. 5), and Xiao Deng’s vinyl records (see chap. 6),
Peter Krischker’s work is anterior to Xiao Deng’s and relies on the selection
operated by Xiao Deng. Whereas Xiao Deng decides in Beijing in 2003, Peter
Krischker decided in Germany in 2001. The latter proposes something from
which Xiao Deng disposes, but once Xiao Deng has taken a decision, it is
Peter Krischker who disposes of the velocities proposed by Xiao Deng.
What this short description of Xiao Deng and Peter Krischker’s work
through the means of artifacts illustrates is that behind the human-and-
artifact collaboration process lays a relation of empowerment and control
that has a close relation with time processing. On the one side, Xiao Deng
controls Peter Krischker’s work (by choosing it), and he can be seen as
empowered by this technical object (he can do things he couldn’t do with-
out it). On the other side, Peter Krischker controls Xiao Deng’s MIDI track
by adjusting its tune every time a note is played— a process similar to the
one outlined in chapter 2, where the mobile phone’s punctuation marks in
text messages were chosen by Siemens’s engineers.
Alfred Gell, in his anthropological theory of art, discusses the notion of
agency in a way that is useful for us here. He notes that the idea of agency
is a way of thinking about causation that primarily serves to discriminate
between happenings (caused by physical laws) and actions (caused by prior
intentions). According to Gell, we rely on the notion of agency “when what
happens is (in some vague sense) supposed to be intended in advance by
some person-agent or thing-agent. Whenever an event is believed to hap-
pen because of an ‘intention’ lodged in the person or thing which initiates
the causal sequence, that is an instance of ‘agency’” (Gell 1998, 17).
For instance, here before me is this boiled egg. What has caused this egg to be boiled?
Clearly, there are two quite different answers to this—(i) because it was heated in a
saucepan of water over a gas-flame, or (ii) because I, off my own bat, chose to bestir
myself, take the egg from its box, fill the saucepan, light the gas, and boil the egg,
because I wanted breakfast. From any practical point of view, type-(ii) ‘causes’ of
eggs being boiled are infinitely more salient than type-(i) causes. If there were no
breakfast-desiring agents like me about, there would be no hens’ eggs (except in the
South-East Asian jungle), no saucepans, no gas appliances, and the whole egg-boil-
ing phenomenon would never transpire and never need to be physically explained.
So, whatever the verdict of physics, the real causal explanation for why there are any
boiled eggs is that I, and other breakfasters, intend that boiled eggs should exist. (Gell
1998, 101; emphasis in the original)
Gell also identifies a particular cognitive operation—which he calls the

abduction of agency—as the attribution of agency to a specific social agent
(human or nonhuman). Abduction, as an inferential scheme (we make a

causal inference), is, according to Gell, specific to “art-like situations” (Gell
1998, 13). For instance, in the same way that if we see smoke we may attri-
bute it to the presence of fire, when we see the Mona Lisa we attribute it to
the work of Leonardo da Vinci.
What the situation above illustrates is that when this process of causal
inference involves artifacts, the notion of happenings (caused by physi-
cal laws) versus actions (caused by prior intentions) is blurred. If the prior
intentions of Peter Krischker are clear (he certainly expected his work to be
used as it is in Xiao Deng’s “TK Remix”) and are therefore the expression
of his agency in the making of this song, his work is also a “happening”
caused by the physical process that concerns the various interactions going
on in between the artifacts themselves.
We saw, in the case of Xiao Deng’s vinyl records (chap. 6), that arti-
facts can sometimes take the place of artists. In the situation involving the
enthusiastic dancer Guo (chap. 6), who shouted Xiao Deng’s name even
when the latter was not present, we saw that the question of who is doing
what is blurred by the presence of technological artifacts. In the case of the
collaboration between Xiao Deng and Peter Krischker, it is the notion of the
authorship that is at stake: Who/what is the author of what?
Without even considering the question of the music’s listener (essential
if we were trying to discuss the perception of the music), the composition
process of the “TK Remix” shows that the song is not only the result of a
collaboration between the Japanese producer, Xiao Deng, and myself (as a
sound engineer for Xiao Deng), but also between Peter Krischker and Xiao
Deng (and many other humans and nonhumans). What is interesting here
is that Peter Krischker is an important contributor to the “TK Remix”: he
designed part of the music.
To add a cultural difference dimension to these observations, if we
assume that Peter Krischker is German and Xiao Deng is Chinese, we end
up with a situation wherein concepts of agency, physical laws, humans,
nonhumans, and culture (in its anthropological sense, but also in the sense
of that which is related to art or craftsmanship practices) appear blurred
and mixed together while maintaining a solid and concrete connection
between them. In Becker’s words, quoted in the chapter 6, “first this hap-
pened, then that happened, and then the other happened, and it ended up
like this” (Becker 1998).
Peter Krischker, for sure, was not the only nonhuman contributor
engaged in Xiao Deng’s composition activities. But the focus on his con-
tribution to one single sound track of Xiao Deng’s work allows us to better
106 Chapter 7
understand the specific part of the process of composition that is supported

by technical objects.
Now that we have discussed several hardware and software objects, and
before coming back to computer-assisted production of music with Lao
Dong’s use of the Max/MSP software in chapter 9, it is useful to consider
how a similar process occurs in the case of a somewhat “third kind” of
artifact, one that not only blurs the division between hardware and soft-
ware but also the temporal dimension between artifacts and their users and
between past and present: the Internet.
8 Lao Dong’s Internet Connection
“Superusers” . . . represent a type whose history is virtually coextensive with the

technology itself. Since the beginning of the audio age, there have been people—
usually men—whose fascination with consumer audio technology seemed excessive
to their peers, men who spent an inordinate amount of money purchasing audio
equipment, and an inordinate amount of time tinkering with it.
—Perlman (2004, 785)
The Instructor
Born in 1967 in Beijing to a family of technicians,1 Lao Dong spent most

of his life in the capital. A gifted person, by the age of thirty-four (when we
met at Club Vogue) he had already successfully worked as a guitarist, DJ,
interior designer, and party organizer, as well as a club and restaurant man-
ager. A couple of years later, he founded an electronic music festival and an
electronic music label, which he managed in his spare time.
Lao Dong was a study-oriented person and interested in many fields
other than music. For instance, several times he helped me write my papers
for the Department of Sociology at Peking University, and his knowledge of
written Chinese was similar to that of one of my PhD student colleagues.
However, he had never attended an institution of higher education. Fol-
lowing what he called a “stupid mistake”—he had forgotten to answer a
question during an examination—he had not been allowed to attend uni-
versity and was trained as a technician in construction at a local school of
architecture. Music eventually became his main activity when he decided,
in 1990, to quit his work in an office to play guitar in a rock band. He had
started learning guitar at the age of fifteen “because I thought it was fun”
⯙奱⼿⤥䍑⃧.
Much respected and admired for his competencies, Lao Dong was nick-
named “The Instructor” ㊯⮤␀ by his peers. In Chinese, this appellation
108 Chapter 8
was used to refer to group leaders in structures of the Chinese Commu-

nist Party and could be understood in a negative way, but in Lao Dong’s
case it referred affectionately to his ability to master various competencies
and to the fact that he was always willing to share his knowledge
with others.
For instance, I experienced this aspect of his personality one afternoon
in March 2004 when I asked him about DJing, an activity I knew little
about. Lao Dong showed me how to mix vinyl records in a methodological
way, focusing on what he considered as the basics: positioning the wrist,
slightly relying on the side of the turntable; moving the needle up without
putting pressure on it; positioning the fingers of the second hand on the
vinyl disc so as to conciliate flexibility, mobility, and ease (and to avoid
cramps); paying attention to the rhythmic parts of the next song by listen-
ing through the headphones and adjusting the two songs; counting the
bars; practicing how to “feel” for the correct moment to let the second disc
go at the correct synchronization speed, and so on.
Lao Dong had been fortunate in starting his career as a guitarist in the
early 1990s, because those years coincided with the birth of rock music in
the PRC (it is usually considered that rock in the PRC began in 1986 with
Cui Jian Ⲽ‍’s famous song “Nothing to My Name” ᶨ㖈㇨㚱2). Playing in
one of the first rock bands in Beijing, Lao Dong’s status as a professional
musician was quickly established. But he didn’t stop his musical training
there. His main goal in life was to “make music” ἄ枛᷸. This general ori-
entation came in different forms through the different periods of his life.
“Play guitar” ⻡⎱Ṿ in 1990, became “be a DJ” ἄDJ in 1996, and “make
computer music” 䓝傹枛᷸ from 2000 on.
For each new musical activity, he always started by spending hours in
acquiring the skills he considered necessary. To play guitar, he practiced
scales. For DJing, he spent nights working out how to mix records the right
way. Between 2001 and 2004, in order to become a computer musician, Lao
Dong spent months testing and using the various software programs that
interested him. This intensive practice on the musical instrument “com-
puter” was intended to take him to a level of proficiency equivalent to that
which he already possessed for the guitar and DJing.
Just as he had made a living working as a guitar player in a rock band
and, since 1997, as a DJ at dance parties, his goal at the beginning of the
2000s was to achieve a similar result for himself with computer music.
In the same way that the musicians of QU had listened to AC/DC’s Who
Made Who album and Portishead’s Dummy (chap. 5), or that Xiao Deng fol-
lowed closely the activities of Richie Hawtin (chap. 7), Lao Dong showed
Lao Dong’s Internet Connection 109
me in 2001 a DVD of a live concert by the band he was influenced by,

Underworld. He took them as a reference for what it was possible for him
to do in the future. He paid special attention to the computer screens the
musicians of Underworld were using, and he tried to figure out what soft-
ware they relied on (Pinch and Reinecke [2009] discuss how the sound of
recordings provides part of the guide for musicians on how to find the
sound they want3). He hoped this activity would later allow him to offer
something new for the dance parties, and that he would be able to compose
songs or sell his computer music skills to pop artists.
Making a Living
At the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s, the PRC experi-
enced its first waves of electronic dance music parties. Disc jockeys, who
usually received the entrance fees from the parties they played (the club
keeping the money from the sale of beverages), could earn up to RMB 6,000
per evening (about US$750; see also Xiao Deng’s testimony in chap. 6).
During those years, Lao Dong worked as a club manager. This activity
progressively became his main source of revenue, although he occasionally
worked as a DJ in Beijing and in other cities in China. He wasn’t famous,
at least not within the mainstream public, but he personally knew most of
the key people in Beijing’s entertainment industry (which wasn’t very big
at that time). For example, Chinese stars such as Zhang Yadong ⻈Ṃ᷄ (a
famous music producer in China, especially because of his work with pop
singer Wang Fei 䌳厚), the rock star Cui Jian Ⲽ⺢ (Lao Dong played in Cui
Jian’s rock band in 1998 and 1999), and the main importer of professional
music devices in China were all good friends of his, and he collaborated
with them every once in a while.
As a club manager, Lao Dong took care of human resources, acquisitions,
security management, customer relations, and music-related issues such as
the hiring of DJs or the installation of sound systems. Between 2001 and
2013 he often worked on the design of new clubs. I saw him, on four differ-
ent occasions, design almost the entirety of a new club. He also wrote press
articles about music and designed advertisements for parties. In the past, he
had given electric guitar demonstrations for music shops, and he was still a
technical adviser and software provider for other musicians in Beijing. For
his peers, as well as for me, he was an impressive person, as the scope of his
activities and competencies was quite large.
The type of clubs or restaurants where Lao Dong worked had mostly
well-off and trendy customers, and the prices at these places were set
accordingly. The customer base was composed of wealthy Chinese and
110 Chapter 8
foreigners; once in a while top models, movie actors, or music stars would
show up.4 Most of the time, he worked on a “collaboration” ⎰ἄ basis. His
money came either from a percentage of the turnover of a club where he
worked as a manager or from the entrance tickets of a party where he was
DJing. His monthly income in the mid-2000s was about eight thousand
yuan (it increased significantly during the next few years), which was a
good salary for Beijing, where, during the same period, a taxi driver would
make about two thousand a month (about US$1,000) and an employee in
a restaurant three hundred and fifty (about US$40).5 Between 2001 and
2011, Lao Dong’s living conditions improved every year (the same was true
for many others as well, owing to China’s fast economic development). For
example, at the beginning of 2003 he bought a big and well-located apart-
ment and, in 2008, a Japanese car.
In many aspects, Lao Dong’s living and working conditions corre-
sponded to the generalization suggested by Everett Rogers concerning lead-
ers in innovation.
Earlier knowers of an innovation, when compared to later knowers, are character-

ized by more formal education, higher social status, greater exposure to mass media
channels of communication, greater exposure to interpersonal channels of commu-
nication, greater change agent contact, greater social participation, and more cos-
mopoliteness. (Rogers 1995, 202)
Music Work Process
One particularity of technical innovations is the necessity for users to

understand the functions specific to the new tools and learn how to manip-
ulate them. In the case of computer music at the beginning of the 2000s,
even though many types of software shared similar functions, several weeks
or, often, several months or years were necessary to get up to average pro-
ficiency. As most of the music software that was made for the Windows
compatible or Macintosh computers the Chinese musicians were using was
in English, this learning process could be difficult and tiresome for them.
For example, Xiao Deng didn’t even try to read materials in English, and
QU’s synthesizer players had asked me to help them translate their sam-
plers’ user’s manuals.
However, for Lao Dong, who was always interested in everything related
to music, his passion seemed to take precedence over everything else. In
2003–2004, I saw him spend literally months, sometimes ten to fifteen hours
a day, testing software. He had an impressive number of files stored on his
two computers, which he commented on in detail during conversations he
had with other musicians, discussing the various functions of each piece
of software. Although there were several hundred files, Lao Dong tested,
read, and listened to each and every file he downloaded, usually the day
after the download. (This situation changed at the end of the 2000s, when
Chinese DJs started to work with mp3s. Lao Dong’s Internet connection
became faster, and he soon had dozens of gigabytes of music files—too
many for him to be able to check them all as soon as he downloaded them
[for similar observations in the United States, see Taylor 2001, 194–195; in
hip hop specifically, Fouché 2012]. But in 2003–2004, his work procedure
was regular and well-balanced.)
The skills acquired this way clearly enhanced his status as an expert and
could be understood as something he did because it was rewarding. Since
almost all of the electronic musicians and audio technicians I met in China
were men, his involvement in music culture probably also had something
to do with masculinity. It was not rare that Lao Dong, Xiao Deng, and I
would chat about music software in the studio, while their two girlfriends
would be in another room watching a TV series. As nicely summarized
by Judy Wajcman, “engineering is a particularly intriguing example of an
archetypically masculine culture where mastery over technology is a source
of both pleasure and power for the predominantly male profession” (Wajc-
man 2000, 454).
Although this predominance of men has also been observed elsewhere
(e.g., in hip-hop music in Japan [Condry 2007, 168], in Chinese rock [De
Kloet 2001, 104–113], and in jazz bands in France [Buscatto 2003]; see also
“Sanlitun” in chap. 5), my guess would be that this situation in China, in
the specific case of techno electronic music, was only a transitional phe-
nomenon, in the sense that Sherry Turkle discussed with regard to com-
puter technology (Turkle 1986). For example, if we consider the evolution
of the Internet in China, where female netizens made up only 12.3 percent
of the Internet-using population in 1997, but were up to 40.4 percent in
2005 (Tai 2006, 149), it seems that the number of female DJs may increase
soon. For techno, the first time I saw a female Chinese DJ was in 2005;
the second time was in 2009.6 Anouska Komlosy seems to have observed
a similar situation in the south of China during the same period of time
(Komlosy 2008, 65), and Baranovitch (2003, 187) has a similar impression
of the evolution of rock and pop.
Intriguingly, Lao Dong’s approach toward learning to use the computer
as a tool for producing music looked similar to the practice of learning to
play a musical instrument. Most of the software he used produced audible
content, and this content was modified by his manipulations. His feelings
112 Chapter 8
toward the computer seemed to me very close to Frank Wilson’s description

of musicians:
[Musicians] love to work and are miserable when they cannot; they rarely welcome
an unscheduled vacation unless it is very brief. How peculiar it is that people who
normally permit themselves so little rest from an extreme, and, by some standards,
unrewarding discipline cannot bear to be disengaged from it. . . . The word “passion”
describes attachments that are this strong. (Wilson 1998, 6)
Whenever acquiring new hardware, Lao Dong spent much time evaluat-
ing the various existing devices on the market. Electronic music styles are
often related to emblematic music equipment that is bought by musicians
who identify themselves with a particular music style—for instance, Akai
MPC samplers for hip-hop and Roland TR-909, TR-808, and TB-303 drum
machines and synthesizers for techno and house. However, Lao Dong wasn’t
limiting himself to a specific musical style; he seemed to be interested in
electronic music as a whole. This particularity, together with his endurance
in testing tools, distinguished him from others. For example, Xiao Deng
(chaps. 6 and 7) didn’t like to change software, focused on devices related
to the techno subgenre, and preferred to work with a limited number of
tools.
As in the citation of Everett Rogers at the end of the previous section,
I believe this specificity relates to Lao Dong’s status as an opinion leader
(Rogers 1995, 68)—that is, a person who provided opinions and technical
advice to the community of electronic musicians in Beijing. He himself
seldom relied on friends or on information collected randomly; he con-
structed his own opinion by means of the information he collected in a
methodical and systematic way on the Internet.
One last detail worth mentioning about Lao Dong’s work process was his
exceptional physical endurance. He could mix continuously for five hours
without any apparent difficulty, without drinking alcohol (he was allergic)
or taking drugs; afterward he would go to sleep only if he was “feeling tired”
⚘Ḯ. If many Chinese musicians worked during the night and slept during
the day, most had still some kind of regular alternation between days and
nights. Lao Dong was generally active between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. because
of his work in the clubs (usually followed by a musical activity at this home,
lasting until the next morning), but he had no fixed sleeping schedule.
Many times, I observed him working from midnight to 2 p.m. the next
day, taking a nap on the couch for two or three hours (usually interrupted
by phone calls), and then going back to work at around 5 p.m. Although
I saw him slow down a couple of times, his astonishing biological rhythm
remained through the years, with many weeks where he had an average
sleeping time of two-to-three hours a day.
The Devices
Below is a nonexhaustive list of Lao Dong’s musical equipment at the begin-
ning of the year 2004. He purchased some equipment in China through
a local music-devices importer, but he also had a substantial part carried
from abroad (bought when he traveled in Europe or acquired through for-
eign friends). His Macintosh laptop computer, for example, was purchased
by a friend of mine in Switzerland and sent to Lao Dong in Beijing. The
two had met when Lao Dong visited me Geneva in 2001. Lao Dong had
stayed only one day at my home, but twenty-four hours were enough for
him to organize a hardware exchange: a couple of months later, he sent
an Akai MPC vintage sampler from Beijing to Geneva and received the lap-
top he wanted in exchange. Both devices were carried between the two
countries by foreign friends of his. Most of his vinyl records were also pur-
chased this way (i.e., the same as Xiao Deng with his Japanese manager in
chap. 6).
Figure 8.1 shows Lao Dong’s home studio in February 2004. Since Lao
Dong couldn’t remember how much he had paid for many of the music
devices he owned, I mention the prices that a musician (I mean someone
who knows where to find material of this kind at the best price) could
have purchased them for in Switzerland at the same period of time. These
amounts are intended to provide readers with a general picture of his
equipment.
Lao Dong’s home, February 2004
(a) Two turntables, Technics SL-1200MK2 (US$650 each)

(b) One audio mixer, Technics SH-EX1200 (US$480)
(c) One synthesizer, Korg Prophecy (US$960)
(d) One Windows compatible computer with an 800 MHz Pentium III pro-
cessor, one Philips monitor, and one Philips ASCII keyboard (US$1,600)
(e) One MIDI controller, Kenton Electronics Control Freak Studio Edition
(16 faders) (about US$400)
(f) One synthesizer, Clavia Nord Modular (about US$960)
(g) One vintage sampler-sequencer, Akai MPC3000 (between US$1,600 and
US$3,200)
(h) One mixer, Soundtracs Topaz 14:4 (about US$700)
(i) Two loudspeakers, Genelec 1030A (about US$2,400)
(j) One vintage drum box, Roland TR-909 (between US$800 and US$1,600)
114 Chapter 8
Figure 8.1
Lao Dong’s home studio.
(k) One pair of headphones, Sony (I don’t know which model it was, prob-
ably around US$160)
(l) One pair of headphones, Sennheiser HD 25 (about US$240)
(m) One audio mixer, Pioneer DJM-300 (not pictured) (about US$400)
(n) One soundcard, Digidesign MBox (about US$480)
(o) One laptop, 600 MHz Macintosh iBook (about US$1,600) (more expen-
sive in Switzerland and China than in the US)
(p) One keyboard, Macintosh (about US$80)
(q) Approximately ten guitar effects pedals (about US$1,600)
(r) One MIDI interface, Midiman M-Audio Midisport 2x2 (about US$80)
(s) (My own Macintosh G4 laptop, to the right of Lao Dong’s, about
US$3,000)
(t) (Not pictured, displayed behind the camera, were about a thousand
vinyl records, and about the same number of compact discs.)
By and large, Lao Dong’s equipment was similar to the equipment found
in other home studios I have seen in Europe, as well as those of famous
artists whose studios can be seen on the Web (see the example of Brian
Transeau in “Learning about Famous Artists,” this chap.). Considering the

economic situation in China at that time, these were, by far, better mate-
rial conditions than most other local musicians. Xiao Deng, for example,
owned only about one third as much equipment as Lao Dong.
Lao Dong and His Virtual Friends
Before discussing Lao Dong’s composition activities in the next chapter,

I focus here on one technical object Lao Dong made massive use of: the
Internet. In 2003–2004, he used it mostly to reach Chinese musicians’ web-
sites. By visiting those sites on a regular basis, he could download almost
any software he needed. Discussion forums provided technical information
regarding the music software and hardware he was interested in, and some
sites even included technical support and translation services. All of these
resources were easy to access and free of charge.
Some members of the forums he visited regularly had a special interest
in technical questions and, according to Lao Dong, devoted their time to
helping others. These people played a key role in advising members of the
forums on which equipment to get, where to find it, and how to use it.7
I will now discuss three examples that I consider representative of the use
Lao Dong made of these sites. Since most were “illegal” sites (according to
Western standards), URLs or access codes are not provided.
Learning about Famous Artists

On March 1, 2004, I archived a series of screenshots of messages that had
been posted on January 14, 2004 by a Web user nicknamed “guru” after I
noticed that Lao Dong was looking at them in a forum. The posts consisted
mainly of pictures of the studio of the American musician Brian Transeau
(a.k.a. BT). The design of this online platform was similar to that of other
discussion-based websites at the time; in this case, one could read the title
of the first post in English—“BT’s home studio”—with a yawning smiley
face on the left representing the net user—guru—who posted the message.
Menu commands in Chinese were similar to those found in English forums:
“new post” ⍹㕘ⶾ, “reply” ⚆ⶾ, “start a poll” ⍹崟㈽䤐, “news” 㴰〗, “look
inside” 㞍䚳, “search” ㏄䳊, “friends” ⤥⍳, “email” 恖ẞ, and “copy” ⢵⇞.
Guru’s first four posts didn’t have any text content. They displayed pic-
tures of the devices described as used by BT, and comments were made
by means of various smiley faces on the upper left of the screen. The last
picture showed Brian Transeau sitting in front of the machines. Lao Dong
often looked at this kind of photo—pictures of well-known Western or
116 Chapter 8
Chinese musicians’ work studios—when he wanted to learn about audio

equipment. In the case of materials presented in English, audiovisual mate-
rials were easier for him to consult, because of the language barrier.8
As with most electronic musicians I have met in my life, Lao Dong was
able to identify much of the equipment shown in these pictures. We often
had discussions about which devices one should buy or not buy. Interest-
ingly, Lao Dong was interested not in what kind of music the pictured
musicians were doing (most of the time he already knew this information)
but in what kind of equipment these musicians were using. I think this illus-
trates the fact that he was aware of the importance of the role of technical
objects in the activity of making computer music. He knew that he had a
special relationship with the people whose actions had been embedded in
those objects.
Learning about New Software

The release of new software or hardware was often the occasion for users
to react, comment, and inform each other. In the following example, I
describe how this type of information circulated.
On September 5, 2003, a net surfer with the user name “pilot” posts
a message in English. It displays information about a new version of the
music software Cubase (a well-known music sequencer, the same one Xiao
Deng used in chap. 7), which was released the day before, on September
4. The post is entitled (in Chinese) “Cubase SX 2.0’s New functions’ list”
Cubase SX 2.0 㕘≇傥ᶨ奰堐. The English text contained in the post has
been copied verbatim from the company’s official site, where the software
release was announced.
Fifteen days later, a net surfer with the user name “deathpond,” who
doesn’t seem to speak English, asks for a translation. “Who translates the
general idea?” 宩亁⣏㤪侣孹ᶳ⓲. On September 22, a user named “Xianr”
⻎⃧ answers. (The Chinese character “Xian” ⻎ represents the string of a
musical instrument, a bow. Xianr’s avatar is a thought bubble that says
“Fang pi!!” 㓦⯩!!, which literally means “break wind, fart” but is also often
used, as seems to be the case here, to say “nonsense.”) He comments: “The
general idea is, when you finished reading you take out the money and pay.
It seems there is a freezing function, it turns VST instruments into sound
files, to reduce CPU load. Not bad huh.” ⣏㤪シ⿅⯙㗗,䚳⬴Ḯ⯙㌷摙Ḙ⏏ˤ
⤥⁷㚱᷒VST᷸☐弔⊾ᷢ⢘枛㔯ẞ,ⅷ弣CPU峇㉭ᶵ擁⒎.
At that time, the “freeze” function was a feature that, although available
in some music software, was not very common. It consisted of temporar-
ily fixing the signal processing effects applied on one sound so that the
computer didn’t have to calculate it each time the file was played. This
feature was valued because it was difficult for computers to process a lot of
audio data in real time. I remember that, when I had read the description
in English of the release of this version of Cubase, I had also noted the new
“freeze” function.
On October 6, a user named “xudsen” posts a hyperlink and comments:
“Look there: Detailed presentation of the new functions and specificities of
Cubase SX 2.0” Cubase SX 2.0 ⺨⍹宎ねᶶ慵天䈡⿏宎乮ṳ乵. The hyperlink
posted by xudsen points to another website which provides not only a pre-
sentation in Mandarin of the new functions of Cubase, but also a complete
FAQ (almost an online course), including illustrations, on how to use the
software. According to the date displayed on the document, it was created
on September 16, 2003.
If we look at the entire process, what we see is that the day after the
launch of the new version of the Cubase software, users of the forum first
had information in English about the software’s new functions, followed by
a Chinese translation, and then, within less than four weeks, explanations
and examples. If the last link had been posted right after the corresponding
page was put on the Web, the whole process could have been completed in
eleven days.
According to my observations, Lao Dong didn’t participate much in
these exchanges, where the average rhythm of the questions and answers
was often much faster, and the answers much more numerous, than in this
example (I selected it for intelligibility’s sake). He mostly used them to find
information he needed or to see if there was anything being said about new
equipment.
The Hackers
I now discuss another website Lao Dong regularly visited between 2001 and
2003, which I continued to observe sporadically during the following years.
Its content was dynamic, with frequent modifications and adjustments,
sometimes within minutes, but its architecture was also stable: from 2001
until 2005, the main period of observation, it stayed permanently active
without any important modification of its organizational structure. This
website was at the same time an online shop for the sale of professional
music hardware, a platform for discussions (through the forums described
below), and a source for pirated software.
Although it may seem contradictory to openly mix legal and illegal
activities, at that time this sort of situation could often be observed in
China. Pirated software, for instance, was sold openly in stores in Beijing
118 Chapter 8
or Shanghai (including some located on university campuses), as well as

in other Chinese cities. The following information, which I retrieved on
September 24, 2001, was displayed on the general information page of
this website that Lao Dong consulted regularly. It is interesting because it
explains how users were expected to use its forums, and also because it
explicitly discusses the “Criminal Underworld” section devoted to pirated
software.
˳孢✃宜㖶˴
㛔䪁㗗℟㚱Ṍ㳩≇傥䘬ᶻ᷂㈨㛗仹䪁,昌⍣ᶨṃ⚢⭂㞷䚖⢾,㊍㚱ế⣂䘬孢✃ˤ
孢✃⊭㊔:
1ˣ㳣≐ᷕ⽫:仹⍳䓐Ḷ斚俲ˣ䓇㳣Ṍ㳩䘬⛢㇨ˤ
2ˣ㈨㛗孢✃:⎬䥵㈨㛗Ṍ㳩
3ˣ 䠔 ẞ /Ḵ ㇳ学 ⢯ :䠔 ẞ ⸼ 䓐㈨㛗 Ṍ 㳩 ˣ 仹 ⍳ Ḵ ㇳ学 ⢯ Ṍ 㖻 (⍇ ⇁ ᶲ ᶵ 㫊彶俴 ᷂ 䘬 Ḵ ㇳ学 ⢯
峑⋾侭)ˤ
4ˣ枛᷸⇃ἄ孢✃:枛᷸⇃ἄ嶇⇞ἄ㈨㛗㗗᷌䞩ḳ,㬌㞷䚖䓐Ḷ枛᷸⇃ἄ㕡㕡朊朊䘬Ṍ㳩
5ˣ枛᷸ἄ⑩Ṍ㳩:⍹堐冒⶙䘬枛᷸ἄ⑩ˤ㬌㞷䚖ᶵ䓐Ḷ枛᷸Ṍ㳩ˤ
6ˣᶻ桀孢✃:⊭㊔ [XXXX] ˣSamplitude ˣCubase/Nuendo ˣCakewalk 0准㚚孢✃ˣ
. . . . . . ˤ征ṃ悥㗗搰⮡㝸ᶨ校㈨㛗侴学伖䘬子孢ᶻ㞷ˤ
8ˣ 湹䣦 Ể :子孢㚱 ℛ 弗 ẞ 䟜妋 ␴ ᶳ 弥䘬䚠 ℛ 斖桀 ˤ 㲐シ :㬌孢 ✃ ⎒ ⮡ 㲐 ℴ Ể ␀ ⺨㓦 ,朆㲐 ℴ
Ể␀ᶵ傥徃ℍˤ徃ℍ㬌孢✃暨天⠓ᶱ᷒䨢,1㗗Ἀ䘬㲐ℴ⎵,2㗗Ἀ䘬㲐ℴ⭮䞩,3㗗“zhuyin”
(ᶵ䬿⺽⎟)ˤ
9ˣ ℝ ☐ ⸻ :⎬ 䥵弗 ẞ 䘬 ᶳ 弥 ˤ ⤪ 㝄暨天子孢 ,実 ⇘ 昼 ⡩ “湹䣦 Ể ”ˤ 㬌孢 ✃ ⎴ 㟟
⎒⮡㲐ℴỂ␀⺨㓦,徃ℍ㕡㱽⎴ᶲˤ
10ˣ孢✃䱦⋶⋢:⎬᷒孢✃ᷕ䘬䱦⋶㔯䪈ˤ
_________________________________________________
Ể␀乏⇓宜㖶:
ᷢ Ḯ 溻 ≙ ⣏ ⭞ 䦗㜩 ⍪ ᶶ 子孢 ,ㆹ Ẕ 学伖 Ḯ Ể ␀ 乏 ⇓ ,Ṷ Ỷ ⇘ 檀 ↮ ᷢ ᶫ 䰣 Ể ␀ ˤ Ể ␀ 乏 ⇓ ⎒ 㗗
堐䍘Ḯ㬌Ể␀䘬㲐ℴ㖞斜攧䞕␴䦗㜩䦳⹎,⸞ᶵⷎ㚱㬏奮ㆸ↮ˤ
ᶫ䰣Ể␀↮⇓㗗:ⶍℝ,㌺攧,反攧,⚊攧,ⶰ攧,⅃攧,⎠Ẍˤ
⎎⢾,孢✃䇰ᷣ␴仹䪁䭉䎮␀䘬乏⇓ᶵ⛐征ᶫ䰣ᷳᷕˤ
[Information about the Forums section]

This site is dedicated to technical information exchange. Excepted for a few
sections, it is open to anyone.
The forums include:
1. Activity Center: Free and informal discussions.

2. Technical Forum: Various technical exchanges.
3. Hardware / Second Hand Equipment: How-to-use exchanges, net surfers’ second
hand transactions (in principle, professional second-hand equipment resellers are
not welcome here).
4. Music Creation Forum: Creation and production techniques are two different
things, this section is dedicated to discussions about any aspect of music creation
5. Music Works Exchange: Announce your own music works. This section cannot be
used to discuss music in general.
6. Specific Topics Forum: Including [name of the website], Samplitude, Cubase/
Nuendo, Cakewalk, Dance Music Forum . . . All of these have been set up to focus
on one technique.
[number 7 missing in the original]
8. Criminal Underworld: For discussing issues related to software pirating and
downloading. Warning: this forum is available only to registered members, unregis-
tered members cannot enter. To enter this forum you will need three things: 1) your
registered member name 2) your registered password 3) “ zhuyin” (without includ-
ing the quote marks).9
9. Arsenal: Various software downloads. If you need to discuss them, please use the
“Criminal Underworld” section. This forum is also open only to registered members,
the access procedure is the same.
10. Quintessence Forum: Selection of the best posts of the forums.
_____________________________________________________
About Member Ranking:

In order to encourage people to participate actively in the forums, we have set up
a member ranking system, from bottom to top there are seven categories of mem-
bers. The member ranking is only an indication of for how long someone has been
a member, and his degree of participation, it doesn’t have any discriminatory value.
The seven degrees of ranking are: Engineer, Leader, Battalion Commander, Regi-
mental Commander, Division Commander, Army Commander, Commander.
Besides, the ranking for the forums’ web masters, as well as the administrators of
the site do not belong to those seven categories.
As we can read in the document, sections eight and nine of the forums
were devoted to pirated software and downloads, and the corresponding
sections were protected by password. Access, at the end of 2001, was pro-
vided to users of the forums through an individualized registering proce-
dure: if someone wanted to become a member, he or she had to post a
certain number of messages in the regular forums within a certain period of
time. After he or she had been identified as a real musician by the adminis-
trators, he or she could receive his or her individual code in order to access
the “secret” sections of the site. Lao Dong had followed this procedure
some time ago, and therefore had access to these pages.
Two years later, when I came back to Beijing to conduct the main part of
the field research, Lao Dong didn’t use this website anymore to download
software; he had found other sites with easier access (see below). However,
he was still reading the forums every once in a while. In December 2003,
when I observed the forums in detail, they were organized into zones and
sections (given in brackets): “free zone” 冒䓙㳣≐⋢ (chat room, leisure,
120 Chapter 8
announcements); “music zone” 枛᷸⋢ (musical works, composition/

arrangement/performance, guitar world, dance music/DJing); “techni-
cal zone” ㈨㛗⋢ (hardware, software, recording/mixing, synthesizers/
expanders/MIDI, signal processing/FX, samplers, MAC, video techniques);
“live music engineering laboratory” 䍘⛢㈑⢘⭆樴⭌ (live music engineer-
ing, sound engineering, technical library); “professional topics zone”
ᶻ᷂ᷣ桀⋢ (software synthesizers, work stations/synthesis editors, Cubase/
Nuendo), and so on. Additional sections were dedicated to specific music
software, including one for “partition editors”ᶻ᷂ㇻ寙.
At the beginning of 2004, Lao Dong preferred to use another website for
his pirated software downloads. It required neither a password nor a regis-
tration, and he found it more convenient. The Web page with the down-
load links was difficult to find because little information was provided on
the main site. (This difficulty, I guess, resulted in some kind of filtering of
the net surfers, in the sense that its address circulated by word of mouth
between Chinese musicians.)
On the page, the software was listed in chronological order from the
moment when it became available, with indications on how to use it. For
example, in March 2004, the “complete professional edition” ᶻ᷂⬴ℐ䇰,
version 7.2.1, of the software Samplitude, from the company Magix, was
listed on it as available since December 31, 2003. A comment stressed: “A
five stars recommendation from our site!” 㛔䪁Ḽ㗇㍐勸! Its size was 69.28
megabytes, and its hyperlink (to download the application file) had been
clicked 2,942,217 times, which gives an idea of its popularity. (Although
one needs to take into account that, at that time, the number of clicks
indicated by this kind of counter was often inflated by technical problems.
Since these software items were large, they took a long time to download.
When the connection broke, it had to be restarted from the beginning. The
procedure could repeat a dozen times before the file was successfully down-
loaded. The real number of downloads for this particular file was probably
only a few thousand.) Additional information about the product and the
German company who markets it followed these explanations, along with
technical information about how it could be used.
To end this short section on music software downloads, I share one last
bit of information from yet another site with free access. In 2003–2004, Lao
Dong didn’t use that site much anymore (he used it in the past), but Xiao
Deng (from whose computer I collected the information in August 2004;
see chaps. 6 and 7) still used it. The site was based on FTP (file transfer pro-
tocol), and it was free and anonymous. Its address, as well as the password
needed to access the files, was transmitted by word of mouth from musi-
cian to musician.
Information that appeared at the top of the access window of the FTP
software on Xiao Deng’s computer provided an indication of the location
of the section’s contents on the host computer: “Resources Center/Virtual
Synthesizers and Sound Generators/” 峬㸸ᷕ⽫/弗ẞ⎰ㆸ☐&枛㸸/. Files
were listed in alphabetical order, and the names indicated from left to right
(a) the company, (b) the name of the software, (c) sometimes the kind of
software, (d) the version number, (e) in some cases the method that had
to be followed in order to open and use the software, and (f) the name of
the hacker (or group of hackers) who cracked it. For example, one file was
named: “Emagic.EPV73.VSTi.v1.0-OxYGeN,” which meant version 1.0 of
the software EVP73 (a plugin) from the company Emagic, Virtual Studio
Technology instrument (VSTi) format, which was provided by the group of
hackers OxYGeN.
Another one, “Native.Instruments.Absynth.v2.04.Incl.Keygen-H2O,”
referred to the group of hackers H2O, who provided the software Absynth
version 2.04, made by the company Native Instruments. It was deliv-
ered with a key generator software that could generate the serial number
required to use it. In some cases, such as this one, serial numbers (i.e., a sort
of password to unlock the software) were computer-specific. In order to pre-
vent the user from installing the software more than once by copying it to
another machine, the software serial number was based on unique criteria
such as the hard disc size, the serial number of the machine, and so forth.
Hackers often broke that code as well and provided their own generator
that would create an official, free serial number for each installation.
In March 2004, a French friend gave me a CD-ROM that contained
pirated music software for Windows compatible computers. He suggested
I give it to Chinese musicians (since I worked on a Mac, I could not use it
myself, but Lao Dong used both platforms). Lao Dong’s comments while
browsing the CD-ROM’s contents, as written down in my field notes, are
interesting because they give an idea of the phenomenon at a global level.
“These are all old files. I have that one, this one also. Ok, this is version 4.0c, I have
4.0a, that’s pretty much the same.” Lao Dong knows all the hackers’ names and tells
me about them. “Yeah, [throughout the world] we all use the same [software].” He
shows me the hackers’ names, including Zone, he talks about [the group of hackers]
H2O but there is no pirated software from H2O on the CD-ROM.
Living Artifacts
The main thing we learn from observing Lao Dong’s everyday work at his
home is that his Internet connection plays a central role in his music activi-
ties. It allows him to learn about music devices, to find answers to technical
122 Chapter 8
or language-related questions, and to access to music software for free.

Regarding the issue of artifacts and cultural difference, a comparison with
the previous observations of QU’s musicians’ use of the MC-505 presets (see
chap. 5), or Xiao Deng’s use of the software FM7 (see chap. 7), is revealing.
Lao Dong is in a similar but different situation from the previous musi-
cians we observed: the contents of his computer are constantly changing.
If we get back to the metaphor of nonhuman actors embedded inside the
technology, we see that these entities are collaborating with Lao Dong
almost in real time. As with Plato’s observation, mentioned in the intro-
duction (the idea that if one can ask a question and get an answer by dis-
cussing something with a human being, the same interaction process is
not possible with a written document; see “The Present of Things” in chap.
3), we note that the issue is different with a computer connected to the
Internet. Lao Dong’s computer can answer his questions if he posts them in
a forum—in the same way that, when we use a phone to make a call or
send text messages, it is possible to have a physical object acting in certain
ways like a human being, especially when a real human being is connected
to it.
For a long time, anthropology has been dealing with the question of
nonhumans versus humans. Western anthropologists have been challenged
to reconsider the separation between humans and animals, or human and
material objects (a tree, a statue in a church, an idol), which were under-
stood in various ways by the people they were observing.
The French anthropologist Philippe Descola, in a recent and major work
(Descola 2005), discusses this issue with regard to the old nature/culture
divide. He suggests the idea that humans position themselves based on
their consideration of two aspects of the world around them: physicality
(bodies and what relates to material processes) and interiority (emotional
and mental states). On the basis of this framework, he then defines four
categories: animism, naturalism, totemism, and analogism.
Animism (the attribution of life and sensibility to plants, animals,
and inanimate physical objects) is the idea that the world is composed of
humans and nonhumans that share the same interiority but not the same
physicality. On the opposite end, naturalism, the classic Western scientific
perspective, attributes the same physicality to humans and nonhumans (we
are all made of matter), but not the same interiority (only humans have
thoughts and emotions). Totemism is the idea that humans and nonhu-
mans share both the same physicality and interiority, and analogism, is the
idea that they have neither the same physicality nor the same interiority
(Descola 2005).
We saw in the previous three case studies that the idea of cultural con-
tent (a Japanese preset, a German record) relates closely to the idea of action
(who/what is playing), and that nonhumans play an important part of the
collective process that gives birth to a work of art. I discussed the variations
that may occur in the contributions of artifacts (if the vinyl/preset is played
or not, how, and when), and the role played by temporality.
What Lao Dong’s Internet connection illustrates is that the issue of time
discussed in the previous case studies—past decisions, active in the present—
is not always relevant when comparing humans with artifacts. It actually
depends on the material structure of the physical object itself: if it is soft,
it can change, and this change may occur in real time. If we consider Desc-
ola’s four ontologies, we see that Lao Dong’s computer presents, at least
partly, a similar interiority to Lao Dong himself. If we keep up with natural-
ism’s basic concept that human and nonhumans share the same physical-
ity, then human-machine interaction in the context of information and
communications technologies takes us closer to totemism: physical objects
have, under specific circumstances, an interiority similar to that of human
beings.
The Internet is a paradigmatic example to help us understand the spec-
ificity of so-called new technologies. What makes technological artifacts
special today is that they are getting closer to human beings by moving
closer to the present. International groups of hackers, Chinese musicians,
engineers, webmasters, and designers worked inside Lao Dong’s computer,
hand-in-hand with him to help with music equipment issues.
In the following chapter, I continue with Lao Dong’s work, but this time
I will consider the dimension of hard versus soft artifacts, the issue of modi-
fiability, and its implication in the creation of music in China.
9 Omnisequ, or The Path of Complexity
During the IRCAM stage, a young composer learning how to use the Cmusic patch
program synthesized an interesting and complex sound—by far the most musical
result produced by a student so far, as the teacher commended him. On checking
how the sound had been made, the teacher was surprised to discover that the young
man had unwittingly written erroneous amplitude values into his file, which would
produce “foldover” and distortion in the sound. So the most aurally interesting
result produced by the program had come from its technical incorrect use. Just as
significant was the follow-up: that evening, the student tried to reproduce the same
rich sound by resynthesizing using exactly the same (erroneous) values as before.
But try as he might he could not recapture it and found instead that each attempt
produced slightly different aural results.
—Born (1995, 182)
Max/MSP
I had met Lao Dong for the first time at Club Vogue in August 2001, at my
request. QU’s musicians had told me about him as the person who provided
them with music software and technical advice, so I wanted to know more
about him. After our first conversation, we agreed that I would pay a visit
to him at his home, and we agreed to meet a few days later.
That day, we exchanged ideas and talked about our respective interests
in music. I was proud of my knowledge of Max, an interactive graphical
programming environment for music named after Max Mathews, a pioneer
in computer music. Using my laptop, I demonstrated my skills with Max. I
showed Lao Dong a patch I had written while studying at the music conser-
vatory in Geneva that I used for live music performances (patch is the name
used for a piece of software written with Max).
Lao Dong had never heard about Max before. The software was well
known in music conservatories, but available only on Macintosh comput-
ers, which were almost nonexistent on the Chinese market at that time.
126 Chapter 9
Also, Max/MSP, the new version of Max that allowed for live audio data
manipulation, had existed only since 1997 (MSP stands for “Max Signal
Processing” and also for Miller Smith Puckette, the creator of Max). Before
that, Max was used mostly as a do-it-yourself controller kit for other music
devices and did not attract much attention from the lay public.
One of the strengths of Max/MSP lies in the fact that it has a visual inter-
face that is quite user-friendly if compared to traditional text coding. The
approach is based on object-oriented programming, similar to a construc-
tion tools kit with ready-to-use objects that one assembles. Many musicians
who never studied programming, and who are not especially interested in
coding, use it to write music software (and, more recently, as the object’s
package was extended, to write other kinds of software such as tools for
video-processing or art installations). One usually needs one or two years
of intense study to be able to do something with it, but many find it worth
the effort.1
As I understood only several months later, my demonstration that after-
noon in Beijing left an imprint in Lao Dong’s mind. What he saw on my
computer screen had reminded him of another piece of music equipment,
one that he owned and appreciated: the Nord Modular, a hardware synthe-
sizer that also relies on a graphical programming interface. So, in August
2001, he decided to learn more about Max/MSP.
At the end of 2001, Lao Dong was invited by two Swiss DJs (with whom
I had no connection) to play in Zurich. He decided to use this opportunity
to visit me in Geneva. He came for one day, and, at his request, I took
him to see some local home studios: those of a sound engineer, a hip-hop
producer, a drum ’n’ bass DJ, and my own. Lao Dong explained to me that
he had a special interest in live computer music, but he was disappointed
because he hadn’t managed to meet musicians doing live electronic perfor-
mances in Zurich.
My friends and I were working on Macintosh computers. Lao Dong said
he wanted to learn Max/MSP (which only my sound engineer friend and
I were using) and asked me if I knew someone who would be interested in
exchanging a Mac for an Akai MPC3000 sampler, a well-known vintage
instrument. He had two MPC3000 in Beijing, so he could give away one. I
introduced him to a friend employed at a second-hand musical equipment
shop, who agreed to the exchange. A few months later, Lao Dong received
his iBook in Beijing (the same model I had with me when I visited him in
August).
Because I was involved in a PhD program, I already knew that I would
spend a year in China two years later. The idea of spending time with me,
Omnisequ, or The Path of Complexity 127
during which I would teach him how to use Max/MSP, interested Lao Dong
very much. We regularly exchanged emails during the year 2002, as he
started to get his hands on the software and slowly got used to this new
device.
Work Process
I noted several computer musicians—Europeans and Americans, and one
Japanese—whose technical and musical skills inspired Lao Dong. One
of them was Robert Henke, from the German band Monolake, whose
use of Max/MSP was often mentioned in the media as well as on his web-
site, where patches were available for download. Monolake was known
for the software Ableton Live, written by its two former members Robert
Henke and Gerhard Behles (Behles eventually left the band to work only
on Ableton Live development, which became, through the 2000s, one
of the most widely used software products for live music performances in
the world).
Monolake members emphasized their mastery of technical aspects as
part of their music activities. For instance, Robert Henke was quoted in a
magazine summarizing his approach toward software instruments with the
following words: “Do I go to the studio and make a song? Or do I make a
new tool to make another song tomorrow?” Or Gerhard Behles: “There are
two approaches you can take with your music software. One is to consider
the tools as fixed. The other is to control the tools themselves. That gives
you a much bigger lever” (Davis 2002, 100). Besides this, the music they
were playing related to the subgenre of minimal techno, which was close to
the musical style Lao Dong had been mixing as a DJ during the preceding
years.2
When I went back to Beijing in August 2003, Lao Dong had not only
downloaded several patches written by Robert Henke, but he had also con-
tacted him by email. He had conducted an interview that was published in
a local magazine in Beijing, and he proposed to organize a tour for Mono-
lake in China. He had also used the opportunity of the email exchange to
ask Robert Henke what kind of equipment he was using.
To find information such as that which he had gathered about Mono-
lake, Lao Dong used keywords in a Web search engine, or he went directly
to the website of Cycling ’74, the company that produces Max/MSP, which
had a section with links to users’ pages. Then he looked for places he could
download patches from. He put the downloaded files in a folder and then
tested them one by one. After he had tried all the files, he sorted the patches
he liked most by putting them in a folder he had named “COOL.”
128 Chapter 9
Max/MSP patches can be quite dense. Often, the patches’ interfaces give
users a feeling similar to being confronted with part of the command board
of a big airplane. Someone familiar with Max/MSP objects may easily recog-
nize elements such as scrolling menus, control knobs, and on/off switches,
as well as the sizes and positions of these elements, but their number and
their functions are decided by the writer of the patch. Therefore, such struc-
tures are always “new” to any other user of the patch.
In 2003–2004, Lao Dong had the habit of picking up a patch on his
computer and showing it to me whenever I visited him. He usually added
the comment “this patch is not bad” 征᷒patchᶵ擁, which meant he had
tested it and appreciated it. Although I wasn’t with him during most of his
tests, I believe he always relied on the same procedure. Often faced with
an impressive interface, he started to play a mix of clicks and slips of the
mouse, conscious choices for the icons he already knew (control buttons,
on/off switches, etc.), and more haphazard choices in the case of icons he
didn’t know.
This method of “play it and hear what happens,” whenever dealing with
new software, was somehow specific to Lao Dong. For example, it differed
from Xiao Deng’s and from mine. Personally, I always started by having a
look at the written materials, user’s manuals, or readme text documents
that often accompanied the files. Xiao Deng (chaps. 6 and 7) preferred to
make sure he had a clear picture of what a software could do, and that it
was worth spending time on it, before trying to use it; he usually started by
asking other musicians, or he watched audiovisual materials such as video
demonstrations.
Sometimes, Lao Dong opened the “COOL” file folder in order to play
music with some of the patches he liked. If he liked what he heard, he
recorded it with his second computer (a Windows compatible PC on which
he used Digidesign’s Pro Tools software with a MBox soundcard) so that he
could listen to it later. He told me this was an old habit that went back to
the time when he played in a rock band and recorded rehearsals. He liked
to listen to the music he had done and analyze his performance.
Timeline of the encounter between Lao Dong and Max/MSP
• August 21, 2001. Lao Dong hears for the first time about Max/MSP when I
show him the application running in my iBook. He already wants to “make
computer music” but has never heard of this software.
• December 17, 2001. Hired to mix in a club in Zurich, Lao Dong comes to
Geneva (to visit me) and meets with a local musician who works in a music
shop. They decide that a sampler Akai MPC2000 that Lao Dong owns in
Beijing will be exchanged for an iBook, which will be purchased for him by
the music store.
• January 27, 2002 The exchange of the two devices—organized by Lao
Dong from Beijing, through acquaintances who travel by plane between
the two countries—takes place at the train station in Lausanne.
• January 29, 2002. I send Lao Dong the address of a server where he can
find a lot of pirated software for Macintosh. I ask the administrator of the
site, whom I know a little, to give him a login and a password.
• January 31, 2002. Lao Dong receives his iBook in Beijing. He starts to con-
figure the computer, and, because it is the first time has used a Macintosh,
he finds himself confronted with unfamiliar technical problems.
• February 1, 2002. He downloads Max/MSP’s trial version (available on
Cycling ’74’s website), but he doesn’t install it. He has noticed the demo
is limited to one month of use and wonders what he will do once the trial
period has expired (he knows this procedure can then sometimes prevent
someone from using a pirated version later). A few days earlier, he noticed
an advertisement on a website where Max/MSP is sold for US$360 and hesi-
tates to buy it.
• February 6, 2002. He installs the demo version. He still has a lot of techni-
cal problems related to the Mac operating system.
• February 9, 2002. Max/MSP’s demo version works normally. Lao Dong
spends a lot of time solving various technical issues related to his new com-
puter, most of it not directly related to Max/MSP.
• February 16, 2002. Worried that the trial period is soon over, Lao Dong
contacts the illegal website I told him about, in order to become a member
(I had told him I noticed a pirated copy of Max/MSP there that could be
working). He becomes a member on the 23rd of February, 2002.
• February 26 2002. After another series of technical difficulties, Lao Dong
manages to install the pirated copy of Max/MSP. It works fine.
• From the end of February 2002 to May 2004, Lao Dong works mainly on
the pirated copy of Max/MSP. Through the Internet, he gets information
related to the product and works on improving his mastery of this techni-
cal object.
• Between August 2003 and September 2004, Lao Dong and I meet regu-
larly at his home in Beijing, where I teach him how to use Max/MSP. He
reaches a level where he is able to write simple patches and slightly modify
existing patches written by others.
• April 30, 2004. I manage to get Lao Dong invited to a music festival in
Geneva. He gets paid a few hundred Swiss francs for his DJ performance,
and when he gets back to Beijing he decides to use this money to buy an
130 Chapter 9
Figure 9.1
Omnisequ main window. Screenshot of Lao Dong’s computer, February 2004.
official copy of Max/MSP. Since his Chinese credit card cannot be used for
the purchase, he gives me his Swiss francs and I buy the software for him,
which we download from the official website.
• From 2004 on, Lao Dong’s activity on Max/MSP starts to slow down. He
hasn’t reached his goal of using the software for live music performances,
and his interest in it slowly fades away.
To analyze the role played by the Max/MSP patches Lao Dong used in his
music composition activities between 2003 and 2004, I will now discuss
one specific patch and two recordings he made using the method described
above.
Omnisequ
During his searches for Max/MSP patches on the Internet, Lao Dong down-
loaded a patch called LLOOPP. Text files accompanying this software indi-
cated it had been written by someone called Klaus Filip, a musician based in
Vienna, and the resulting work was available for free on a website dedicated
to its diffusion.3 A particularity of LLOOPP was that it consisted not of
one but several patches linked together, some of them written by different
programmers. Lao Dong liked one section of LLOOPP’s subpatches called
Omnisequ.
Omnisequ, as the “sequ” in the second part of its name indicates, is a
sequencer software. The appellation is generally used to describe a software
or hardware that can record, edit, and play back music information. It can
roughly be compared to a barrel organ, where bits of information, such as

holes in paper rolls, trigger the production of sounds (see for instance Xiao
Deng’s use of Cubase in chap. 8).
Lao Dong had recorded several pieces of music with Omnisequ. He was
quite satisfied with these songs, and he often gave them to friends for lis-
tening. In figure 9.1, the black squares displayed on the white rectangular
lines on the right side of the window indicate the locations of Lao Dong’s
mouse clicks. These squares were read by the computer at a fixed speed
from left to right, which then triggered a percussive sound for each one.
The numbers and controls located on the left and lower parts of the
window allow users to change the speed, pitch, volume, panning, and
other parameters of the patch. Each horizontal line represents a sound
file, which has to be put in a dedicated folder on the user’s computer hard
disk. Omnisequ analyzes the contents of this folder, and files can then be
selected using a scrolling menu. For example, if one has a recording of a
voice saying “orange,” puts it in the folder, and selects it in the red menu
of the second line from the bottom, a part of the rhythmical section will be
composed of “. . . orange . . . orange,” the sound being triggered by each of
the two black squares of this line. All the lines are always read in loop, and
the speed can be modified only for all of them at the same time (i.e., there
were no independent speed controls for each line).
Similarly to the imaginary example of a voice saying “orange,” Lao
Dong’s activity consisted mostly of choosing sound files and arranging
them at certain time intervals. He also played with the other parameters,
such as panoramic, pitch, and so on, to change the timbre and presence of
the sounds.
I discuss now an application of this procedure with a song Lao Dong
recorded called “Midnight Buzz.”
“Midnight Buzz”
“Midnight Buzz” was recorded in May 2003, before I came back to Beijing
for the second time. I selected this piece for analysis because Lao Dong was
very satisfied with it. He often played it for friends who came to his home,
and I saw him twice, during the year 2003–2004, giving it to people on a
home-burnt compact disc as a sample of his work. I also selected it because
he had composed the music alone, at a moment when we hadn’t spent
much time together. My own influence on the making of this piece seemed
to me easier to track than after August 2003, when we exchanged ideas and
played together for months.
132 Chapter 9
For this study, “Midnight Buzz” is useful as it is representative of Lao

Dong’s work at his home training himself in the practice of computer music.
As an introduction, I invite the reader to listen to the corresponding record-
ing, which can be heard at http://www.842.ch/dl/MidnightBuzz.m4a.4
The Making of “Midnight Buzz”

During the spring 2003, the SARS virus (short for Severe Acute Respiratory
Syndrome) was spreading through the PRC. The government had taken
strict measures to control the epidemic. The inhabitants of the city of Bei-
jing stayed in their homes, the streets were empty. Because he could not go
out much, Lao Dong downloaded huge amounts of Max/MSP patches. For
him, “Midnight Buzz” expresses the quietness and bizarre atmosphere of
the streets of the capital, usually crowded, at that moment.
In early 2003, he had not reached yet his goal of “doing computer
music.” He considered the songs he made as exercises, and “Midnight Buzz”
was one of those. He had started it by trying some percussive sounds he had
put in Omnisequ (following a similar procedure to Xiao Deng, described
in “Writing Techno Songs,” chap. 7). After that, he recorded his laptop’s
output while playing with the software. The rhythmic section of “Midnight
Buzz,” made of percussive elements only, was made this way, in one shot.
(I do not have a recording of this first step of the composition process,
but another song he wrote called “Tribal,” composed under similar circum-
stances at the end of 2003, gives an idea of the kind of music Lao Dong
could make only by using the patch Omnisequ. It can be heard at http://
www.842.ch/dl/Tribal.m4a.)
At this moment, Lao Dong’s goal (which he didn’t recall exactly one year
later, when I asked him about it) was probably related to his objective of
making some kind of minimal techno song, a subgenre he had been mix-
ing a lot. The structure of this style of music involved percussive sounds
like those he had selected,5 together with melodic elements, the absence of
human voice, and other specific aspects.
Then, Lao Dong added a melody. He connected a Korg controller key-
board to a Nord Modular synthesizer.6 Having, on one side, the first record-
ing, done with Omnisequ, containing only percussive sounds, and, on the
other, a synthesizer sound he liked (he selected a preset and then “slightly
modified it” 㓡Ḯᶨ䁡), Lao Dong proceeded to the second and last step of
his composition process. He placed the first recording in his second com-
puter, and, using the Korg keyboard as a controller for the Nord Modular,
plus the software Pro Tools that allowed him to play the first recording
and record a second one at the same time, he played a melody. “Midnight
Buzz,” as we can hear it today, is made of these two recordings of Lao Dong,
added one onto the other.
If we pay attention to the distribution of work between Lao Dong and
the other humans or nonhumans he interacted with, we see that until the
very last steps, Lao Dong didn’t play any music. His activity is the one of
a consumer (Théberge 1997), selecting certain objects from among others,
following a procedure similar to that of someone going to a supermarket
and targeting items he or she wants to buy. Lao Dong’s specific physical
intervention in the structure of “Midnight Buzz,” the one related to his
body gestures that can be heard in the final song, occurs at the moment
he begins to modify the Nord Modular presets, or when he creates the
rhythmic patterns by arranging the drum samples in time. These modifica-
tions imply a personal touch, an additional element in the final result—the
“musical body movement” of Lao Dong—placed among the work of the
many designers of the various software and hardware he put together.
Before that, Lao Dong’s activity consists of setting up the environment
that would later allow the creation of the song, in a similar way to a painter
who buys paint and then starts painting, or a cook who buys food and then
starts cooking. He brought together various hardware and software devices,
and he made himself able, by learning, to use this equipment later on. In
other words, he created the appropriate “hybrid collective” (Callon 2004),
made of an assembly of nonhumans and humans, that he needed to give
birth to “Midnight Buzz.”
Before coming back to the patch Omnisequ and the question of non-
humans, let us have a quick look at another song Lao Dong did with
Max/MSP.
“Restaurant” 饭馆
A Max/MSP patch can be displayed in two different modes by pressing a
combination of keys on the keyboard that result in the patcher window
being unlocked or locked. The programming work in Max/MSP is made in
unlocked mode. It consists of selecting a number of objects, putting them
in the main window, adjusting a few parameters on it, and linking them
together with “cables” that are drawn on the screen by clicking and drag-
ging with the mouse. In unlocked mode, the totality of the elements that
constitute the patch are visible, and they can all be edited. In locked mode,
elements can be hidden and the programming structure can be used, but
it cannot be modified; locked mode is generally used to play with a patch.
In April 2004, with some help from me, Lao Dong made his first Max/
MSP patch. He had decided to mainly rely on six waveform~ objects. The
134 Chapter 9
Figure 9.2
Lao Dong’s first patch. Screenshot of his computer while he was using the patch,
May 2004.
screenshot in figure 9.2 shows the patch in locked mode, during one of the
final steps of editing the patch, where the waveform~ objects are the gray
rectangles lined up in two columns of three rows.
This symbolic step for Lao Dong of having a patch that could be played
was followed by the creation of several pieces. I will briefly comment two
aspects of the structure of one song he called “Restaurant” 椕椮 (it can be
heard at http://www.842.ch/dl/Fanguan.m4a).
The first thing to know to understand the making of “Restaurant” is
that a waveform~ object provides a visual representation of the waveform
of a sound file it contains (which is chosen by the user). The sound file can
be played as a loop, and one can modify parameters such as duration and
speed. For example, if we imagine a recording of a voice saying “The earth
is blue like an orange,” and we select its first third with the mouse on the
waveform~ object, by pressing a play button connected to it we will hear
a sound loop saying: “The earth is . . . The earth is . . .” The main idea Lao
Dong had for this patch was to have six waveform~ objects, so that he
could manipulate six sound samples simultaneously and independently.7
After finishing the first version of the patch, Lao Dong started to play
with it. Similar to the way that he used Omnisequ, he loaded sound files
inside the waveform~ objects and modified some parameters, especially the
length of the sound loops, their volumes, their speed, and the low and high
frequencies.
In order to discuss Lao Dong’s musical activity for this specific piece, it
is useful to listen to three sound files. First, two sound samples he used to
produce the song: “VoiceFanguan” (fanguan means “restaurant” in Man-
darin), and “Grainedsine1” (http://www.842.ch/dl/VoiceFanguan.m4a;
http://www.842.ch/dl/Grainedsine1.m4a); then, the resulting song called
“Restaurant” 椕椮 (http://www.842.ch/dl/Fanguan.m4a).
If one listens to the two extracts and then to the song, it is quite easy
to get a general idea of what Lao Dong was doing on his laptop. The first
sample can be heard 1:30 into “Restaurant.” It consists of the voice of a
girl selling noodles. Lao Dong recorded it in 2001, using a minidisc and
a cheap microphone, with the idea of using it later (he liked this sample
because he used to go to that restaurant often and enjoyed the place). The
second sound sample, “Grainedsine1,” was downloaded from the Internet.
Lao Dong could not remember where exactly. He used it as a sort of back-
ground sound, and it can easily be identified from the beginning to the end
of the recording.
By listening first to the two excerpts, and then to the final song, one
can hear the length of the sound loops in each waveform~ object as well as
Lao Dong’s movements of the mouse—his only physical contact with the
instrument, that is, the computer. For each sample, he modifies separately
the duration and the volume, as well as other parameters. His gestures are
especially intelligible when he manipulates “VoiceFanguan,” for instance at
2:25, when he shortens the duration of the sample.
We now have enough elements to compare “Midnight Buzz” and “Res-
taurant,” so I move on to the analysis.
Circulation
Similarities can be noted between the making of “Midnight Buzz,” “Restau-

rant,” and the preceding case studies (see chaps. 5, 6, and 7). Lao Dong, like
Xiao Deng or the musicians of QU, collaborated with nonhumans. Xiao
Deng selected discs and mixed them; Lao Dong selected sound samples
and mixed them. Xiao Deng added personal effects on the music of the
records he played by moving faders and controls of the DJ desk; Lao Dong
added personal effects by modifying the presets of his Nord Modular or by
136 Chapter 9
changing parameters to modify the drum samples he put in Omnisequ.

Xiao Deng collaborated with the virtual presence of Peter Krischker to write
the “TK Remix”; Lao Dong collaborated with the virtual presence of Klaus
Filip to produce “Midnight Buzz.”
But in case of the song “Restaurant,” the role played by artifacts comes
up slightly different. Since Lao Dong wrote, and then played, his own patch
written in Max/MSP, the procedure implies that we have a situation where
the artist collaborates with himself, as he can be considered as embodied in
the patch he wrote.
A comparison between Omnisequ and Lao Dong’s patch structure can
help us look at the fine-grain differences between “Midnight Buzz” and
“Restaurant.” If we consider the main structure of the two patches used for
the making of each song, we note that if we were to listen to a great number
of songs done with Omnisequ or with Lao Dong’s patch, we could easily
differentiate the pieces done with the first software compared to those done
with the second one by paying attention to the differences in the rhyth-
mic structures. Omnisequ-made songs would have short percussive sounds,
synchronized and arranged in sequences played in loops. Lao Dong’s patch-
made songs would have longer sound loops, unsynchronized, and probably
more nonpercussive content since the structure of the patch did not allow
users to manipulate percussive content accurately.
In other words, in the same way that when we listen to a piano and
then to a guitar concerto we are able to identify (or differentiate between)
the two instruments piano and guitar, we can identify the two instruments
“Omnisequ” and “Lao Dong’s patch” by listening to pieces of music done
with one or the other. In the same way as when I closed my eyes at Xiao
Deng’s team’s Great Wall techno party and heard German techno music
(chap. 6), the software used by Lao Dong delivers a specific message con-
tained in the sound.
As we can see more clearly now, the comparison between the two patches
takes us closer to the issue of cultural difference and technical objects by
touching on the idea of the physical localization we attribute to a piece of
music. A melody of traditional Chinese music played with an ancient Chi-
nese string instrument such as a guqin ⎌䏜 will be perceived as Chinese. If
so, is it possible to create Chinese music when the computer used for doing
so by a Chinese musician is American?
Perception of cultural identity in music is certainly a complicated ques-
tion (see Cifariello 2008 on the semantics of “global” versus “local” sonic ele-
ments in music from the point of view of the composer and/or the listener,
or Chang 2009 on how sample-based music uses sounds instrumentally). If
the melody played on the guqin was a traditional American folk song, the
perception of listeners could be different, conflictual probably, since, on the
one hand, the instrument gives a Chinese indication, while on the other
hand the melody gives an American indication.
And we can go one step further: Lao Dong’s work procedure also blurs
the differences between what we usually label “musical” versus “techni-
cal.” In the same way that he clicked and dragged the notes he played to
make the melody of “Midnight Buzz,” Lao Dong clicked and dragged the
six waveform~ objects used to create the song “Restaurant.” In the finished
songs, both software structures—the notes and the waveform~ objects—
produce part of the sound structures.
In other words, in Lao Dong’s music there is no difference between artis-
tic activity and technical activity. And there is no difference either between
music culture and Chinese culture. We are talking about the exact same
thing—and this is why we are using the same word to describe it.
In the previous chapters, we have seen that ideas of cultural difference
and agency sometimes can appear mixed together: synthesizer presets,
vinyl records, a plugin software, all come from distant countries and are
active in the creative processes of the band QU and the DJ Xiao Deng. In
the study of Lao Dong’s Internet connection, we saw that this type of non-
human intervention can occur in real time, and that raises questions about
how to understand the physicality and interiority of technical objects ver-
sus human beings. Now, in the case of Lao Dong’s songs “Midnight Buzz”
and “Restaurant,” we again observe a situation where human intervention
and technical devices’ interventions produce similar results, which this
time touch on the difference between what we understand from “culture”
as related to artistic practice and “culture” as related to shared knowledge.
In order to describe these processes, it is necessary to use a single termi-
nology to group the phenomena for which we have, until now, used differ-
ent words. I will start with the term circulation8 and argue that the presets
of the MC-505 (see chap. 5) circulated up to QU’s performances at Vogue;
the contents of Xiao Deng’s vinyl records (see chap. 6) circulated to my ears
during the rave on the Great Wall; Peter Krischker’s programming work
(see chap. 7) circulated from Germany to the “TK Remix”; and the work of
LLOOPP programmers, as well as Lao Dong’s own, circulated up to the songs
“Midnight Buzz” and “Restaurant.”
The second step is to consider what is actually circulating. To address
the question of the materiality of circulation processes—now that we have
a better idea of the role Omnisequ played in Lao Dong’s music—it is useful
to have a closer look at the software itself. If “Midnight Buzz” was made
138 Chapter 9
with Omnisequ (and made of Omnisequ, as we have just seen), what was
Omnisequ itself made of (or with, if that still matters)?
Waves
The documentation provided by the main programmer of LLOOPP, Klaus
Filip, contained information about Omnisequ. It specified that the patch
was actually a modified version of another patch. The original one was
named Omnichord Deluxe and had been written by a programmer named
Oliver Stotz.
Lao Dong had looked for the original Omnichord Deluxe on the Web
and found it in 2002 (I believe through a personal Web page of Oliver Stotz,
which did not exist anymore when I looked for it). The version of Omnich-
ord Deluxe downloaded by Lao Dong, placed next to Omnisequ, confirmed
Klaus Filip’s affirmations: if there were a few differences between the two
patches, the main interface and the basic features remained the same. A few
tests I did with the two patches confirmed this first impression. It was the
same structure, slightly modified in order to make it compatible with its
inclusion in the main structure of LLOOPP.
Searching for information about the original programmer, I found a doc-
ument on LLOOPP’s website with the following indication: “Omnichord
Deluxe is an 8-track rhythm player based on the famous ‘omnichord.’ . . .
It features the original chordsound and allows playing with the macintosh-
keyboard.”9 I eventually decided to contact Oliver Stotz to ask him about
his project. The synthesizer named Omnichord, he told me, was a device
produced at the beginning of the 1980s by a family-run Japanese com-
pany named Suzuki. He had owned a model called OM27 in the past, and
he really loved playing with it. So when he started to learn Max/MSP, he
decided to make a software version of Omnichord.
In the example of the mobile phone discussed in chapter 2, I relied on
Madeleine Akrich’s concept of script to describe designers’ representations
implemented in technical objects (Akrich 1992, 208). Then, for each case
study, I gave simplified analyses where nonhumans acted as humans. Such
conceptualization could be used again in the situation of Lao Dong playing
Omnisequ. We could think of how Oliver Stotz virtually collaborated with
the Suzuki family (whose actions were embodied in the Omnichord synthe-
sizer), then with Klaus Filip, eventually ending up in a collaboration with
Lao Dong in order to produce the song “Midnight Buzz.”
However, if we consider the Suzuki company’s work, embedded in the
Omnichord software, circulating through Oliver Stotz and, later, with Klaus
Filip, we see situations of conservation, fragmentation, or modification of
the creator’s original decisions. At each step, some of the synthesizer’s func-
tions changed, some disappeared, some were added, some were modified,
and some remained the same. To find a way to grasp these different steps,
I now consider briefly two other STS concepts: those of immutable mobile
and inscription device.
In 1985, Bruno Latour used the words immutable mobile to describe how
scientific facts circulate without changing. For instance, a piece of informa-
tion such as “the earth revolves around the sun” moves from one place
to another, and one person to another, without any major change to its
content. To be transportable and, at the same time, convey unchanging
information is one of the characteristics, according to Latour, of a scien-
tific fact (Latour 1987, 2006). A piece of information that changes at some
point in time—for instance, “the sun revolves around the earth,” which is
then contradicted by someone who argues the opposite—is not a scientific
fact anymore. Regarding the situations that interest us here, the concept of
immutable mobile can also be seen as one category, among others, of circu-
lation processes. An immutable mobile describes a circulation process with
conservation of the contents.
The concept of inscription devices is used in STS in Bruno Latour and Steve
Woolgar’s famous book Laboratory Life to describe how information manip-
ulated by scientists is reformulated when moved from one device to another
and changed into numbers, graphs, screens, and so on. For instance, scien-
tists will measure the amount of a certain substance and turn this amount
into numbers, the numbers into graphs, and so forth (Latour and Woolgar
1979; see also Pinch 1985; Callon 2006).10 As with the immutable mobile,
the notion of inscription device is something we can relate to a circulation
process, but this time it involves mainly the idea of the modification of the
information that is transported (or translated, using ANT’s vocabulary).
With these two concepts in mind, if we consider the circulation of
Suzuki’s script as it proceeds from the Omnichord synthesizer to Lao Dong’
songs, we note first the presence of immutable mobiles: things that moved
without changing from one device to another. For example, the idea of
“attributing a sound to a line that can be triggered by a user who selects it
(or not) using a control button” was embodied by the Suzuki company in
the Omnichord synthesizer hardware. Then it was embodied by Oliver Stotz
in the patch Omnichord Deluxe, then by Klaus Filip in LLOOPP, and finally
we can hear its structure in Lao Dong’s music. This “information” went first
from one artifact to another artifact (from a hardware synthesizer to soft-
ware) through a human being (Oliver Stotz), and it changed from a material,
physical form to a digital one. Then it went from one artifact to another
140 Chapter 9
artifact through an artifact: when Oliver Stotz and Klaus Filip exchanged
information that was probably sent by email, or through a cable, from one
computer to another, before it was pasted inside the final LLOOPP software.
We note also that at each step of this circulation process, it is not the script
of Suzuki as a whole that traveled but only small parts of it. Much informa-
tion was cut, shaped, and transformed many times before it became part of
Lao Dong’s music—and much of it disappeared completely. For example,
the physical shape of the Omnichord synthesizer went away at the moment
Oliver Stotz rewrote Suzuki’s script into a Max/MSP patch: it was translated
into a computer window. The original sounds of the Omnichord synthesizer
and the three-line structure it had also did not circulate up to Omnisequ.
Only some elements traveled through the whole journey. Other parts of
Suzuki’s script did not circulate at all, because of the programmers’ choices,
technical constraints, and so on. Some parts of the script were deeply trans-
formed: the idea of “attributing a sound to a line that can be triggered by a
user who selects it (or not) using a control button” was adapted to a slider
interface which could be controlled on a computer screen by a mouse click
rather than pressing a hardware button. Oliver Stotz added also possibilities
in the matter of controls and parameters.
Let us make a short list of the characteristics we observe regarding the
circulation of Suzuki’s script:
• Some parts circulated through a human being and changed.

• Some parts circulated through a human being without changing.
• Some parts circulated through an artifact and changed.
• Some parts circulated through an artifact without changing.
• Some parts disappeared on the way.
• Some parts were added on the way.
So, what is this thing that is circulating in so many different ways? Inter-
estingly, the nature of the path that goes from Omnichord to Omnisequ
and then to Lao Dong’s music is similar to the one of sounds. In the same
way that a conversation on the street can be recorded, sent over the Inter-
net, and copied and edited several times on various kinds of media before
being listened to by people in a distant country, ideas from the Suzuki com-
pany have been recorded in the Omnichord synthesizer, listened to by Oli-
ver Stotz, re-recorded in the patch Omnichord Deluxe, copied and edited
on various kinds of media before ending up in the patch Omnisequ inside
LLOOPP and then in Lao Dong’s “Midnight Buzz” song.
On the basis of this analogy, I suggest considering that the basic char-
acteristics of the “thing” that circulates—sometimes conserved, sometimes
created, and sometimes dissipated—is the shape that matter can take. I will
use the name waves (by analogy with sound waves) to describe the various
sorts of data that circulate between human beings and artifacts.
Harry Collins, whose work on the sociology of scientific knowledge I
discussed in chapter 2, has actually defined a concept of “strings” that is
different but also close to the concept of waves I am sketching out here.
“‘Strings’ . . . are bits of stuff inscribed with patterns: they might be bits of
air with patterns of sound waves, or bits of paper with writing, or bits of
the seashore with marks made by waves, or irregular clouds, or patterns of
mold, or almost anything” (Collins 2010, 9).
In Collins’s framework, strings are physical objects. Their definition is
operational and relative: strings are entities and entities are strings, a long
string is a set of strings, elements of a string can be strings in themselves,
and vice versa (the meaning of the term emerges from the context). Collins
uses this concept to approach the notion of explicit knowledge with a most
reduced set of elements, as tacit knowledge, in his framework, cannot be
transmitted with strings (Collins 2010, 16, 86).
Wave, as I intend it, is not operational or relative but absolute: a wave
is the smallest level of shape that matter can take. Moreover, the idea of
wave—as a disturbance—aims to characterize something that is not itself
physical, but the shape of a physical object. Something that travels, some-
times changes, sometimes does not, and conveys some kind of information
that is often not present on the same material support. The Omnichord
synthesizer, the Omnichord Deluxe patch, the Omnisequ patch, and the
structure of “Midnight Buzz” have a common origin in the factory of the
Suzuki company. However, once launched, their respective existences do
not depend on what happens to the others. If someone modifies the hard-
ware synthesizer Omnichord, this will not affect its software copy Omnich-
ord Deluxe inside Oliver Stotz’s computer. Neither will it have direct
consequences on the structure of the Omnisequ software, which Klaus Filip
implemented in LLOOPP, or change the structure of Lao Dong’s song “Mid-
night Buzz.”
I will call a form any aggregate of waves we identify for operational
needs. For example, “attributing a sound to a line that can be triggered by
a user who selects it (or not) on a button” is a form I define for the purpose
of discussing Omnisequ. A word, a song, a picture—all are forms. A form
is an operational and relative concept, similar to Collins’s strings, but it is
not a physical object. Made of waves, it is the shape of something that has
a physical materiality. It can move from one physical object to another, or
be present simultaneously in several of them. The concept of form aims
to take advantage of our unparalleled capacity to identify and manipulate
aggregates of waves.
142 Chapter 9
In sound engineering, the term sound waves, formally, is used to describe

the audible variations of pressure that air particles take. These waves have
properties similar to waves on the ocean, except that they ride air particles
and not water particles. The variations of air pressure explains why, when
you stand inside a big hall and say something loud, people in the hall can
hear your voice even if they are located in different places inside the hall.
Some sounds even come back to your ears after their corresponding sound
waves have been reflected by the walls (this effect is usually called reverber-
ation or echo). The overall movement is, roughly speaking, similar to what
we observe at the surface of a swimming pool when we throw in a large,
heavy object: a wave moving from a center out in all directions, hitting the
borders of the pool and coming back less powerful than before, back and
forth and so on, until it finally dissipates and disappears.
This property of sound waves, or “waves” in general, as a disturbance
able to spread across space simultaneously in different directions, is shared
by what I call waves (a positivist stance, the smallest amount of shape mat-
ter can take) and forms (a relativist stance, aggregates of waves we iden-
tify for operational needs). In this framework, sound waves are only one
type of wave: the one made of variations of pressure of air particles. We
need the generic entity waves to describe the other kinds of shapes that we
can observe (it is also probably worth thinking of it by using other words,
because a “wave,” strictly speaking in natural sciences, is usually periodical,
which is not always the case with the phenomena I am considering here).
Sounds have the interesting property of being able to travel through
various kinds of media. If we go back to the example of the person speak-
ing in the hall, we can imagine someone else being located behind a door
in a room adjacent to the hall. This person may also hear the sound of the
person speaking, because some of the corresponding sound waves will be
transmitted to the material structure of the door and then to air particles
again. It is this kind of transmission process that explains why we can hear
a kid learning how to play the saxophone even though he or she lives six
floors below. And this is why the concept of waves is useful for our purpose:
when sound information is transmitted as a vibration inside the wooden
door, or in the pipes of the building, it is not strictly speaking sound waves
anymore, but something else.
Sounds can be stored temporarily or permanently in many different
kinds of media: a digital hard disc, a wooden door, pipes, or a human brain,
among others. It is this kind of “imprint” that I attempt to group under
the generic banner of waves, but I am not limiting its use to sounds. The
word must be understood as representing the various formats that a piece
of data can take—a sound, a picture, a word, anything a human being can
memorize in one way or another (I will come back to the human brain in
part 4). The very fact that we can remember a sound or a picture, and that
this information can be sent through various material supports is, I believe,
the expression of a set of phenomena that needs to be reconceptualized
in order to solve the issue of technical objects and cultural difference dis-
cussed in this book.
So, to sum up, waves circulate between objects and people, can be
recorded or memorized, created or dissipated, transmitted and multiplied
through various kinds of material, are most often shaped by the structure
that hosts them, and often disappear definitively at the very end. Their for-
mations, conservations, and dissipations can be followed if they are exam-
ined closely on the concrete materials that host them.
The idea of waves is useful in that it allows us to think of situations,
such as the ones described in this book, in a concrete way: imprints on
matter, sometimes solid (think of the hardware synthesizer Omnichord),
sometimes gaseous (think of sound waves), sometimes electromagnetic
(think of X-rays or radio waves), sometimes in a human being (and this
may be the most difficult place to physically identify it; I will get back to
this question later). The easiest way to clarify this framework is probably to
think about the Internet and mobile technologies, which allow us to send
waves—pictures, sounds, movies, all kinds of data—through various kinds
of material support.
But let’s go back to Lao Dong for a few more pages and see what else
we can learn from his activities, and how we can relate those activities to
waves’ circulation.
Modifiability
Now that we have learned about how the design embodied in the Suzuki
company’s Omnichord synthesizer circulated up to Lao Dong’s patch and
music, it is useful to consider what happened to this circulation process
when it took the shape of an interaction with Lao Dong himself. If it is
impossible to go back in time to observe him downloading and using the
patch, several steps of this process can be reconstructed from his comments
about the Max/MSP environment and from the Omnisequ patch structure
itself.
Lao Dong, whose objective was to master Max/MSP and to be able
to write patches by himself, systematically opened in editing mode (the
“unlocked” mode) all the patches he downloaded and tried to figure out
144 Chapter 9
Figure 9.3
Omnisequ in editing mode.
how they were structured. The screenshot in figure 9.3 shows Omnisequ’s
window when it is unlocked.
Lao Dong was used to the famous spiderweb-like appearance of Max/
MSP patches. He usually continued his observations by paying attention
to some of the icons he saw. If we imagine that he focused his eyes on the
upper part of the patch, observing some of the elements that constitute
the programming structure, we see for instance objects with names such as
“funnel” or “collX.”
When I asked Lao Dong in May 2004 about the funnel object, he didn’t
know what it was. So we can assume he didn’t know it either at the time he
opened the patch. In that kind of situation, Lao Dong usually searched the
Max/MSP English user manual. I tried to perform this operation: the fun-
nel object is listed inside it, and there are explanations about how it can be
used. In other words, by observing closely the cables between the objects,
the parameters (i.e., the numbers that are on the right side of each funnel
object) and so on, Lao Dong was able to know all the necessary information
related to this section of the patch.
However, the situation changes if we pursue this imaginary observation

process. The object collX, located above the funnel object, is not an object
from the standard Max/MSP package. It cannot be found in the user man-
ual. It is an “external object,” written by a programmer named Stephen
Kay.11 Oliver Stotz used this object in Omnisequ’s programming structure
but, at the beginning of the year 2004, I could find no documentation
about it on the Internet except the name of its author.
During the time when I often stayed at Lao Dong’s place, I observed
that each time he opened a patch, he would—after a few minutes, a couple
of hours, or a few days—give up trying to understand the structure and
simply play with it in locked mode. If we stop our imaginary path of “Lao
Dong learning from Omnisequ” here (he could of course have continued
searching, for instance by asking on Internet forums), we note that the
musician, in his activity of studying how to program in Max/MSP, is con-
fronted with several difficulties. First, Max/MSP is in English, a language
he can read but which he has not mastered. Second, the complexity of the
patch written by Oliver Stotz is huge, and it takes time to figure out what
elements it is made of and how these are connected. Third, some of the
objects are not even part of the Max/MSP structure, but need extra work to
be comprehended.
I believe that Lao Dong’s interaction process with Max/MSP is not spe-
cific to him, or even to Chinese musicians, but is representative of some-
thing related to the activity of working with complex devices. For instance,
Georgina Born observed similar situations with programmers at IRCAM
(Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique, the renowned
music research center in Paris).
In 1984 the problem of opacity seriously affected both skilled and naive software
users. Skilled IRCAM programmers complained that, looking back on programs they
had written in collaboration with several others, the complexity of the codes made
it extremely difficult for them to reconstruct afterward from the codes themselves
exactly what was done and how in the bits of code authored by colleagues, without
asking them. Programs at IRCAM were often put together over a period of months
or years by several collaborators, a gradual, collective bricolage. Software was, then,
characteristically a result of multiple authorship. Moreover, the process was very
far from being totally preconceived, so that programming solutions to problems
and aims that arose in the course of development were tried out, altered, and kept
or discarded often without any record being kept of the why and how. . . . In other
words, due to social and temporal mediation, programming code—despite its image
of transparent logic—is far from open, self-evident, and transparent to decode, even
for the highly skilled authors themselves. (Born 1995, 230)12
146 Chapter 9
Regarding the question of cultural difference and waves’ circulation, several

points can be made from the observations above. If we go back to Mad-
eleine Akrich’s definition of the script of the designer (Akrich 1992, 208),
we see that Max/MSP is an inscriptible object: one part of the script of Max/
MSP’s designers is to let the user write his or her own script inside the
software. This feature is well-used by programmers such as Oliver Stotz or
Klaus Filip. At the same time, we see that this inscriptibility (or modifiabil-
ity) of Max/MSP is strongly related to the understanding, competencies,
and resources available to the user.13 Whenever Lao Dong’s knowledge, or
the user manual, or the Internet are not sufficient to answer his questions,
Max/MSP becomes uninscriptible.
This type of circulation process is not specific to Lao Dong but repre-
sentative of a general situation that can be observed in any setting where
the complexity of the tools that are used exceeds the competencies of the
user (I emphasize the use of tools because, if they are not used, the argu-
ment does not apply). Less than fifty years ago, a person could completely
understand the mechanics of a computer operating system, an airplane, or
a car, if he or she wanted to do so. Some people were able to modify these
devices, repair them, or even design new ones. But today things are differ-
ent: nobody can fully understand the operating system of a computer, and
no pilot or engineer can master all aspects of an airplane. Human beings
have become so skilled at inscribing waves inside artifacts that most often
groups of people, several dozen or several hundred, each specialized in a
certain field, put their expertise together to design a new device. In order
to deal with ever more complex structures, people have no choice but to
collaborate with others or to rely on the work of others, often through the
devices themselves.14
What is interesting for us is that this kind of work configuration suggests
that waves’ circulation is not random but follows specific patterns, and that
there are laws which can be defined to describe those patterns. Howard
Becker discusses this issue in his book Art Worlds (2008) when he considers
how conventions place constraints on artists. He gives the example of the
compositions of Harry Partch, who tried to compose music that didn’t rely
on the Western chromatic musical scale of twelve tones but relied instead
on another one of forty-two tones. The composer needed a lot of resources
to be able to give a performance of these works: new instruments had to be
invented and built, people had to learn how to play them, and a new nota-
tion system was required. “Seven or eight months of work finally would
result in two hours of music, hours which could have been filled with more
conventional music after eight or ten hours of rehearsal by trained sym-
phonic musicians playing the standard repertoire.” In other words, Becker
concludes: “The difference in the resources required measures the strength

of the constraint imposed by the conventional system” (Becker 2008,
p. 33).15
Becker’s comment, while simultaneously touching on the old issue of
technology as enabling and constraining action, sketches out the first of
something we can provisionally call a law of circulation. Reformulated to
describe the situations of Lao Dong or IRCAM’s engineers, it simply states
that when the tools a user is handling are more complex than what the per-
son is able to master (for whatever reason), something specific will happen.
Either the user will give up, or they will have to ask for external help, or the
waves’ contents of the tool (the unmodifiable part of it) will be imposed on
the final output of the act of using.
In Collins’s words, using the concept of strings mentioned earlier (“bits
of stuff inscribed with patterns”; see “Waves,” this chap.), the effect that a
string can have on an entity is causal or mechanical; it depends on the rela-
tionship between them and is a matter of what happens to it. “If the string
is physically hard, it will more [have] easily a physical effect on an entity on
which it might impact; if the entity is soft, the effect of the impact will be
greater. Likewise, the way inscriptions work and the type of inscription that
results from the impact of a string depend on the physical instantiation of
string and entity” (Collins 2010, 17).16
It is partly for this reason that Lao Dong’s songs were either percussive
(made with Omnisequ) or structured with smooth loops (made with his
own patch), but not a mix of the two. It is to some extent a contingent
phenomenon, but it also implies that under specific circumstances the
structure of the technology must be given a special explanatory status. In
a similar way to Wiebe Bijker’s concept of inclusion, which describes the
degree of involvement of individuals in a technological frame that leads to
technical innovations (Bijker 1987, 1995), the modifiability of the waves
content of an artifact is not a binary concept, or a constant form of a net-
work, but remains a multidimensional component with variable degrees of
involvement in the final result of an activity. It relates to, and depends on,
the goals, problem-solving strategies, experimental skills, theoretical train-
ing, and so on, of users, but also includes the work of the designers of the
technical object involved.
Before getting back to waves and their movements of circulation involv-
ing conservation, creation, or dissipation, it is useful to consider one
last case study involving Chinese musicians with Lao Li’s story, described
in the next chapter, as it offers more observations about inscriptible
objects, their modifiability, and their relation to human being’s skills and
resources.
10 Lao Li and the Inscriptible
The materiality of sound, its embeddedness not only in history, society and culture
but also in science and technology and its machines and ways of knowing and inter-
acting, is a topic which I think is not yet addressed sufficiently by other fields like
musicology and the history and sociology of music.
—Pinch (2003, 109)
In October 2003, a foreign musician based in Beijing forwarded me an

announcement for an “International Electronic Music Festival.” Among the
twenty local and foreign artists listed in the line-up, I noticed the name of
Lao Li. A French student had discussed his work with me a couple of years
before. He was, she had told me, an experimental musician living in pov-
erty, far away from the center of the city. She had heard that he once made
a listener pass out and another one’s nose bleed just by playing them some
of his songs.
Thinking of one of Howard Becker’s tricks of the trade, I was looking for
a case study that could potentially change my vision of the data (Becker
1998, 83–88). Compared to the other artists described in the preceding
chapters, Lao Li seemed active in a very different context and in a very dif-
ferent way. So I decided to have a look and went to the festival.
Lao Li’s performance was a big surprise. His music, a mix of concrete and
synthesized sounds arranged as flows of sound material, was beautiful. I
was used to all sorts of music performances, including experimental ones,
but Lao Li did something I had never experienced. What intrigued me the
most was that I could neither understand what made me feel his music was
different nor what he was doing onstage with his instrument. He played
alone with a multitrack recorder, the main function of which is to record or
reproduce sounds; it is not to enable someone to do a musical performance
in real time.1 I wasn’t able see his movements clearly, but I could hear all
sorts of manipulations that were clearly done in real time. The problem
150 Chapter 10
was that those manipulations didn’t relate to any technical procedure I

knew. The thing that was different wasn’t sound intensity, it wasn’t pitch,
equalization, or reverberation effects—it was something else. For someone
as proud as I was (I had read twice, from cover to cover, Curtis Roads’s Com-
puter Music Tutorial, the Bible of computer music, about a thousand pages
long), that was frustrating.
This first impression of Lao Li, of someone doing strange things in unex-
pected ways, some that I could understand and some that were obscure
to me, remained throughout the field study until today as I am writing
these lines, six years after our first encounter. To observe Lao Li, to try to
understand what he was doing, what he was saying, and what was going
on in his music, has been a very different experience compared to that of
the other studies in this book. Indeed, as Corbin and Strauss nicely put it:
“A researcher never should become upset by not being able to choose a
site or obtain access to a theoretically relevant site or person(s). Rather, the
researcher should make the most out of what is available to him or her”
(Corbin and Strauss 1998, 210).
To deal with the specificity of this case study, I made special decisions
while I conducted the field research, which I will detail throughout this
report. An important one occurred when Lao Li ran out of money and a
place to perform: I invited him to my home and ordered a piece of music
from him. For the needs of this study, many observations have taken place
in this artificially created setting. Also, I have to concede that I have never
been able to completely understand the way he spoke about his activities.
I spent many hours wondering whether he was completely crazy, lying,
some kind of mysterious genius, or an absolute bluffer, without being able
to find a clear answer. The only thing I never questioned was that his music
sounded amazingly beautiful.
Making Experimental Music in China
For reasons I will explain later, I haven’t had much access to Lao Li’s friends
or family circle. Information provided about his personal life is mainly
based on his own discourse about himself. Although not as reliable as the
biographies of Xiao Deng and Lao Dong in the preceding chapters, I believe
a few words about Lao Li’s life and musical experience are still necessary to
get an idea of the kind of personae he was using. I invite the reader to take
it as it is: not as a biography, but as a story told by an artist who presents
himself to an audience.
Lao Li and the Inscriptible 151
Lao Li was born at the beginning of the 1970s in a big city within a poor
province in northwestern China, where he spent his childhood and ado-
lescence. His parents separated while he was a child, and, after his father
completely stopped looking after him when he was ten, he was raised by his
mother.2 Lao Li became first an electrician and then worked in the Chinese
army for three years. He eventually quit because he didn’t feel at ease in
that environment and was too often involved in fights. Several scars on his
body testified to this period of his life.
As a child, he was very much interested in music. He had an outstanding
memory for melodies. He studied a little bit of guitar and sang sometimes
in local rock bands. At his home, he enjoyed making experimental record-
ings using a hi-fi tape recorder. In 1998, he came to the conclusion that the
kind of music he was interested in—noise music ☒枛枛᷸ and experimen-
tal music ⭆樴枛᷸ (I will return to these terms and how Lao Li was using
them)—was not popular enough in the city where he lived. So he decided
to move to Beijing, which was, as is Paris for France, the center for artistic
activities in the People’s Republic of China.
After taking two years to settle into his new environment—a move
known to be difficult for someone coming from a far-away province with-
out a local work permit—Lao Li started to actively make music. He used
his hi-fi tape recorder as an instrument and composed several songs. After
listening to one of his works, a Beijing label proposed to pay him in better
musical equipment against exclusive rights to his productions. He received
18,000 renminbi (US$2,250) in advance for his coming album and bought
a Roland VS-880 multitrack digital recorder, which became his main music
instrument.3
He composed an album with the VS-880, but the label didn’t like it and
eventually decided to end their collaboration. However, Lao Li was allowed
to keep his equipment. During a period of three years, he produced a great
number of recordings, including four albums that he distributed himself
under the name of a label he ran with a close friend. The sales did not allow
him to make a living, but he became known in the country through the
network of people interested in experimental music (probably only a few
people per city at that time, maybe five hundred or so for Beijing).
In Beijing, he met a woman who became his girlfriend; she lived with
him and shared his day job but stayed away from his artistic life. In 2003–
2004, the couple ran a small office downtown where they burned CD-ROMs
for various companies and institutions. Their equipment consisted of sev-
eral computers linked to multi-CD burners, so that one computer could
152 Chapter 10
simultaneously burn eight to sixteen CD-ROMs. For example, once they

burned 10,000 CD-ROMs for a local university.
Although this technical procedure might seem strange for people living
in the United States or Europe, where the burning of such an enormous
amount of CD-ROMs at that time would have been done with better equip-
ment, it was pretty standard in China. This may be explained by consider-
ing the fact that China experienced rapid economic changes that resulted
in a two-speed society. In Beijing in 2004, riding my bicycle through the
city, I would often see someone carrying an impressive quantity of printers
and other computer-related devices on a bicycle cart, or sometimes using a
draft animal.
Although I believe burning CDs was Lao Li’s main activity, he always
referred to it as “my wife’s work” (they were not married, but he would call
her “my wife” ㆹ侩⧮), whom he said he was “helping” ⷖㆹ侩⧮. Some-
times he said that she was “supporting” him 月侩⧮. By comparison, when
referring to his musical activity, Lao Li used the word “work” ⶍἄ. If he
mentioned his composition activity, most of the time he also used the word
“to work” ⸚㳣⃧, and almost never “to make music” 枛᷸ or “write a
song” ⅁㫴, as did Xiao Deng or Lao Dong. In a similar way, when com-
plaining that burning CD-ROMs took too much time, he said: “My life does
not give me enough time to work” ㆹ䘬䓇㳣孑ㆹ㈦ᶵ⇘ⶍἄ䘬㖞斜.
Lao Li often claimed his independence from existing music styles, espe-
cially Western ones, and insisted on the fact that he had not been influ-
enced by others during his musical trajectory. Contrary to Xiao Deng or
Lao Deng, he never mentioned another musician he admired or took as a
model. If he was to refer to someone that had influenced him, he spoke
about his mother, who had taught him about Buddhist religion (he didn’t
refer to any specific school, he just said “Buddhism” ἃ㔁). He explained he
discovered his own music aesthetics by playing with his hi-fi tape recorder.
Asked whether he had heard about other experimental musicians, Lao
Li said he had only found out later in his career that this kind of music
existed already. He also never mentioned other musicians in China with
a similar profile as him (e.g., the band Zi Yue, or Feng Jiangzhou; see De
Kloet 2001, 64).
This said, Lao Li still seemed to label himself as an “experimental musi-
cian” 孽樴枛᷸⭞. Promotional texts about his work, written by the friend
he was running his music label with, described him as one. Recordings
made when he had just arrived in Beijing were also referred to as “works of
experimental music” ⭆樴枛᷸ἄ⑩ or to some other musical style related to
this main category, including “noise music” ☒枛枛᷸.
If I often heard these words in European or Chinese musicians’ circles

to describe music styles, there was no official definition of “experimental
music” 孽樴枛᷸ (in the West or in China). Interestingly, when I asked two
different CD shop salespeople—one in Geneva and one in Beijing—who
specialized in this type of record, to put into words the kind of music they
were selling, both gave me the same answer: “Les disques qu’on ne trouve
pas ailleurs”; “Music you cannot find elsewhere,” ℞Ṿ⛘㕡㱉㚱䘬枛᷸. This
definition is similar to Lao Li’s statement about his music not being related
to any other existing music. According to the same Chinese seller (owner
of the CD shop in Beijing, who told me he didn’t know Lao Li personally),
Lao Li was well known for this style of music in China.
On the basis of my personal experience, the term experimental music, in
China or in the West, describes all sorts of musical practices—electronic
or not—that differ from other genres, often cannot be found in big music
stores, and sound strange to those who are unfamiliar with them. It often
includes noise music ☒枛枛᷸ (a genre that focuses on sound materials
whose content does not include a rhythm or a melody, but mostly features
variations of density, timbre, and volume), but it also sometimes features
improvisations with acoustic instruments such as guitars and brass, with
melodies and rhythms close to that of free jazz.
Lao Li had knowledge of the work of Western experimental musicians.
For example, links were clearly made on some of his albums covers (which
he designed) where references to other musicians were listed. Also, the
name of the label funded by Lao Li and his friend was made up of two Eng-
lish words, which were clearly a reference to an English experimental music
label (this was confirmed by Lao Li when I asked him about it).
Experimental music, as a music genre, could be seen as sharing simi-
larities to Lao Li’s life conditions. This kind of music has, by definition, a
limited and specialized audience. Even the most famous Western or Japa-
nese artists in experimental music in those years, such as Brian Eno, John
Zorn, Otomo Yoshihide, or Christian Fennesz, did not sell huge amounts of
records. My feeling was that many experimental musicians I heard playing
in Europe relied on international concerts for most of their income. But
Lao Li could not use this earning method in the 1990s or the early 2000s
because it was difficult for him to get a visa to go abroad. (I did get him to
visit Switzerland in 2004. He was invited to Japan in 2005, but he couldn’t
go because of a visa problem; he later managed to travel to other Asian
countries without difficulty.)
Of course, difficulties in finding a livelihood and a substantial audience
are common among musicians and not specific to Lao Li (see Born 1995,
154 Chapter 10
5–6, regarding contemporary art music in Europe). But still, Lao Li needed
much tenacity and intelligence to manage a financial space where he could
pursue his musical activities.
Observing Lao Li
After his performance in October 2003, I visited Lao Li in a three-room

apartment, located on the outskirts of Beijing, where he usually retired
to compose. That day, we discussed his music for several hours and hap-
pily agreed that we would meet again soon and collaborate in one way or
another.
Unfortunately, for economic reasons, Lao Li left this apartment a few
weeks later to stay at the home of relatives of his girlfriend, in a place
located downtown, close to their office. This unexpected change quickly
became a serious problem for my field study. From that day on, the only
conversations we had were a few sentences over the phone, during which
he complained that he could not make music because he didn’t have a
place to work—and, even if he did, he wouldn’t have time to make music
because he had to help his wife make money. After several months of not
being able to observe his artistic work, a situation I could easily imagine
continuing until the end of my stay in Beijing (it actually did last until I left
China), I made a decision: I told Lao Li that he could work in my apartment
if he wanted to.
During his first stay at my place, following his suggestion, I let him use
my own musical equipment (a Macintosh laptop, the sequencer software
Logic Audio Gold 4.8.1, and two Doepfer MIDI controllers). The deal was
pretty much the same as the one I had with Xiao Deng (chaps. 6 and 7):
I acted as a technician for him as we tried to modify a piece of music he
had created some time ago. Those few days of collaboration at my home,
although focused on the use of my own musical equipment, were an oppor-
tunity to discuss his work and the devices he used, as well as “Meditation,”
a recording we worked on which I will discuss later (it didn’t have a name
at the time—“Meditation” is a title I made up to refer to it).
This first collaboration lasted only a couple of days. A few months later,
my Swiss girlfriend at the time—who had come with me to Beijing and was
studying contemporary dance at a local Chinese university—asked me to
help her find a musician to write a piece of music of about twenty min-
utes for a choreography. I suggested asking Lao Li to do it, for financial
compensation of 1,800 renminbi (US$225). According to my estimations,
this amount was slightly more than what Lao Li spent every month, and I
thought it was a fair deal. He accepted the offer immediately, and also said
he could do the music for free, which we refused.
So Lao Li moved his musical equipment to my home. I put the room
I used as my office at his disposal. He and I lived together for about two
weeks at the beginning of July 2004, a time during which he composed
the major part of the piece we ordered from him. This period was a golden
opportunity for me to observe his work, but, because of the many hours
we had spent speaking about technical issues during our first collabora-
tion work on “Meditation,” the question of my influence was a problem.
For this reason I decided to use this second series of observations only to
double-check information I had already gathered on “Meditation,” a piece
he had composed before we came to know each other.
My relationship with Lao Li during these two periods of collaboration
was complicated. I admired his music, but I was puzzled every time I heard
him talk about his work. I noticed that I could not trust the information
he gave me. For example, if I asked several times about how much time he
spent on a piece, the figures he gave me changed each time. Or if I wanted
to know what kind of devices or sound sources he used to make a sound,
his answers didn’t make sense with regard to the technical characteristics of
the devices. For example, when I asked about a section of a song that had
clearly been composed using about six to eight different sound samples
(which I could hear distinctly), Lao Li told me he had used about forty to
sixty.
He expressed most of his technical concepts by using metaphors with
colors and analogies to natural elements. A sound with a lot of high fre-
quencies was “white,” and when a stereo sound file (actually two sound
files, one for the left channel, one for the right) was merged into a mono
(one sound channel), he called the process “the joining of two rivers.” He
also often used colloquial or dialectal expressions in Chinese to describe
and explain his metaphors, which I couldn’t find in the thickest Chinese
dictionaries.
These communication difficulties meant I had to spend a lot of time
verifying the information I gathered. I asked the same questions several
times, at different moments and with different words, in order to get some
kind of true answer. I also tried to identify precisely sections of the songs he
referred to, so that I could evaluate the technical information he provided.
After the field study of 2004, I spent several years pondering my inter-
actions with Lao Li, exploring various explanations for our interactions
and his behavior, including synesthesia.4 Lao Li did not seem to use the
common “technological frame” (the concepts and techniques employed
156 Chapter 10
by a community in its problem solving, Bijker 1987, 168; see also

chap. 3, n. 2) for audio manipulations that most musicians, Chinese or for-
eign, had in common. I cannot recall him mentioning words such as equal-
ization or reverberation, for example. He had built some kind of personal
knowledge learned by experience, which he was the only one to master.
I eventually found possible answers in recent publications in the field of
sound studies.5
My hypothesis is that his knowledge was experience-based, and similar
to that of early sound engineers, who, “having learned from experience
what worked best for a particular instrument or voice . . . selected spe-
cific microphones for specific instruments and voices based on the kind
of sound they wanted” (Schmidt Horning 2004, 710). Very self-confident,
Lao Li, confronted with my questions about whether he was talking of, for
example, reverberation or equalization, privileged his personal experience,
in a similar way to the audiophiles described by Marc Perlman who “resist
the scientifically authorized claims of audio engineering . . . and . . . argue
against scientific methodologies that seem to expose those experiences as
illusory” (Perlman 2004, 784).
Lao Li did not care about being precise when he was talking about his
music. His distinctive discourse about sound was similar to the one of early
sound scientists, as described in Jonathan Sterne’s The Audible Past. This
aspect was reinforced by the fact that the existing vocabulary for sounds is
poor when compared to that for visuals (in English but also in Chinese). As
discussed by Sterne:
While visual experience has a well-developed metalanguage, sonic experience does

not. We have abstract words to describe color, texture, shape, direction, shading,
and so forth. Conversely, most of the languages used to describe elements of au-
ditory phenomena is metaphoric: aside from specialized languages in musicology,
sound engineering, acoustics, and general descriptors such as loud or quiet, there
are very few abstract words in common English for describing the timbre, rhythm,
texture, density, amplitude, or spatiality of sounds. (Sterne 2003, 94; on the history
of the development of vocabulary to describe sounds, see also 131–132)
So, in the absence of available words for the manipulations he was perform-
ing, I believe Lao Li had developed his own terminology, and it didn’t mat-
ter to him if there already existed a vocabulary “to talk about sound in ways
understandable to other sound engineers and musicians” (Porcello 2004,
733). I have wondered how much the difference of understanding influ-
enced Lao Li’s work, as the feeling of listening to a song and “knowing”
what it is made of is different from listening without this knowledge (e.g.,
in the example of the song “Restaurant” in the previous chapter, listening
to this song after having heard the samples Lao Dong used reveals its struc-
ture and changes our perception of its musicality).
I believe he did not feel it was important for him to precisely answer
my questions, for instance about whether he had spent three days or three
weeks on a piece of music, if he had applied a reverb effect or, on the con-
trary, modified the equalization of the high frequencies, or about any other
concrete actions that led to the existence of a song. What he cared about
was the musical feeling and the exchange between people who are talking
about something. The musical quality of the result was the focus of his
attention. He often referred to my questions by using the word “feeling”
デ奱. For example, when talking about a section of a song, he would often
say: “[Here the] feeling is not right” デ奱ᶵ⮡ (Lao Li used the word “feel-
ing” to express something “that functions,” rather than the idea of being
moved emotionally by the music, e.g., as in the country music described by
Fox 2004, chap. 5).
For me, one concrete problem was that in order to perform the techni-
cal operations he was asking me to do, I had to understand what he was
referring to. Our relationship was similar to the one of sound engineers
described by Porcello (2004) who need to translate musicians’ words about
sound into more technical language. Porcello argues that “associative and
evaluative moves become less a part of the linguistic practices that accom-
pany the recording process as one becomes more fully professionalized”
(Porcello 2004, 748, n. 19).
The greater one’s knowledge of and experience with sound engineering, the less
explicit and extended is the use of association (and evaluation). . . . If an engineer is
told that the drums are too “dry” or too “tight,” he or she knows that nine times out
of ten the solution will simply be to run them through a reverb machine or to put up
some room mics to capture more reflected sound. (Porcello 2004, 748)
In the end, I spent many hours wondering if Lao Li was insane, if I was
too tired, or if he was in possession of some secret technical knowledge
that I did not have access to. As I will discuss in the next section, even
though I was often tired and too much focused on IRCAM-like technical
knowledge, and even if Lao Li’s own technological framework was certainly
penalizing his work, he had indeed discovered a highly specialized audio
technique.
The Flows’ Perspective
For clarity’s sake, I have divided Lao Li’s composition process into four steps:
collecting, editing, arranging, and reprocessing. These four categories represent
158 Chapter 10
groups of actions that were systematically present in his discourse. This

said, I also have to inform readers that according to him there were no such
systematic procedures. When asked about it, his answer was: “I don’t [use
any systematic procedure]. [I have] no fixed creation procedure and inten-
tion” 㱉㚱ˤ㱉㚱⚢⭂⇃ἄ㖞斜␴≐㛢.
I will now detail each of the four steps, describe how things went on
during the recording of the song “Meditation,” and show how the con-
ceptualization of waves’ circulation sketched in the previous chapter can
be integrated into the observations. In the last section, I will come back to
the main musical device Lao Li relied on: his multitrack recorder Roland
VS-880.
Collecting
Lao Li “collected” sounds that then constituted the raw material for his
compositions. He used existing recordings, such as compact discs from
other musicians, but he also produced sounds by playing various kinds of
objects: instruments, bells, a spoon he would hit on the ground, and so on.
Lao Li referred to collected sounds with the word “source material” 䳈㛸.
He came up with the idea for the song “Meditation” by listening to other
records of meditation music. Lao Li found their musical expression “not
correct” ᶵ⤥ (Lao Li’s use of ᶵ⤥—literally “not good” in Chinese—was not
about the musical quality of those records but about their adequacy regard-
ing the act of meditating) and this feeling made him decide to compose
this kind of music himself. According to him, a state of “meditation” ⅍゛
consists of a deep feeling of internal stability, accompanied by a passive
awareness of the movements around oneself.
“Meditation,” composed over several months in the years 2002–2003,
was aimed to both illustrate with sounds the feelings of the practicing per-
son and also to be listened to while practicing. The music of this piece
expressed the “world” ᶾ䓴 in movement, represented by a great amount
of disparate sounds, and the practicing person’s feeling of internal stability,
represented by musical “emotion” ね互. He was referring to the latter as a
“sound line” ⢘乧 (he sometimes also used the synonym 枛乧).
In the case of “Meditation,” Lao Li sampled bird songs and sounds of
water taken from compact discs he had at home. He also recorded many
other sounds: a bicycle pump, bells, a bicycle hand bell, an erhu (a Chinese
string instrument), and the water flows of his bathroom (the toilets and
the washbasin). He also played an old synthesizer he had at home, used a
flute (whose sound he recorded and then played inside a container made
of iron and re-recorded it), and blew into a thermos. Similar to Xiao Deng
Figure 10.1
Lao Li’s Roland VS-880 multitrack recorder. Lao Li’s home, Beijing, November 2003.
(chapters 6 and 7), who was unable to name or sometimes even recognize
records he had used in his mixes, Lao Li could not tell me exactly which
compact discs he had used: “I took [some sounds] on two other discs, but
I don’t remember the names. One [had] sounds like waves or rivers, the
second a long synthesizer sound” 往慯Ḯ᷌⻈ⓙ䇯,ᶵ䞍忻⎵⫿,ᶨ⻈⁷㴟㴒ˣ
㱛㯜䘬⢘枛,往㚱ᶨ⻈㚱⎰ㆸ☐䘬攧枛.
At each step, he kept the recorded samples in his multitrack recorder
Roland VS-880. This machine can be seen in figure 10.1, inside its flight
case.
Among the objects I could observe the first time I visited Lao Li’s home
were an erhu, a small drum, a radio receptor, little bells, a Shure Beta 57A
microphone, an AKG D330BT Mark II microphone, and a small device that
played a Tibetan monk’s prayer in loop. Lao Li used the latter, a small yel-
low box, sometimes onstage as background sound and also when he was
doing meditation at home or needed to relax.6
The microphones, Shure Beta 57A and AKG D330BT Mark II, accord-
ing to the general discourse in sound engineering circles as well as in their
respective user instructions from the manufacturers, are normally not con-
sidered appropriate to record concrete sounds (i.e., those Lao Li was mostly
interested in) because they are not sensitive enough. They are meant to
be used onstage or in the studio for electrified instruments and human
voices. Lao Li had noticed some specificities about them, but these hardly
160 Chapter 10
related to their technical specificities. According to him, the Shure Beta

57A recorded sounds that were more “bright” ⢘枛㖶Ṗ䘬, whereas the AKG
made sounds more “stuffy” ⢘枛斟. This observation was perhaps related to
the fact that he had never paid attention to the presence of a switch button
with high-pass and low-pass filters on the AKG (which make a big differ-
ence in low and high frequencies, respectively, in the resulting recording).
Before continuing with the next three steps of Lao Li’s composition pro-
cess, I would like to share a short story that illustrates how he used these
sound sources and the kind of connection that can be made with the con-
cept of waves’ circulation discussed in the previous chapter.
In November 2003, when I visited him at his home for the first time, we
had agreed to meet at a bus station located in the suburbs of Beijing. When
I arrived, he was waiting on the side of the road, listening to music played
on a portable CD player. A couple of minutes later, as we were chatting in
a second bus on the way to his place, I asked him what he was listening to.
He passed the headphones to me and said it was an album from a German
musician (a few weeks later he would tell me he was mistaken, it was a Swiss
musician, from Bern). A friend had given this compact disc to him because
that musician would come soon to China and Lao Li was expected to meet
with the guy.
One month later, I had the opportunity to attend a concert he was giv-
ing in a bar. Having arrived late, I noticed the little yellow box, which I had
already seen at his place, placed at the backside of the stage. Most of the
time it went unnoticed, but the monotonous voice of the Tibetan monk
kept pouring up and down during moments of silence, and when the over-
all volume of the music was low it could be heard very distinctly. Then I
noticed, among the sounds Lao Li was playing on his Roland VS-880, some
sounds that were very similar to the compact disc of the Swiss musician he
had been listening to at the bus station a few weeks before.
After the performance, Lao Li told me that the Tibetan monk’s praying
box was a trick he often used. Sometimes he played it directly on the stage,
but sometimes he also recorded its sound into the Roland VS-880 and then
edited it (see the next section on editing). Regarding the compact disc, he
confirmed it was the same CD that I had heard on the bus, from which he
had decided to use some parts.
By considering these two sound sources, together with those of the bicy-
cle pump, the bells, the erhu, or the one of Lao Li blowing inside a ther-
mos, we see waves’ circulations similar to those observed previously with
QU (chapter 5), Xiao Deng (chapters 6 and 7), and Lao Dong (chapters 8
and 9). Waves circulated from the Swiss musician and the Tibetan monk
to a compact disc and a prayer device; then, under Lao Li’s guidance, they
went inside the Roland VS-880. In a similar way to Lao Dong and his Max/
MSP patch described in the previous chapter, Lao Li also collaborates with
himself as he plays his own recordings.
Once again, this kind of collaboration work occurs anachronously.
Where Lao Li plays, the Swiss musician, the Tibetan monk, and Lao Li at his
home, have played.
Editing
In the second step of his composition process, now that the sounds he
wanted were recorded by the Roland VS-880 multitrack recorder, Lao Li
edited the samples. He modified them by performing various operations,
mostly relying on the internal functions of the device. In the case of
“Meditation,” he had copy-and-pasted sounds, changed volumes, changed
pitches (an operation that can considerably modify the timbre of the sound,
e.g., making a woman’s voice sound like a man’s), and applied more
sophisticated transformations using the effects box available in his Roland
VS-880.
Lao Li experienced difficulties related to the fact that the interface of the
workstation was in English. The Roland VS-880 had a small display that
allowed him to access functions through a unique window by moving an
adjusting knob. All commands were in English: Save, Print, FF (for fast for-
ward), and so on. The problem was more important when using the effects,
because there were so many that it was impossible to memorize them all.
He said he experienced a kind of rediscovery of his device every time he did
not recognize the words on the display. He often quickly tested all the func-
tions, or reverified their Chinese equivalents in a reduced Chinese version
of the user manual, which the local music-devices importer had given to
him when he purchased the VS-880.
With regard to the language barrier, Lao Li emphasized the fact that he
did not understand a single word of English. One day, I wrote the words
“VOLUME” and “TEST” in capital letters on a sheet of paper and asked
him if he could read them, and he said no. However, I had the feeling he
was exaggerating this incapacity. For surely he could not memorize all the
names of the menus in the VS-880; considering the great number of pieces
he had produced, and the fact that he was using this device and the com-
puters in his office (whose interfaces were mostly in English) almost every
day, he must have had at least some basic command of English.
His linguistic capacities seemed to me as good as anyone else’s: he’d mas-
tered Mandarin—the language spoken in Beijing and the official language
162 Chapter 10
in the PRC—and he also had firm knowledge of the Chinese script (which is
sometimes a problem for not-so-well educated Chinese people from distant
provinces). When talking about music, he liked to quote all sorts of texts,
especially mystical or religious ones, and I often had difficulty in following
him. He also mastered several terms in Chinese specific to electronic music,
such as “sinus wave” 㬋⻎㲊, “sequencer” 枛⸷☐, “quantization” 慷⊾, and
so forth. Therefore it didn’t make sense to me that after several years of
working with devices such as his multitrack recorder he wouldn’t know an
English word like “volume.”
This said, for comparison purposes, while in China, I tried to set the
operating system of my laptop to Chinese to see how it felt. After several
weeks, exasperated by the fact that I couldn’t remember the meaning of
some words in the menus that were difficult to memorize, I randomly
clicked with the mouse, preferring to figure out what was going on by trial
and error rather than looking for a translation. Sometimes I even gave up
doing the operation I originally intended to do and worked instead on
something else. I came to the conclusion that Lao Li’s poor knowledge of
English certainly had an influence on the way he conducted his musical
activities with the machines.
Arranging
As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, Lao Li had his own system
of thought for music. He used metaphors of flows, or colors. For example,
he would say “My music is white” ㆹ䘬枛᷸㗗䘥刚䘬, to indicate the pres-
ence of high frequencies in a sound file. He also used lots of onomatopoeia
and gestures to explain how sounds were moving, or should be moving—
including inside the listener’s own body. In discussing how to improve the
song “Meditation,” he explained to me that he wanted sounds to start from
the listener’s stomach, move up to the roof, then split to the left and right
sides of the room. He saw the structure of sounds as similar to flows of liq-
uids, and he visualized the tracks of his multitrack recorder as rivers that
could be separated, united, or mixed at will.
Such metaphors were really disturbing for me, because it didn’t match
up with what I had learned at the Music Conservatory of Geneva in Swit-
zerland’s sound engineering courses. (On human perception of space when
listening to sounds, see Pierce 1999. On the main known audio techniques
as taught in music conservatories in the West at that time, see Roads 1996,
449–496.) For me, a sound was a vibration, communicated to air particles
by the means of membranes incorporated inside a loudspeaker or head-
phones. So the sound couldn’t start from my stomach or be coming from
up on the roof. The fact that Lao Li didn’t describe things any differently
when listening through headphones or loudspeakers disturbed me even
more, because I had been taught that one of the first things lost when
listening through headphones was the feeling of tridimensional space. We
had many discussions about these questions, but in the long run, neither of
us changed our minds about how to think about sounds.
Intriguingly, an English version of the Roland VS-880 manual, which
I found on the Roland company’s website in 2003, featured a sketch of a
house and its water circulation system.7 It explained some of the principles
of the VS-880 by analogy with flows of water. Was that the origin of Lao Li’s
thinking about sounds? This explanation was not in the Chinese version
of the manual he possessed, and I haven’t been able to figure out whether
he saw this sketch or if it influenced his thinking about sounds. Another
guess would be the popular imagery in China of flows of energy, which is
a central concept regularly mentioned in Chinese medicine, martial arts
novels, and TV kung-fu series, but I don’t recall Lao Li mentioning this kind
of material during our discussions.
Anyway, according to his own system of thought about sounds, at what
I called the arranging step of his composition process, Lao Li organized his
modified sound materials by putting them side by side, one after the other,
or one onto the other, with the help of the internal software of the Roland
VS-880. The machine allowed him to easily mix eight audio tracks (his
VS-880 could actually mix more than eight tracks by using a special func-
tion called “virtual tracks,” but Lao Li didn’t seem to use it).
Most of this work was done while looking at the small display window
of the Roland VS-880 where the audio samples displayed as black squares.
These indicated the location of the different sounds on each track, and
their timing could be read by observing their location on the horizontal
axis, while the differences between tracks were known via their position on
the vertical axis (i.e., one horizontal line for each track). The position of the
cursor was indicated by a thin vertical line.
When writing “Meditation,” Lao Li had arranged the samples randomly.
What he wanted was to express a world composed of random elements,
so it wasn’t necessary to arrange them in a specific way. After doing that,
he had played all the tracks simultaneously and recorded the output while
he played in real time with the respective volume fader controls of the
VS-880. Readers not familiar with this kind of device can imagine someone
who takes nine tape recorders, arranges eight of them side by side, switches
them on at the same time, then plays with the volume controls of each
device and records the overall result on the ninth recorder.
164 Chapter 10
On the picture displayed in figure 10.1 of Lao Li’s Roland VS-880 multi-
track recorder, one can see the eight faders, in the shape of white rectangles,
which can be moved vertically (the ninth, on the right, is a general con-
trol). While Lao Li was working at my home in July 2004, he connected,
on the left side of the table, a minidisc to the VS-880 in order to transfer
sounds in and out.
To compose “Meditation,” Lao Li played with the volumes of the eight
tracks and then recorded the result of his play on an external DAT audio
recorder. He had bought this expensive, gold-colored hi-fi recorder at a
second-hand market for RMB 1,000 (US$120; he told me he thought the
device had probably been stolen). He connected it to the Roland VS-880
using a standard mini-jack audio cable.
Reprocessing
The fourth step of Lao Li’s composition process consisted of repeating the
three preceding steps indefinitely until he decided that his work was com-
plete. For example, he sometimes decided that a piece he composed was not
a piece anymore, but “raw material” 䳈㛸, and he would then use it during
the collecting phase of another work. Or he would decide that a song was
missing one sound, so he would add it using the collecting-editing-arrang-
ing procedure. And so on.
For “Meditation,” Lao Li had transferred the first piece he had made dur-
ing the arranging phase from the DAT recorder back to the Roland VS-880
(by rerecording it). At the same time, he kept in the VS-880 the sounds that
he had used to make this recording. Then he started the arranging proce-
dure again. He put in the recording he had just imported as a background
sound, at half-volume. He played the same tracks again, so as to rerecord
them, but this time he concentrated on the panoramic effects (the balance
left-right). In other words, Lao Li mixed the first recording with itself, but
with the original track’s panoramic settings being modified in real time.
And, for the second time, he recorded his playing on the external DAT
recorder.
This procedure was related to Lao Li’s concept of sounds behaving like
flows that interacted with one another. By using the same sound file twice
and applying different effects to it, he thought he could create movements
between sounds, where one track would “inhale” ⏠ another one. The fact
that the sound files were identical but the effects applied to them were dif-
ferent was supposed to create this effect. He often referred to the procedure
with the term “piling up” ⎈.
The transfers from the VS-880 to the DAT and back were disturbing
for me, because sound engineers usually advise against moving the sounds
in and out of a device in this way. Each time the sound is transferred
through the analog connection, background noise is added and a part
of the information (depending on the quality of the connectors, con-
vertors, and cables) is lost. Lao Li seemed neither to be aware of nor to
care about this technical issue. He also did not know he could perform
the same operation inside the VS-880 by working on six tracks and
using the two remaining ones to record, without any loss of sound
quality.
The procedure was probably partly the result of his ignorance of these
technical issues and partly related to the fact that he was composing mostly
noise music. For this kind of music, background noise is not a big prob-
lem since other noise sounds will often cover the audible spectrum (a big
background noise can even sound nice). Also, the headphones he used
(discussed later in this chapter) didn’t allow him to clearly hear this back-
ground noise.
After making this second recording, Lao Li erased the first version of
the song (he didn’t explain why, I guess because of the lack of space on
the internal hard disc of the VS-880), and he transferred the one he had
just recorded on the DAT back to the Roland VS-880 once more. This time
he focused on the interactions between this second recording, which he
put at half-volume as he had done with the previous one, and the original
sound files again. But he applied more specific sound effects to the tracks
(those available on his VS-880 effects card). He started anew the process of
arranging and mixing, and recorded for the third time the result on the
external DAT.
He then transferred the third recording back to the Roland VS-880.
Then, he turned the volume on this track to normal (i.e., not half-volume
as before) and reduced the volume of the original samples tracks (which
had been at a higher volume than the first and second recordings in the
preceding operations) to a value between 20 and 50 percent of the maxi-
mum volume. This time, he didn’t “play” the tracks as previously, by mov-
ing the faders and changing parameters in real time, but edited them by
hand using the small display, putting the original sound samples into dif-
ferent moments of the third recording.
The final recording was made of this third recording and the added
sound samples. The mix of the two was recorded a fourth time (with the
external DAT as before) and then burnt to a compact disc.
166 Chapter 10
Inscriptibility and Modifiability
What was going on between Lao Li, the devices and various objects he used,
and his musical works? As I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, his
situation seemed similar to that of early audiophiles and audio technicians
who tried to understand the physical nature of sounds and defined names
and concepts in order to be able to talk about sound. As I will illustrate now,
Lao Li’s personal theory of sound had its own advantages and disadvan-
tages, which sometimes produced very successful results and, sometimes,
very unsuccessful ones.
High Pressure
Lao Li often mentioned a concept he called “high pressure” 檀⌳. Among
other things, he wanted to produce this audio phenomenon of high pres-
sure to physically touch the body of the listener. For example, listeners
would experience (according to Lao Li) the feeling that sound was coming
into their body by entering from their shoulder. He could feel these effects
when he was composing and listening to his music with his headphones,
and he made great efforts to achieve these results.
When Lao Li asked me to help him with his work on “Meditation,” he
had already repeated the reprocessing step for this recording many times at
his home. He told me he had recorded up to seventeen different versions of
the recording (each one lasting more than one hour) before choosing the
best one. But he still wasn’t satisfied with the result. He wanted to add some
changes in the movements of the sounds in space. For example, he wanted
some of the bells sounds to be sometimes located very far from the listener,
and sometimes very close, sometimes on the left, sometimes on the right,
so that they expressed the “world in movement” around the “musical line,”
as discussed earlier.
A problem (for me) lay in the fact that the sound material Lao Li wanted
to modify was a stereo file of about one hour. He no longer had the origi-
nal sound files that he had used to make the recording. He had “piled up
together” ⎈⛐ᶨ⛿⃧ everything during the preceding steps of creation.
According to the sound techniques I was aware of, the result he expected
was technically unrealizable. There was no way to take a sound “out” of an
existing recording, modify it, keep the existing sound file intact, and then
bring the sound back inside it.
For our first attempt, on the basis of his instructions tempered by my
resistance, to modify elements of the piece “Meditation,” we used my
Macintosh laptop computer and the software Pro Tools Free (a free version
of Digidesign’s famous Pro Tools software, with a limit of eight audio

tracks). We duplicated the original recording and then aligned the copy
and the original, which we modified independently. We filtered one file
so that it had only high frequencies, and then the second one so that it
had only low frequencies. In the picture that can be downloaded below,
the first two lines (white background color) show a section of the file with
“low frequencies” Ỷ枛, and the next two lines (black background color)
show “high frequencies” 檀枛. The horizontal lines in black show the vol-
ume modifications, drawn by Lao Li. The blue, green, and red lines are
graphical representations of the sound waves, allowing the user to follow
the evolution of the sound along a timeline. The audio recording of this
segment of “Meditation,” and its corresponding screenshot, can be found
at http://www.842.ch/dl/LaoLiExample.m4a and http://www.842.ch/dl/
LaoLiExample.jpg (both from January 2004).
This screenshot is interesting because it allows us to see the details of Lao
Li’s work on the sound material, an operation that was usually inaccessible
afterward (since he was moving faders on the VS-880). One can first hear
a lot of high frequencies and then, starting from second 22 on the audio
file, the bass frequencies coming in, as is clearly visible on the top left of
the illustration on top (the two tracks with the white background). Later,
at 58 seconds, high frequencies break in and can be seen at the short peak
on the right part of the illustration of the two tracks in black (there are two
curves for each pair of left and right channels because they were modified
simultaneously).
This short peak of high frequencies remains in my mind as a special
moment. I would never have imagined working this way, because duplicat-
ing a sound file didn’t make much sense to me. Lao Li’s procedure made
me worried about having frequencies overlap with a slight delay, which
could cause all sorts of highly undesirable sound effects. Once I heard the
introduction of this song, I had to avow this peak of high frequencies and
other additions he made sounded beautiful, and if I couldn’t hear the audio
effects Lao Li wanted to achieve in the way he had described them (Lao Li
wasn’t fully satisfied with the results either), there were no obvious undesir-
able effects.
Faced with his insistence, and also the fact that I could sometimes hear
particular things in his other songs without being able to figure out what
they were, I started to ask sound engineer friends about the kind of techni-
cal issues Lao Li often mentioned, such as extracting a sound from a ste-
reo file or having the music entering the listener’s body, which I described
earlier. No one had any idea of what Lao Li was doing. I read books on
168 Chapter 10
sound mastering and paid special attention to questions related to mixing

techniques, with this main question in mind: Was there a procedure which
consisted of duplicating a sound and then modifying its copy before mix-
ing it back with the original, to create “variations of the flows”?
Having failed to figure out the answer to my inquiry by listening (what
sound studies scholars would call exploratory listening, a mode of listening
that aims to discover new phenomena; Pinch and Bijsterveld 2012, 14), I
ended up mixing my ethnographical data with readings in sound engineer-
ing. I eventually found the following excerpt, in which Bob Katz, an Ameri-
can sound engineer, discusses a technique he calls parallel compression:
Let me introduce you to a venerable compression technique which has finally come
to age. Imagine compression that requires just a single knob—no need to adjust at-
tack, threshold, release or ratio. The sound quality is so transparent that careful lis-
tening is required to even know the circuit is in operation! . . . The principle is quite
simple: Take a source, and mix the output of a compressor with it. (Katz 2002, 133)
In other words, the technique described in Katz’s book is a procedure of

sound compression (an operation that allows for a reduction of loud sounds
and an amplification of quiet sounds in order to narrow the dynamic range)
that consists of doing exactly what Lao Li was doing. That day I suddenly
understood where the indefinable variations in his music came from: they
were variations of compression, processed independently on copies of the
same sound files and mixed together in the final recording.
Through metaphors of flows that were far from the physics of sound as
described in scientific books and far from sound engineers’ practices (at
least in the circles I was familiar with), Lao Li had discovered a technique
that was, under certain circumstances, absolutely valid. It is important to
note that it was not always valid—the procedure works fine with compres-
sion but it’s another story with other effects, and our work on “Meditation”
failed miserably—but it was sometimes very efficient and produced good
results. This contradiction, between successes and failures, explained many
sound structures that could be found in his works.
I leave Lao Li’s concept of flows and his piece “Meditation” aside now
to briefly discuss another device that was probably the main obstacle he
encountered while composing music: his headphones.
HD-320 Headphones
For a long time, Lao Li had noticed inconsistencies between the results
he expected and what he ended up with. He used to throw away a great
number of recordings because he suddenly didn’t like what he heard. For
example, he designed some sounds and, once those were burned onto a
compact disc, “the sound had disappeared!” ⢘枛㱉Ḯ! He was especially
disappointed about a work he had composed that, he said, could break
down the loudspeakers’ membranes (an effect he found very interesting).
After he had damaged six of his own loudspeakers, he had proudly sent
his work to friends, but the “break down loudspeakers” effect had unfortu-
nately disappeared.
A look at Lao Li’s equipment pointed to a well-known issue in sound engi-
neering that explained his difficulties: the monitor sound system he used
wasn’t good enough. To make a long technical story short: a loudspeaker
is never neutral, but always gives a color to the sound it outputs. For this
reason, music producers and engineers usually rely on high-quality loud-
speakers designed so that they output sounds that are “neutral,” which
means they are calibrated to correspond more or less to the average loud-
speakers that can be found on the market. This way (and using other tech-
niques as well), an engineer working on an audio recording can figure out
what people will more or less hear when they listen to the same recording
at home, in their car, on their laptop, and so on, whatever sound system
they have.
Inversely, anyone who designs a sound using low-fi loudspeakers will
have a surprise on the day s/he hears the work on other loudspeakers: the
output will probably sound very different. That was what happened to Lao
Li, who composed most of his songs using a pair of Sennheiser Expres-
sion HD-320 headphones, a model that was old, cheap, and aimed at the
general public, not at professional audio workers (the Sennheiser company
provides many high-quality headphones, but this one did not belong in
this category).8
Asked about his headphones, Lao Li said he always liked to listen at a high
volume (as do many other musicians I have met, in China or in the West9).
He often broke them, and for this reason he preferred to use cheap ones. He
liked this pair in particular because he found it more resistant and cheaper.
Volume was important for him, “because I believe it is only this way that
one can find the [right] feeling [to compose music], like that [at low vol-
ume] you don’t feel anything” ⚈ᷢㆹ奱⼿征㟟ㇵ傥㈦⇘デ奱,恋㟟㈦ᶵ⇘デ奱.
He also “liked the sound” of the HD-320 ╄㫊⬫䘬⢘枛. However, he didn’t
seem aware of the issue presented here.
I tried once to listen to his songs directly from his multitrack recorder,
using different headphones. The experience was enlightening: the cheap
HD-320 made me hear beautiful sounds, but when I heard the same music
with my own pair of (high-quality) headphones, I had a very poor musical
170 Chapter 10
feeling. I told Lao Li about my understanding of this issue and suggested

he purchase better headphones. But, fortunately or unfortunately, he never
changed his habit because of me.
At the beginning of the year 2004, his HD-320 headphones broke com-
pletely (they were already damaged in 2003 but still somehow usable). The
plastic clip was hard-broken, the only way to use it was to hold it and
manually press it against one’s ears with the hand. So he decided to pur-
chase a new pair and got himself an Ovann OV880V, a model as cheap as
the HD-320 and with the same neutrality problem. In his own words, they
were “headphones worth just a few dozens of RMB” ↈ⋩⛿摙䘬俛㛢.10
Later, when Lao Li stayed at my home to write the piece I had ordered,
I used this opportunity to make some measurements to evaluate his new
headphones (with his agreement). I proceeded this way: I selected a sec-
tion of the recording he was working on, and I put on two small OKM II
studio microphones (special microphones designed to be placed inside the
listener’s ears11). I recorded successively what I heard, first with my head-
phones (a pair of expensive Sennheiser HD-25, about US$240), then with
Lao Li’s Ovann OV880V. Readers can listen to the two extracts, “Extract
1—HD-25” and “Extract 2—OV880V,” at the Web addresses indicated in the
notes.12 As can easily be heard, the sound is very different from one pair of
headphones to the other (the difference is particularly obvious in the high
range).
Unmodifiable versus Inscriptible Objects
As we have seen, Lao Li took decisions according to what he heard. The

problem was, what he heard was shaped by the headphones he used. He
modified, adjusted, and arranged every sound he manipulated according
to the specific audio response of his headphones. In his earlier works, this
instinctive audible reference was the hidden reason behind all sorts of
problems of “the sound disappeared!” ⢘枛㱉Ḯ! that made him throw away
large quantities of his compositions.
Using the conceptualization of waves’ circulation presented in the previ-
ous chapter and the observations discussed in the “Collecting” section of
Lao Li’s work process, we can imagine flows (Lao Li would love this con-
cept, for sure) circulating between the various objects Lao Li used to cre-
ate sounds: the Roland VS-880 multitrack recorder, the Sennheiser HD-320
headphones, and Lao Li himself. At each step of this process, waves are
shaped by the human or nonhuman entity that hosts them.
Lao Li
Sennheiser in the present
HD-320
Tibetan Swiss
monk musician
Roland VS-880 song
Lao Li
in the past
Sennheiser HD-320
Figure 10.2
Diagram of Lao Li’s interactive process of composition.
As figure 10.2 illustrates, in the same way that Xiao Deng’s vinyl records
were part of the DJ’s competency when mixing for a crowd (chapter 6), or
that the amplifier and the guitar are part of classic rock (Pinch and Reinecke
2009), Lao Li’s headphones were part of his works. The headphones
modified all and every sound in his music, as Lao Li took every single deci-
sion according to the feedback he received from the headphones.
Lao Li’s ignorance of the equipment issue is interesting because it shows
us how a technical object can sometimes intervene in an invisible and
authoritative way in the context of artistic creation. In the example above,
Lao Li is surprised and disappointed to see that his work “changed” where
the agency of his headphones intervened. In a similar way to the use of the
FM7 software by Xiao Deng (chap. 7), Lao Li’s songs, while keeping most of
their characteristics, are also products of somebody else’s work: the people
who designed the HD-320.
Waves’ circulation in Lao Li’s work is particularly revealing in that it
offers two perspectives on how cultural contents can or cannot be embod-
ied inside a nonhuman entity. On the one hand, waves are easily created,
modified, displaced, or dissipated: when they go through Lao Li’s head-
phones, move to a compact disc recording, and then to hi-fi speakers at
Lao Li’s friends home, their shape is so profoundly distorted that, in Lao
Li’s words, some of them disappear completely. On the other hand, the
previous example of Lao Li trying unsuccessfully to perform spatialization
172 Chapter 10
movements on certain sounds brings to light a difference between Lao Li

who plays and Lao Li who has played: where the first one can create, modify,
or remove all kinds of effects, the latter is static, unmodifiable (i.e., equiva-
lent to Latour’s immutable mobile discussed in “Waves,” chap. 9).
What is “before” in the technical object Roland VS-880, or in the struc-
ture of the headphones, compared with what is chosen “after,” is character-
ized by a difference of modifiability. In the case of spatialization, sounds of
Lao Li who has played exert some kind of constraint on Lao Li who plays, in
the form of a stiffness in the stereo space. Lao in the past decides, in a way,
of the position in space of the sounds, to the great displeasure of Lao Li in
the present, who wants to, but can’t, position them differently.
Having reached the end of these six case studies about the activities of
Beijing electronic musicians, I will now summarize the theoretical points
of each chapter, show how I believe they can be applied in other kinds
of research projects, and propose a general formulation for the concept of
waves. The examples involving Lao Li, especially the difficulties resulting
from the use of his headphones, compared with Lao Dong’s interaction
with the complexity of Max/MSP patches (chap. 9), will be used to illustrate
the kind of “natural laws” that may be formulated to describe waves’ cir-
culation between things and people. To do so, I will rely on two other case
studies involving technical objects—one on a social networking site and
one on computer encodings.
III Social Networking Sites and Computer Encodings in
China, 2008–2012
In the introduction, I presented my goals: (1) to contribute to a better fram-

ing of the concept of culture in science and technology studies, and (2)
to find a way of dealing with everyday things in contemporary sinology.
In the preceding chapters and during the case study analyses, I discussed
theoretical and methodological aspects regarding technical objects and the
concept of culture, especially when it related to the idea of cultural
difference.
To group these arguments in a way that can be applied to other studies,
I consider the three following statements:
(1) It is methodologically useful not to make any a priori difference between

humans and nonhumans, as well as between what or who is considered
Chinese and non-Chinese. Although there are differences, this perspective
helps us to see the boundaries between categories as more fluid than often
assumed.
(2) Technical objects have contents embedded in them that relate to spe-
cific contexts. For instance, a piece of music, a text, a picture, or a software
can come from Germany or from China (or both), and therefore contain
elements specific to the ways of living and thinking in those places. I con-
ceptualize this type of content as the shape of matter, made of waves, a
concept that I also use to describe how shapes are transmitted from one
medium (human or nonhuman) to another.
(3) The waves content of a technical object used by a human or a non-
human to produce something will always appear, at least in some degree,
in the final product. The amount of waves coming from an artifact partly
relates to its modifiability, such as its material stiffness or its complexity
when compared to the user’s ability to change it if s/he wants to do so.
In the remaining chapters, I will show how these elements prove fruitful
in Chinese studies, and then, in STS. To do so, I rely on two further case
174 Part III
studies. The first one, used to illustrate the methodological point in sinol-
ogy and Chinese studies, is about Happy Network ⺨⽫仹, a social network-
ing site. The second, used to illustrate the methodological point in STS, is
about computer encodings in China.
11 Beta Testing the Framework: Sinology
Sinologists are so skilled in analyzing the distant past and working on

ancient artifacts that they sometimes feel lost when they see China today.
They wonder whether they need to become political scientists, social sci-
entists, or economists in order to perform their scientific tasks. By thinking
this way, sinologists tend to forget that most of them were trained to ana-
lyze artifacts, a specific job that requires specific skills. Social scientists are
not doing much work on artifacts. If objects are often discussed by sociolo-
gists (there is even a “sociology of objects”1), their focus is clearly not on the
physical objects themselves as much as it is in the humanities. A humanist
is a scientist who, for instance, is able to work on a chapter of the Bible and
nothing else—that is, without necessarily doing research about the users of
the Bible or its writers.
The case study that follows is an attempt to work on China today with a
focus on artifacts only. To do so, I rely on three basic methodological points
which I derive from interactionism and grounded theory (see “Truth, Fal-
sity, Chinese, and Non-Chinese,” chap. 2).
(1) I start with an object of study and a research question. This is basic to
doing scientific research: by attempting to find a relevant answer, I aim to
produce new knowledge. Whether this knowledge will prove useful in the
end is a complex issue, but it is not my goal to discuss this in detail here.
Roughly, this first step will allow me to state which part(s) of the object
of study I choose to focus on. As discussed in the introduction, this is a
particularly tricky step when working on the present, because there is no
historical distance to help us figure out which direction is relevant.
(2) I try to produce a clear, grounded description of what I observe. This
is an old trope in ethnography: the researcher is faced with a multiplic-
ity of complex structures, superimposed upon one another, which s/he
attempts to grasp and then to render. It implies a focus on real actors in
176 Chapter 11
real situations, and also that the relationship between the data and the
researcher must be kept close and explained with directness and in detail,
preferably using the singular present without too many abstractions. My
motto is this quote from Bruno Latour:
The simple fact of recording anything on paper is already an immense transforma-

tion that require as much skill and just as much artifice as painting a landscape or
setting up some elaborate biochemical reaction. No scholar should find humiliating
the task of sticking to description. This is, on the contrary, the highest and rarest
achievement. . . . If a description remains in need of an explanation, it means that it
is a bad description. (Latour 2005, 136–137)2
Beyond the idea of description, I aim to create immutable mobiles (see

“Waves,” chap. 9), but not in the strict sense of producing scientific “facts.”
Here, as the goal of the description is to remain as close as possible to the
data, in the best case it will be identical to the observations (an ideal goal,
hardly ever reached). If I can describe what I observe as I observed it, the
waves’ circulation from the data to my publication will be organized in
such a way that the forms (i.e., aggregates of waves) will be more or less
conserved (i.e., with as little creation or dissipation of waves as possible).
(3) I try to find the best possible samples in the data to illustrate the answer
I find to my question. This relates to point (2): a good description is a
description that provides examples representative of what the researcher
believes is generally going on in the data. A representative example is a
form of theoretical generalization. Concretely, that means that in my study
of Happy Network in this chapter, I carefully select two or three illustra-
tions from among the over forty-five hundred screenshots I took of the Web
pages, and I pay much attention to the way I display them on the printed
pages of this book.
There would be much more to say about the analysis of artifacts in the
present, but we need to limit ourselves to one thing at the time. Here the
objective is mainly to illustrate how sinologists can make one step in the
direction of the analysis of everyday things today in China, so I stop here
for now and proceed to the description.
Happy Network 开心网
In the 2000s, when I observed Lao Dong accessing Chinese musicians’ web-
sites (chap. 8), the Internet had been developing fast in China.3 From a few
thousand users and Web pages in the 1990s, to 22 million users and 1.6
Beta Testing the Framework: Sinology 177
billion Web pages at the end of 2000, it had grown to 111 million users and
2.6 billion Web pages in 2005. At the end of June 2008, with 253 million
users and an overall number of Web pages that would surpass 16 billion
at the end of the year, China had become the number one country in the
world in terms of Internet presence (CNNIC 2008, 15; 2009, 24).4
As in the West, this development, strongly supported by the government
of the People’s Republic of China, had changed, and was still changing,
millions of peoples’ lives. Web-based platforms for online communities,
also called Social Networking Sites (SNS), were part of the movement. Face-
book had been launched in 2004 in the United States; in China, one of
the first SNS, UUZone,5 had started in 2003. Among other SNS, one web-
site called “Campus” 㟉ℭ仹, which started in 2005, already looked like a
successful clone of Facebook. As an STS trained scholar who “follows the
actors” (Latour 1987), I didn’t pay much attention to the development of
these platforms since people I knew in China didn’t pay attention to social
networking sites.
The situation changed in July 2008 when, as I was staying at Xiao Deng’s
place in Beijing for the summer (see chaps. 6 and 7), I noticed he was spend-
ing hours on a website I had never heard about before. Upon waking up, at
around 2 p.m., he would walk into his living room where I was sleeping on
the couch, switch on his desktop computer, and access the site. He would
smile and comment “Let’s be happy for a while” ⺨⽫ᶨᶳ. His expression
was a pun on the website’s name: Happy Network ⺨⽫仹 (kaixin001.com),
a new SNS that had been launched a couple of months before. The par-
ticular rhetoric of Happy Network, compared to other social networking
sites, was that it focused on the idea of “having fun” (this concept was pre-
sented as Happy Network’s main strategy in several sources in Chinese, and
it could also easily be observed by analyzing the site’s discourse, features,
and main applications6).
Intrigued by Xiao Deng’s comments, I registered on July 25, 2008, and
started taking screenshots and notes about what I saw on the Web pages.
This basic task of logging in and observing the changes in the design of
the site and the contents provided by other users quickly became a daily
routine.
A few months before, a friend working in the advertising industry in
Switzerland had described SNS as being “advertisers’ paradises” because
users could be selected according to their age, gender, taste, habits, and
so forth and targeted with appropriate advertisements. Economic incen-
tives were also said to be the main engine behind the launch of social net-
178 Chapter 11
working sites aimed at the general public (Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of
Facebook, was known as the youngest billionaire in the world).
Therefore, because of this friend, I chose as a provisional research ques-
tion: How is advertising provided on Happy Network? The question made
sense in that it was large enough for a research project that would probably
last a couple of years, and it also seemed to touch on a central aspect of the
dynamics of the selected object. If I could understand the way Happy Net-
work dealt with the question of advertising, I would probably be better able
to understand other aspects of its development, as they would relate in one
way or another to this first one.
During the first seven months of observation, I didn’t see a single ad on
Happy Network. This wasn’t a problem for me because I knew that many
Web companies do not display advertisements when they start a new proj-
ect. The search engine Google.com and the video-sharing website YouTube.
com, for example, famously started to display advertisements only when
enough people were connecting to their services regularly and when they
knew how to target their audience. So, to stay focused on the data and to
help me make sense of the documents I was collecting, I started to make
comparisons.
In 2008, Facebook provided an adequate source of comparison for Happy
Network. At that time, there were two aspects of my Facebook and Happy
Network user pages that were radically different from each other. Where the
former used one page for my user information and another for the news-
feed about my friends, Happy Network mixed the two functions on the
user page. And while Facebook stated explicitly that it would never tell my
friends about whose profile or photos I viewed, Happy Network did exactly
the opposite: a dedicated section called “recent visitors” 㚨役㜍孧 displayed
information about who viewed my profile and when. If I found the avatar
of an unknown visitor intriguing, I could click on it to visit his or her user
page, which would then display my avatar and time of visit in his or her
respective recent visitors section.7
Happy Network provided several games, which, contrary to most of
Facebook’s applications at that time, were designed by the owners of the
site themselves (in July 2009, I counted 38 applications on Happy Net-
work, 29 of which, according to the information displayed on the website,
were designed by Happy Network, one in collaboration with another com-
pany, and eight by third parties). Some were heavily used by my Chinese
acquaintances and the many other Chinese people I quickly got to know
while crawling through the “recent visitors” pages. I didn’t notice any other
foreigners until February 2009, when some of my students registered after I

showed them the website.
A game called Parking Wars ḱ弎ỵ seemed particularly successful.8
Almost everyone I knew, including Xiao Deng and Lao Dong, was playing
it. The basic rules of Parking Wars were that users had to place their cars on
friends’ streets and could earn virtual money if they remained there. The
way to cash out the money was by moving the car to another space, but
your friends could take away your money by giving tickets to your cars if
these were parked on their streets. The goal was to make as much virtual
money as possible, so as to buy new virtual cars.
Interestingly, Parking Wars seemed to be a copy of a game of the same
name that had been on Facebook. It had been developed first as a teaser
for a television reality show, and it too was successful on the Facebook
network (a friend in Switzerland told me he kept moving his virtual cars
for months).9
At the beginning of 2009, Happy Network was becoming more and more
successful. When I had registered in July 2008, according to the number of
my user-ID, we were about 500,000 people on the site. In June 2009 the
site’s registered users seemed to exceed 30 million and was still growing at a
fast pace. The company was eleventh in a list of top Chinese websites, and
analysts called it China’s top Internet phenomenon of 2008–2009.10
In March, I noticed that various kinds of ads started to appear on the site.
Interestingly, where Facebook systematically displayed posters on my user
page and on the newsfeed page,11 Happy Network had none, but seemed
to rely mostly on “advergaming” (in-game advertising). Ads were simply
displayed inside the many games Happy Network provided. For instance,
on March 27, 2009, some of the walls behind my parking places started to
display advertisements.12 (Although Parking Wars was a quite simple game,
people didn’t seem to get bored with it, and eleven months later I noted
several friends were still playing on a daily basis.)
While Facebook’s advertisements clearly related to my profile informa-
tion—for example, my gender, the languages I speak, my age, and loca-
tion (typically I got advertisements for men’s underwear, or in one case,
an iPhone advertisement in French saying that thirty-six years old was the
right age to buy one)—Happy Network’s advertisements focused on which
kind of activity I was performing. For example, when I clicked on a button
labeled “part-time job” to get some virtual money in order to buy seeds for
my garden (in another game), an advertisement banner at the bottom of
the page displayed an ad for a job-placement company.
180 Chapter 11
In October 2008, I had become interested in the virtual gifts sections.

On Happy Network, the principle was simple: users could send gifts to their
friends. Not material gifts, but pictures of a flower, a champagne bottle, a
gold ring, candy, a chocolate box, and so on. Some of the gifts were free and
some were available only if one paid some kind of fee (using real or virtual
money).
Figure 11.1 shows the fourth page of Facebook’s virtual gifts window
(upper left) and the first of Happy Network (upper right). When compar-
ing the two websites, I was surprised to find that some of the gifts were
the same on the two platforms. Since Facebook had been launched four
years before Happy Network, I wondered if the latter had, as seemed to
be the case with Parking Wars, copied and then slightly modified the gifts
(the underwear and the angel on Happy Network had additional glitter and
heartbeat animation effects).
This question progressed in December 2009, when I noticed the design
of the gifts changed on Happy Network (lower right): the underwear had
become thicker and more colorful, and the angel had now a new Tyro-
lean look (notice that the colors of the candy changed as well). The form
“G-string” seemed to have circulated from Facebook to Happy Network
and then within Happy Network, while its content of waves had been first
slightly altered, then heavily modified, during its journey.
At the end of 2009, I noticed that the gifts section featured advertise-
ments too (I suspect that this started several months earlier). It now pro-
posed virtual gifts such as a Kentucky Fried Chicken hot beverage for the
winter, Nokia mobile phones, and a Smart car. Most often, “ad” gifts were
placed at the beginning of the gifts section. They featured a short anima-
tion—something normally only available for higher-end gifts—and giving
one of them three times during a single day allowed one to use a gift from
the high-grade section for free. “Ad” gifts were often displayed in relation
to a special event or time of the year, such as Christmas or the Chinese
New Year.
For instance, in February 2010 I received a Smart car with a tiger skin,
offered on the occasion of the Chinese year of the Tiger. The animation
first displayed the car as white in color and full of red roses; then the roses
popped out of the car and the color changed to yellow; then tiger lines
appeared, while petals slowly fell down and a message appeared at the top
of the window saying “Wish you love for the year of the Tiger.” The sentence
contained a double pun on the word “tiger” in the second half, as it says lit-
erally “Love for the year of the tiger—Love the tiger’s oil” 嗶⸜㚱䇙䇙侩嗶㱡.
The second part, 䇙侩嗶㱡 ài lǎ ohǔ yóu, seemed to be a reference to a Tsui
Facebook October 2008 Happy Network October 2008
Happy Network December 2009
Figure 11.1
Screenshots of the virtual gifts sections from Facebook and Happy Network, October
2008–December 2009.
Hark movie where a character uses this funny transcription for “I love you,”
but can also be understood as a way of saying “this car saves gas.”
I stop the description of Happy Network here. I hope that this short dis-
cussion illustrates the interest, for specialists of China, in relying on ques-
tions and descriptions with carefully selected examples. Thinking of the
quote from Bruno Latour (2005)—“If a description remains in need of an
explanation, it means that it is a bad description”—if I believe the descrip-
tion above is clear enough to be self-sufficient, it definitely warrants more
detail. The few forms described here are only a very tiny part of a huge
and highly complex object. Happy Network has hundreds of features that
I have not discussed in this analysis. Even a short list would range widely:
the interface for its use on mobile phones, the various applications users
could add,13 its commercial and legal battles with the other SNS on the
Chinese market14 and, later, Weibo ⽖⌂ (the Chinese equivalent of Twitter),
interaction with the government on censorship issues,15 users selling their
virtual goods against real money,16 debates in the local media about the
impact of SNS on society,17 and so forth. Contrary to archaeologists, who
often expend great efforts in order to find only a little information, research
182 Chapter 11
about the current design of websites raises the question of how to choose
which information to discuss among the billions of Web pages available.
Before moving on to the next case study on computer encodings, it is
useful to briefly consider the examples presented above in the perspective
of the waves’ circulation framework.
Arguably, since Facebook started its activities in 2004 and Happy Net-
work was launched in April 2008, it makes sense to imagine that icons,
concepts, and pieces of software were copied from Facebook by Happy
Network.18 On the Facebook blog, for instance, the gifts section was said
to have been launched in February 2007,19 and the G-string picture was
visible in the gifts collection designed by Susan Kare posted at that time.
Although Happy Network might have borrowed this picture from another
source (there were thousands of other SNS in China during that period),
evidence of this SNS recycling design elements from competitors’ websites
(as well as the opposite, competitors recycling Happy Network’s design ele-
ments) allow us to provisionally reformulate this hypothesis using waves
and forms.
The shape of the underwear that was conserved from Facebook to the
first and then second version of the gifts section in Happy Network is a
form—an aggregate of waves we identify for operational needs, and which
we label with the word “G-string.” To think that this form is made of waves
helps us understand why some design aspects of the underwear, such as its
thickness or the color, changed when circulating from Facebook to Happy
Network.20
The circulation involving the G-string is similar to a situation where
someone sends a mobile phone text message saying “Hello”: the word hello,
which the receiver can read on her mobile, is a form we can identify when
it is sent, and that we can still identify at the end of the circulation process
(when it is received) because parts of its contents of waves have been con-
served (e.g., it didn’t change into “Goodbye”). But the overall design of the
message, such as the fonts or the color of the display probably changed if
one of the persons involved in the process used a different device: the let-
ters might be smaller or bigger, serifed or not, bold or not, and so forth. The
corresponding contents of waves that make up parts of the form have been
dissipated, conserved, or created.
In other words, the waves’ circulation framework allow us to think of
phenomena such as the observations in this chapter in a concrete way: it
enables one to describe the movement of an image from the United States
to China, being recycled in an ingenious way by Web designers in Bei-
jing, all of it grounded in the matter that makes the bits and bytes of the
Web pages I observed. Many questions remain, for instance how users
interpret this image and how to consider this type of circulation in human
beings, but the waves’ circulation framework provides a first step to help us
write about the phenomenon in a nonabstract, concrete and descriptive
way.
Before coming back to the framework’s pros and cons, I now briefly pres-
ent the last case study of this book to illustrate how it can also be applied
to deal with an STS-type object of study: the use of computer encodings in
China.
12 Beta Testing the Framework: Science and Technology
Studies
At the end of the case study on Lao Dong’s use of Max/MSP (chap. 9), I
argued that waves’ circulations do not occur randomly but according to
specific patterns. No simple procedures, especially because the number
of circulations involved is always huge, but some basic principles can be
underlined. In this chapter, I will look at cases where parts of the waves’
content of an artifact are transferred as a result of interaction with the user.
The case studies involving Lao Dong (chaps. 8 and 9) and Lao Li (chap.
10) both discussed situations wherein a technical object, such as a soft-
ware, a hardware, or an audio recording, cannot be modified (e.g., com-
plex Max/MSP patches, cheap headphones, or “rigid” stereo files). This is
the case either when the artifact is too complex to be understood by the
user, or when its material structure is too rigid with respect to available
technologies.
Such cases touch on the old idea of technological constraints, which I
group under the banner of “unmodifiability,” and as such they are close
to the framework defined by Harry Collins about subkinds of somatic tacit
knowledge discussed earlier (see the beginning of chap. 3, and “Waves” in
chap. 9). For example, he labels knowledge that is tacit because of human
bodily limits (e.g., a person cannot live several hundred years, and this limi-
tation will affect the knowledge one can acquire in a lifetime) as somatic-
limit tacit knowledge. Collins also argues that some kinds of knowledge,
such as knowledge related to specific human abilities (e.g., playing high-
level chess, or kicking a rugby ball), are tacit because only the human body
and brain are made of suitable material substances to perform these tasks.
This prevents such knowledge from being written out explicitly, or to be
dealt with by, say, a computer (computers can be designed to win at chess,
or to kick a rugby ball, but they won’t perform these tasks in the same way
that humans do); he calls this somatic-affordance tacit knowledge (Collins
2010).
186 Chapter 12
Using Howard Becker’s work on conventions in art (see “Modifiability,”

chap. 9), and similar to the way that, in Collins’s work, the categories of
knowledge described in the previous paragraph cannot be made explicit, I
argued that in situations involving the use of an “unmodifiable” technical
object something specific will happen: either the user will give up, or s/he
will have to ask for external help, or the waves contents of the tool—the
unmodifiable part, mediated by the act of using it—would circulate to the
final output. The example with the Siemens mobile phone (discussed in
chap. 2) is an illustration of this sort of phenomena: in Beijing, in 2003–
2004, if a mobile was used to send a text message, the punctuation would
become either “Western” or “Chinese,” depending on the model of phone
that sent it.
This example with the mobile allows us to formulate the sketch of a law
of circulation for this specific type of setting: if a technical object is used and
its respective waves content cannot be modified by the user, then those waves will
be present in the output of the collaboration between the user and the artifact. (If
the object is not used, or if it is modifiable, the law does not apply.)
To illustrate situations where artifacts are not modified and are used, I
will now discuss everyday computer technologies in China that involve
devices similar to the one used in the example of the Siemens 3618 mobile
phone punctuation system (see chap. 2) and rely on my personal experi-
ence as a user. To keep these case studies grounded and, at the same time,
simple and illustrative, I selected a series of observations I made involving
devices I hope most readers are familiar with. For the same reason, and con-
trary to the previous cases studies on electronic music devices and the social
networking site, I will not discuss the background of each technical object
and will, instead, move rapidly from one observation to the next one.
Broadly speaking, the situation at the beginning of the twenty-first cen-
tury in China with computer encodings can be described as follows:
(a) We have technologies that are widely used (keyboards, text encodings,
Web technologies, information and communications technology proto-
cols, and so forth).
(b) English text and the Roman alphabet are strongly embodied in these
technologies. In China specifically, it is a big challenge to design either
interfaces that do not rely on the Roman alphabet or different encoding
systems not based on English but on Mandarin.1
So, if the law of circulation mentioned three paragraphs back is correct,

the corresponding waves’ contents that make the encodings, the keyboard
interfaces, and so forth should circulate up to the final output of the col-
laboration process of Chinese users with these technologies.
Beta Testing the Framework: STS 187
Computer Encodings in China
For the purpose of this section, it is necessary to start by saying a few words
about the system on which written Chinese relies.
The Chinese script is not an alphabet. It is made up of Chinese char-
acters, which are, strictly speaking, logograms. They are not symbols of
sound but symbols of meaning. A consequence of this specific feature is
that there is no fixed limit to their overall number. Schoolchildren learn
about 2,000 characters, educated people in China know between 3,000 and
4,000, scholars sometimes memorize up to 10,000, and a good dictionary
discussing the various uses throughout history exceeds 50,000. Conse-
quently, whereas a child would need a couple of weeks to memorize the
Roman alphabet, several years are required to acquire literacy in the most
frequently used characters in modern Chinese.
To better understand how the system works, one can consider the use of
Arabic numbers: for example, “1” has the meaning of one singular and is
pronounced “one” in English. But it can also be pronounced un in French,
uno in Italian, eins in German, and so on. Similarly, the character ⤥ in writ-
ten Chinese, which means “good,” is pronounced hao in Mandarin, ho in
Cantonese, hou in the Min dialect, and so on.
The structure of Chinese characters is, in a way, similar to words in Eng-
lish: where most are made of a combination of twenty-six letters, characters
are made by combining elements from a repertoire of some two hundred
parts. The overall number of these parts is limited, making the assemblage
relatively easy to memorize, just as a new word in English is easy to remem-
ber for someone who already knows the alphabet. For example, if the word
“script” is composed of the letters “s,” “c,” “r,” and so forth, the character
“⤥” is composed of “⤛” and “⫸.” Or a character like “愺” is composed of
“惱,” “㖍,” and “䓇.” As the letters “s” or “c” are also used to build other
words, “⤛,” “⫸,” “惱,” “㖍,” and “䓇” are found in the composition of
many other characters. This aspect—what the art historian Lothar Ledder-
ose has called a module system (Ledderose 2000)—makes the task of memo-
rizing them much easier than one would first imagine.
Because written language is not strictly linked to oral pronunciation,
Chinese-speaking people enjoy several advantages. For example, ㇳ means
“the hand” wherever you are in the country, whatever dialect you speak,
and even if you don’t know how to pronounce it in Putonghua (the official
language of the PRC). For a country with many dialects, and that is approxi-
mately seventeen times bigger than France, this is no small advantage. Web
citizens from Guangzhou, in the South of China, have no difficulty under-
standing what people from Ningxia, in the North, write, although many
188 Chapter 12
of them would experience problems if they had to communicate orally.

Moreover, a twelve-year-old Chinese child is able to understand the mean-
ing of ㇳ, which she has studied at school, whether she reads it in a local
newspaper or in an ancient manuscript from the third century.
As discussed by Ledderose, whose work informed my overview of Chi-
nese writing, “Europeans have to learn a new language every time they
want to read something written five hundred kilometers away, or five hun-
dred years before. Not so in China” (Ledderose 2000, 23).
Now that we have a basic understanding of the inherent structure of the
Chinese script, we can pay attention to what happens to Chinese characters
as they interact with “Roman alphabet-embedded” technologies.
Illustration 1: The ASCII Keyboard

In the past decades, the United States has taken the lead in matter of tech-
nological development. Although new technologies are based on centuries
of scientific achievement in many different countries (including China),
many of today’s technical tools have been designed, to put it bluntly, with
English speakers in mind.2 One of the most obvious examples is the personal
computer’s keyboard interface, which is based on the Roman alphabet.
In the past few decades in Beijing, the most common way to input Chi-
nese characters in a computer has been to use a standard ASCII keyboard
and pinyin, the official Roman alphabet phonetic transcription of Chinese
since 1958.3 Pinyin is based on today’s pronunciation of the characters in
Mandarin (also known as Putonghua, “standard language”). One types the
sound of one character and then chooses among the different characters
that share the same pronunciation. Although competing systems are under
development, especially since the advent of graphic tablets, this procedure
is still the most widely used in China at the moment.
The system works well, and, at the beginning of the 2000s in Beijing, a
user such as Lao Dong who entered Chinese into a computer was as fast as a
user typing in English. One feature of the relevant software is that it is able
to recognize Chinese words, which are often made of two characters, and it
can also memorize frequently used expressions. These functions are essen-
tial because many Chinese characters share the same pronunciation and are
usually differentiated by the context in which they are used. For instance,
if one has to choose among about ninety different characters for the syl-
lable “ke” 䥹, the number of possibilities drops to five pairs of characters for
“keji” 䥹㈨ (the Chinese word for “technology”).
Since English is the “mother tongue” of the computer, any language
that differs from English almost always has to go through “English text”
in one way or another, similarly to the input system described here. For
instance, in the Unicode hexadecimal encoding used in the previous
paragraph, the two characters for the word “technology” are encoded as
“科&#x6280”; the difference between “科&#x6280” and
䥹㈨ is that in the first case the computer considers the data as English text,
while in the latter it sees it as an encoded entry that has to be displayed by
its corresponding Chinese characters.
The same phenomenon repeats for all signs that do not belong to the
computer’s mother tongue; if the letter “e” is encoded “e,” the French
accent aigu, “é,” is encoded “&#xe9”, and so on. Anything that differs from
English text is treated differently by the computer (English language also
contains foreign words, French words for instance, which I am not con-
cerned with here in my rough designation of “English text”).4
In September 2003, I purchased a bike in Beijing. The two pictures in fig-
ure 12.1 show the front and back of a note attached to the wheel system. The
“Important Safety Notice” is written in English, German, French, and Span-
ish. As one can observe on the images, letters that differ from English are cor-
rupted or displayed as in unknown format. The “é” of French, for example, is
displayed as a square, the “ü” of German becomes a “Ÿ,” and so on.
So what about Chinese characters? Waves’ dissipation becomes even
more apparent because all the characters differ from English-text. The text
below shows an email sent to me by a Chinese friend in January 2005.
??:???
???,?22?????,?????,????????????,??????????,????
????????
??????????
???
??
The original text reads like this:
Dear Basile: Hello

I am sorry, on January 22 I already have an appointment, therefore I cannot come,
but I am sure your talk at the seminar will be fine, as it always is
Regards to you and the other colleagues
Good luck with your work
Your friend
Zhang Xu
All Chinese characters have been turned into question marks in the email
in Mandarin, while the only “English-text information,” such as the layout,
the punctuation marks, and the numbers, are displayed normally.
190 Chapter 12
Bike wheel
system notice
(recto)
Bike wheel
system notice
(verso)
Figure 12.1
Bike wheel system notice (recto-verso). Beijing, September 2003.
Reformulated for the two cases just noted, our law of circulation reads
as follow:
If a technical object [computer encodings] is used [sticker printed/email message

sent] and its respective waves content [incompatible encodings] cannot be modi-
fied by the user, then those waves [incompatible encodings] will be present in the
output of the collaboration between the user and the artifact.
Illustration 2: Web Technologies

Today, worldwide, a website’s address has to be written using “English
text.” Although it has been technically possible to have a website URL in
a foreign—that is, different from English—language for several years, com-
patibility issues prevent people from using them, as the technology takes a
Table 12.1
Comparison chart for website addresses in a foreign language
Frederic@gmail.com Frédéric@gmail.com
www.aljazeera.net ‫ﻧﺖ‬.‫ﺍﻟﺠﺰﻳﺮﺓ‬.www
www.yi.cn www.[300 possible Chinese characters].cn
long time to be adapted, if it ever is. Consider Internet Explorer, the world’s
most widely used Web browser in the 2000s, which has recognized non-
English URLs only since 2006; the World Wide Web, as we know it, has
existed since 1992.
In the comparison chart shown in table 12.1, I take two websites’ URLs
and an imaginary email address, and I perform what I will call from now on
an “inverted comparison” (see also “Baidu versus Google, chap. 13): I apply
to them the waves content from other regions of the world. In this case, I
relied on language structures. I end up with, on the left, website addresses
as they have existed since the 1990s, and, on the right, website addresses as
they do not exist (at least for now).
The first line shows a French given name used in an email address, the
second line the website address of the Arabic-language news network Al
Jazeera, both displayed as they normally appear in French and Arabic. On
the third line, to choose a Chinese character for “yi” for the website address
in Mandarin is problematic, since there are over three hundred Chinese
characters that share the pronunciation yi, and they can only be differen-
tiated by their stroke components. The transcription obscures the mean-
ing of a site such as www.yi.cn for a Chinese native. It could be read as
www.堋.cn (yī meaning “clothing”), www.⋣.cn (yī meaning “medical sci-
ence”), www.䦣.cn (yí meaning “move”), or any other sound mates.
What this inverted comparison brings to the fore is an observation close
to the one of the ASCII keyboard discussed in Illustration 1. As history
teachers taught us at school, the West took the lead during the last centu-
ries in matter of scientific discoveries, and therefore (this corollary is less
discussed) most information and communications technologies we use
today feature waves content that has a solid Western background.
If our law of circulation applies here, we might consider this relation: If
a technical object [Web address] is used and the respective waves content [Roman
alphabet] cannot be modified by the user, then those waves [Roman alphabet]
will invariably be present in the output of the collaboration between the user and
the artifact.
192 Chapter 12
Once the relation between a technology and the presence of an ines-

capable cultural output has been established, it is easy to find other real-
world observations. In the 2000s, if you have a look at any newspaper in
the world written in a language other than English, you notice that, quite
often, the only non-Chinese, non-Arabic, non-Korean, and so forth waves
contents of the page are websites or email addresses.
For instance, in the January 20, 2008 issue of the Southern Weekly
⋿㕡␐㛓 (a renowned weekly newspaper in China), on page 26, in the Sci-
ence News section, I could read an article about whether Mars will be hit
by an asteroid at the end of the month. The paper was written in Chinese.
But the Chinese characters were not alone on this page. I could see Arabic
numerals here and there (commonly used in modern Chinese for dates and
phone numbers), and also foreign specialists’ Western names, intended for
Chinese readers who want to know the correct name in English, which
were indicated in Roman letters right after their transcription in Chinese
characters. For instance, in a paragraph “Steve Squyres” was indicated in
brackets next to a Chinese character transcription: ⎚吪⣓㕗⸻慴㕗 (Steve
Squyres).5
On the upper part of the page, the name of the “responsible editor,
ZHU Liyuan” 峇峋亾弹, 㛙≃径 was indicated, together with a contact email
address: “E-mail:nfzmsci@yahoo.com.cn.” Roman-alphabet letters corre-
sponding to the first one of each character’s phonetic transcription were
used: “nfzm” stands for ⋿ Nan - 㕡 Fang - ␐ Zhou - 㛓 Mo (i.e., the newspa-
per’s name, “Southern Weekly” ⋿㕡␐㛓, in pinyin Nanfang Zhoumo; “sci”
seems to be an English abbreviation for the Science News section).
What is interesting in this example is that while the Steve Squyres’s
name was purposely added in the text in Chinese in its Roman-alphabet
version, the email address of the editor is not. If the Southern Weekly had
the choice, they would probably have preferred to give contact informa-
tion in their own language, Mandarin. Or they might have preferred to use
English—but what interests us here is that they didn’t have this possibility
of choice between the two languages.
Newspapers are not the only places where such waves’ circulation output
can be observed: anywhere a website is used in the world, or mentioned,
there are visible consequences. The next image (figure 12.2) shows the same
phenomenon on an advertising board in a street in Beijing.
The six Chinese characters displayed in white on a red background read
“Chinese Painting and Calligraphy Online” ᷕ⚥Ḏ䓣⛐乧. The company’s
website domain name, www.zgshzx.com, stands for “ᷕ Zhong – ⚥ Guo – Ḏ
Shu – 䓣 Hua – ⛐ Zai – 乧 Xian,” that is, the first Roman-alphabet letter of
Figure 12.2
Street in North Beijing, August 2007.
each Chinese character’s phonetic transcription. Note that these Roman-

alphabet letters are the only non-Chinese content that can be seen on this
building; everything else is in Chinese.
Similarly to the previous examples, we can imagine the path that resulted
in the display of this advertisement board. At some point in the past, there
was the Roman alphabet in some engineers’ brains, probably in the United
States, since this is where the ASCII technology and the computer mouse
were developed (Rogers 2003, 155). Roughly sketched, ASCII became one of
the main coding standards for computers, and the Domain Name System
technology (DNS) developed as the main naming system for the Internet.
When DNS technology circulated to China, it was used by a Chinese Web
designer and ended up in a Chinese company’s website address. It finally
reached an advertising board on a street in Beijing, where it was captured
by my digital camera and printed in this book.
This oversimplified story of Roman-alphabet forms circulating West to
East does not explain anything about the reasons that made various peo-
ple select a particular type of encoding, why the pinyin transcription was
chosen by the government of the People’s Republic of China long before
194 Chapter 12
computers were widespread, or why the Chinese Painting and Calligraphy

Online company opted for this name for their website among the thou-
sands of alternatives they probably had.
However, it helps us to better understand how waves behave when they
are embodied in artifacts, in human beings, or moving between them. The
Roman alphabet has, in part at least, circulated from the United States of
America to a street in Beijing through ASCII and DNS technologies, in the
same way than an email does. Its journey was complex, interactive, related
to many different aspects, but it also remains a traceable and unique path
that only ended on this particular advertisement board.
Before concluding this presentation of observations involving com-
puter encodings in China, I comment on two more examples involving
waves’ circulation output and the Chinese script—this time not in physical
objects, but in human beings.
Illustrations 3 and 4: Forgetting How to Write, and Renaming Children

Whenever someone writes by hand in Mandarin, knowledge of the stroke
structure of each character is necessary in order to perform the procedure:
not only knowledge of the signs that are created by assembling the strokes,
but also the order in which ones does so, because this will influence the
way the characters look like in the end (when writing fast, as in English,
the writing gets distorted, and the way that happens relates to the order of
the strokes). Most Chinese people, after several years of practice, integrate
these structures as somatic tacit knowledge (Collins 2010).6 In this process,
other knowledge, such as the pronunciation of the characters in Mandarin,
is not required.
When one writes by means of the computer input system based on the
pinyin transcription described earlier, the order of importance gets reversed:
active knowledge of the pronunciation of the characters is necessary, and
only passive knowledge of the stroke structure is required to choose among
the selection of characters that share the same phonetic transcription.
In such a situation, waves’ circulation occurs differently than in the
example of the advertising board. The output of the circulation process
is observable inside the human beings involved. Roughly, when someone
writes Chinese characters by hand, strokes-structure data comes out of her
or his brain and hands, but when the same person writes on a computer,
pinyin-structure data comes out of her brain and hands. Such processes
relate to cognitive procedures and the human brain’s capacity of memoriz-
ing, or, in other terms, waves recording.
Without going too much into detail about these processes (I will come
back briefly to what may be going on inside human brains in the section
on neuronal plasticity below), we can observe waves’ circulation outputs in
testimonies from average users of this technology. The following excerpt is
taken from an article published in the New York Times in 2001 (the situation
it describes could still be observed in China in 2013):
“There are some characters that I can’t write with a pen, but if you give me a com-
puter I can type it out,” said Mr. Li, a 23-year-old computer teacher who lives in
rural Yangshuo in Guangxi province, in southern China. . . . It has been more than
six years since Mr. Li started using a computer for Chinese word processing. It has
been just under six years since the characters started slipping away. He estimates that
more than 95 percent of his writing is now done by computer. . . . Chinese typing
requires users only to recognize characters and not construct them from scratch.
More than 97 percent of computer users in China type by phonetically spelling out
the sounds of the characters in a transliteration system, called pinyin, that is based
on the Roman alphabet. . . . The conflict is a result of forcing the complexities of the
Chinese language to conform to a standard Roman-alphabet keyboard. (Lee 2001)
As illustrated by this short story of Mr Li, in the same way that when
someone reads a book waves ride photons and circulate from the text and
illustrations to the reader’s brain, and re-reading the same document con-
solidates the memorizing process, the material structure of a brush or a
keyboard influence the circulation process up to the user. It helps or pre-
vents them in keeping track of the Chinese characters they are learning
or have already memorized.7 In the absence of waves’ circulation related
to stroke structures, the corresponding waves are slowly eroded. In other
words, the use of the ASCII keyboard helps Chinese language users forget
how to write Chinese characters while ensuring that they will also, no mat-
ter how “badly” they may speak official Mandarin, master the spelling of
its pinyin transcription.
A second example involving an impact on human beings’ behavior
concerns the overall number of characters used in Chinese. As the writ-
ing of the word “technology” keji 䥹㈨ discussed earlier illustrates—the
user chooses between different characters proposed by the software for the
syllable “ke,” or pairs of characters for “keji”—the pinyin-input procedure
implies that Chinese characters must already be present in the machine’s
database. Besides, since each character has its own encoding, the number
of characters to be found inside a computer is, by definition, limited. In
other words, if a character has not been encoded, it won’t be found in the
computer.
196 Chapter 12
The problem is, this concept—a limited number of encodings—differs

from the original system behind the Chinese script which allows for a
potentially unlimited number of combinations between the two hundred
parts that constitute its repertoire.8 If the current computer technology
allows a user to create new words by changing the combination of Roman-
alphabet letters, it does not allow the creation of a new structure of strokes
for an unknown Chinese character. Since the task of the software is to pro-
vide the user with a choice of characters, a character not available in the
database will simply not be selected.
Reformulated using the waves’ circulation framework, we can say that
the forms that are the encoded Chinese characters are stored in limited
quantities in the container that is the computer technology. The arrange-
ment of waves built into the computer structure does not allow for the
creation of other elements of this category (i.e., other Chinese characters)
and limits their overall quantity, in the same way that a vinyl record can
only play sound data that has been inscribed on its surface and cannot
play sound data that has not been inscribed on its surface. The computer
technology’s waves content related to the Chinese script is incomplete. If
one compares the number of Chinese characters inside the computer with
the number that can be found outside it (e.g., in Chinese users, in Chinese
texts, and so forth), the latter is much greater than the first one. There-
fore, the interactions between the input procedure and the users will be but
problematic every time a character that has not been encoded is required.
The following is an excerpt from an article published on April 12, 2006,
in the Economist entitled “Farewell the Red Soldiers.” It discusses how many
parents in China, who only a few years ago were choosing rather common
Chinese characters (with an often political flavor), now want to opt for
rare characters. Unfortunately, for the reasons I just detailed, the available
technology does not facilitate their choices. Moreover, and typically, the
“fault” lies with the user: no Western computer technology is blamed, but
the Chinese human beings confronted with it are (Woolgar 1991, 80–82).
The problem is that commonly used software for inputting Chinese characters, in-
cluding that used by police departments responsible for issuing identity cards (which
every Chinese must carry), cannot handle very rare characters. . . . For the police all
this has become a particular problem with the introduction in 2004 of new identity
cards with embedded microchips. Rather than getting better software, a senior police
official has announced that the answer is to ban problematic characters. Reaction
has not been entirely positive. One Chinese newspaper complained that the new
regulation would “simply be for the convenience of the police” rather than for the
good of the public. A government adviser was quoted in another as saying that the
“right of citizens to use characters freely” should be respected. (Farewell the Red
Soldiers 2006)
Situations where alphabet-encoded technologies have gone through a pro-

cess of technological closure—although not irreversible, as the advent of
graphic tablets and phones without keyboards illustrates—are exemplary
cases where it becomes difficult to see the technological tools differently,
and the outputs of the interactions they involve are revealing.
Again, reformulated for in these two cases, our waves’ circulation law
applies. For the people who are forgetting how to write:
If a technical object [computer ASCII keyboard] is used [Chinese word processing]

and its respective waves content [passive knowledge of the stroke structure, focus
on pinyin] cannot be modified by the user, then those waves [passive knowledge of
the stroke structure, focus on pinyin] will be present in the output of the collabora-
tion between the user and the artifact.
For the families renaming their children:
If a technical object [computer encodings] is used [Chinese word processing] and

its respective waves content [limited number of Chinese characters] cannot be
modified by the user, then those waves [limited number of Chinese characters]
will be present in the output of the collaboration between the user and the artifact.
IV Waves and Forms
13 Waves and Forms
The broad objective of this book was to discuss the relation between the
concepts of technology and culture in the context of the use of artifacts by
human beings. A specific idea was to benefit from China’s sociocultural and
economic environment, so different from the West’s, to better understand
the role played by technical objects regarding the question of cultural dif-
ference. Having reached the end of the presentation of the case studies, I
would like to summarize the theoretical and methodological arguments,
and situate them with regard to the works of a few more authors.
In the introduction, I explained that both the observations and the
theory would be presented incrementally. I would always start with the
observations before making a point, and each of these points would be
added onto the other while moving from one case study to next. I under-
lined the close relationship between a selection of frameworks in STS and
the one I sketched for sinology and Chinese studies around the concept of
culture. Drawing on the work of the anthropologist Alfred Gell, I discussed
how a focus on physical objects could be useful to sinologists in order to
find new ways of working on China today. I discussed how the concept of
“culture” has been for many years both at the core and at the periphery
of science studies, being used mostly as a tool for research but not as a
topic of research per se (with the notable exception of Harry Collins and
Robert Evans’s recent work on expertise, see the introduction of chap. 3
and “Waves” in chap. 9). Therefore, I argued, it was interesting to rely on
frameworks from STS to discuss the idea of culture itself.
Moving through the four case studies of the electronic musicians in Bei-
jing in the 2000s (chaps. 5–10), I suggested that sociology of translation’s
stance on nonhumans and heterogeneous networks could also be seen as a
network characterized by what I called waves circulation. I defined waves as
the lowest level of shape matter can take: an equivalent of atoms for matter,
but related to the shape of matter, not matter itself.1
202 Chapter 13
I considered strategic situations wherein processes of circulation occur

in a way that allows for the formulation of laws of circulation. Not laws of
individual behavior, but systematic relations, based on a reduced set of ele-
ments, that describe the way waves circulate in humans and nonhumans
entities. I suggested one of these laws, the remaining others still being on
the work table, to describe situations where the cultural contents of a physi-
cal object (i.e., waves’ contents) are invariably present in the output of the
circulation process, which I provisionally formulated with the following
statement: “If a technical object is used and its respective waves contents
cannot be modified by the user, then those waves will be present in the
output of the collaboration between the user and the artifact.”
This affirmation does not mean to imply that everything is predictable,
but only that the materials traditionally studied by humanities and social
sciences have a physicality that is, as in natural sciences, following certain
rules that can be formulated. As recent research in neurosciences made a
bit clearer what is going on inside the human brain I now consider briefly,
before getting back to artifacts and the issue of cultural difference, the rel-
evance of the concept of waves in this field.
Plasticity and the Synaptic Trace
Until now, I haven’t provided a clear definition of what exactly a “wave”

is. To be honest, one reason for this is that I lack the knowledge in physics
(and I guess it would certainly not be an easy task even if had the required
knowledge). This said, since the goal is to find a way to deal with complex-
ity, rather than trying to grasp something that is known to be ungraspable
because of the numerous sizes and forms it takes, the best method is to find
ways to circumscribe the problem.
An obvious question behind the idea that all things physical always have
some sort of shape (and that, under specific circumstances, these shapes
can be transferred from a material object to another material object, from
a human being to another human being, or a mix of the two) is the nature
of the connection this concept has with the human brain and its capacity
to memorize. In all the different uses of “culture,” ideas the term describes
are intimately linked to the ability of humans to imitate and borrow infor-
mation and to pass it on to others: unlike most other animals, humans can
transmit acquired characteristics across and within generations. In medical
science, this specific characteristic of human beings is discussed through
the notion of “neoteny,” which is used to describe the retention of juvenile
characteristics in a (sexually) mature organism. Humans can be considered
Waves and Forms 203
as the most neotenic animal that exists—that is, the most unfinished at
birth and, therefore, the most receptive to waves’ inscriptions.2
From this point of view, physical objects we find in a natural environ-
ment, such as, say, a tree, cannot be considered as “cultural” in any exist-
ing use of the adjectival form of “culture” (except of course if the tree has
been cultivated, in the sense of having been modified, by a human being).
Intriguingly, at the same time, if culture is specific to what is transmitted
by human beings, we know that this transmission occurs through material
objects as well. If we think of a book, a person who writes it, and another
person who reads it, at a certain moment the “culture” is located inside a
material object.
Artifacts have been considered as part of “culture” by many authors in
humanities and social sciences—nothing new here—but as this example
takes us back to the differentiation between humans and nonhumans, it is
useful to reconsider ANT’s framework in the context of the description of
interactions in heterogeneous networks. In Bruno Latour’s words:
Interactions are not homogeneous. . . . the relays through which action is carried out
do not have the same material quality all along. . . . When slides are projected on the
screen, how many different successive ingredients are necessary when some writing
on a keyboard becomes digitalized, then transformed again in an analogical signal
before being retransformed in some sort of slower brain wave into the mind of half-
asleep students? (Latour 2005, 201)
To build a link between Latour’s illustration (here mostly concerned with

the idea of agency) and the idea of culture, we can imagine a simple story. I
take a picture of a tree outside my home in Switzerland and send it by email
to a friend in China. My friend likes the photograph, prints it, and sticks
it on a wall in front of his desk. His ten-year-old child notices the picture
and makes a drawing of it. Then, if we look at the tree outside the window
and compare it to the drawing—we assume that the child draws well—we
see an obvious link between the beginning and the end of the circulation
process: a similar shape.
At the same time, if we follow the path that goes from the tree to the
child’s drawing, we note several steps and transformations: the shape of a
natural entity—the tree—became digital data, then probably at some point
an analog signal, and later ink marks on a sheet of paper coming out of a
printer. Then it went through a ten-year-old child’s eyes, brain, and hands,
before it was finally turned into other ink marks on another sheet of paper.3
If we compare this imaginary story with the case studies of the elec-
tronic musicians (chaps. 5–10) and situations involving the transmission
204 Chapter 13
of sounds from one place to another—say drum samples downloaded from

the Internet—we see that circulation processes are quite clear as long as
only technical objects are concerned. Indeed, the materiality of sound
recordings has been thoroughly studied and analyzed by audio engineers
(who actually designed most of the artifacts involved). For instance, a vinyl
record, such as those DJ Xiao Deng uses (chap. 6), is a data-storage device
that consists of a disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove. The infor-
mation it contains is usually referred to as “analog sound,” and it produces
“sound waves.”
Here is an excerpt from a classic book on computer music that discusses
the nature of sound waves.
Sound is produced by a vibrating source. The vibrations disturb the air molecules
that are adjacent to the source by alternately pulling apart and pushing together
the molecules in synchronism with the vibrations. Thus, the sound source produces
small regions in the air in which the pressure is lower than average (rarefactions) and
small regions where it is higher (compressions). These regions of alternately rarefied
and compressed air propagate away from the source in the form of a sound wave
much in the same manner as the troughs and crests of an ocean wave. When a sound
wave impinges on a surface (e.g., an eardrum or microphone), it causes that surface
to vibrate in sympathy with the wave. In this way, acoustic energy is transferred
from a source to a receptor (listener) while retaining the characteristic vibration pat-
tern of the source. (Dodge and Jerse 1997, 25;4 emphasis in the original)
As this paragraph about sound waves illustrates, the concept of waves differs
from the traditional view on culture in that it goes slightly into the natural
world (made of tree, stones, air molecules, and so forth) while being able
to link with human beings by means of the human body. In the imaginary
example of the path from the tree in Switzerland to the drawing in China,
the final drawing of the child that relates to the original tree outside my
home is a form (an aggregate of waves we identify for operational needs).
The colors, details of the tree, its size, and so forth are modified during
the circulation process, wherein waves are dissipated, conserved, or added
to by the various humans and nonhuman entities present on this specific
heterogeneous path, but something, say the overall shape of the tree, is
conserved.
We observe many similar phenomena in our daily lives. They involve
pictures, sounds, movies, texts, all sorts of data. In this imaginary story,
where the picture of the tree travels from Switzerland to China, we note
that while the child is making the drawing, the original tree is still outside
my home, its picture still in my camera, and the corresponding digital data
still in my friends’ computer, while the ink marks remain on the sheet of
Waves and Forms 205
paper stuck on his wall. In other words, several material objects involved
in the circulation process remained in place. Not all of them—electrons have
traveled around the world, photons have traveled to enable the image on
the camera to appear, but in various locations on the path from the tree to
the drawing we see humans or nonhumans that didn’t move. Some kind
of data has been copied, from one medium to another, in a similar way to
that in which waves in the ocean or sound waves in the air communicate
variations of pressure.
Now, if waves circulation can technically be followed from the tree up
to the printed document, the question becomes more complex when the
transmission goes through the ten-year-old child’s brain and requires help
from the field of neurosciences. Neuroscientists have been interested for a
long time in the functioning of the human body when memorizing visual
items. For instance, experiments have been made with macaques to which
geometric forms were shown; the poor animals were then killed and parts
of their heads sliced open in order to see whether the same forms were pres-
ent inside them and in what circumstances. Some discoveries were striking,
as certain shapes could be recognized in the physical structures of the brain
(most of the time it was of course much more complicated than that; see
Tootell et al. 1988 for striking results of experiments with macaques; Bell et
al. 2009 for a more recent paper on similar issues).
If it is not within our skills or intentions to get into people’s and animals’
brains, we can still compare an input with an output. If we consider realism
in visual arts, we observe many occurrences of a human being looking at
something and being able to make a drawing that matches the original. In
other words, there are situations where some kind of data goes through the
human brain in a way certainly different from, but also similar to, the path
that goes from a digital camera to the Internet. Some sort of imprint is, in
an obvious and intuitive manner, circulating.
The psychoanalyst François Ansermet and the neurobiologist Pierre
Magistretti, in a fascinating book on the possibility of linking psychoanaly-
sis to the neurosciences through the idea of plasticity, discuss experimental
data about how certain stimuli coming from the external world leave a
trace in the neural network in the form of a modification of synaptic effi-
cacy (Ansermet and Magistretti 2007).5 For instance, as an illustration of
the functioning of the brain, they describe a simple experiment where (1) a
group of neurons is stimulated and its response observed, (2) this group of
neurons is conditioned with a high-frequency stimulation for a few tenths
of a millisecond, and (3) the group of neurons is stimulated again by fol-
lowing the same procedure as in step (1). At step (3), it can be observed
206 Chapter 13
that the response has been amplified. According to them, the term long-
term potentiation (LTP) is used to describe this phenomenon, which can last
several hours. It seems that neurobiologists increasingly believe that LTP is
the basis of memory, where different stimuli produce not only actions but
also internal states that are inscribed in the human brain (Ansermet and
Magistretti 2005).6
If we go back to the imaginary story above with the picture of the tree
and the circulation of some sort of imprint between human and nonhuman
entities, it is interesting to note how Ansermet and Magistretti emphasize
the idea of trace when they discuss the notions of synaptic trace (neuro-
sciences) and psychic trace (psychoanalysis): “It seems entirely justified to
speak of a trace, not only in terms of molecular mechanisms, but also in
terms of a trace left by experience at the level of the very structure of the
synapses” (Ansermet and Magistretti 2007, 67). Or, commenting the dupli-
cation of dendritic spines through the process of the LTP, “we may say that
a trace is literally inscribed in the neural network by the structural modifi-
cations of the synapses” (Ansermet and Magistretti 2007, 68).
Relying on a metaphor, Ansermet and Magistretti compare the function-
ing of the brain to a system made of rheostats, such as the kind that enables
us to vary the intensity of light in a room (as with every cell of our organ-
ism, there is a difference in electrical potential between the inside and the
outside of the neuron, where the passage of ions across the membrane gen-
erates currents).
The brain is sometimes seen as a system functioning in binary fashion, with infor-
mation either passing or not passing in the circuits, as if basic elements, the neurons,
were organized like microcircuits engraved in silicon, like those of a computer. Such
a view, relatively simplistic and rigid, does not correspond to recently obtained ex-
perimental data, according to which information is in fact transmitted in our brain
from one neuron to another in a highly modulated manner. As an initial analogy,
let us consider a rheostat, the two poles, that is, of a binary communication. . . . For
what we find here is a concept mentioned above, that of plasticity. Plasticity is the
reverse of rigidity. For neuronal circuits it involves the ability of the neurons to
modify the efficiency with which they transmit information (Bear 2003). (Ansermet
and Magistretti 2007, 19; see also 24)
Strikingly, the analogy with rheostats not only illustrates how the human
brain records waves, it also takes us closer to the issue of modifiability and
how to deal with predictable versus unpredictable circulations. Ansermet
and Magistretti insist on the fact, known by neuroscientists for a long time,
that the brain never functions twice exactly the same way: each time the
system is used, it slightly modifies its settings accordingly.7
Waves and Forms 207
Without going too far into how traces are associated inside the human
brain, leading to complex issues such as unconscious internal reality
(according to Ansermet and Magistretti, the unconscious is a rearrangement
of traces in a fantasy scenario, where the traces no longer have a relation
to the external experience that generated them; Ansermet and Magistretti
2007, 219–220), the analogy with Michel Callon’s work in the 1980s to
describe heterogeneous associations and mechanisms of transformation or
consolidation is striking.8 Callon, discussing the notion of network, also
emphasizes its connectedness and its capacity for change.
The actor network is reducible neither to an actor alone nor to a network. Like net-
works it is composed of a series of heterogeneous elements, animate and inanimate,
that have been linked to one another for a certain period of time. . . . But the actor
network should not, on the other hand, be confused with a network linking in some
predictable fashion elements that are perfectly well defined and stable, for the enti-
ties it is composed of, whether natural or social, could at any moment redefine their
identity and mutual relationships in some new way and bring new elements into the
network. An actor network is simultaneously an actor whose activity is networking
heterogeneous elements and a network that is able to redefine and transform what
it is made of. (Callon 1987, 93)
Interestingly, Ansermet and Magistretti put forward similar arguments for

neural circuits.
Plasticity calls for a new approach to the issue of determinism. Through the struc-
tural and functional modifications produced by experience, it introduces the possi-
bility of change. The process of becoming is neither determined nor undetermined:
it is plastic.
The mechanism of plasticity in a temporal sequence of the diachronic process of
becoming reworks the neural circuits in such a way that an identical stimulus can
give variable responses. . . . We are dealing with a system that, via the mechanisms
of plasticity, is rearranged from one stimulus to the next, which results in the fact
that in diachrony—that is, over time—one and the same stimulus can lead to differ-
ent responses depending on the state of the system. In combination with plasticity,
diachrony thus establishes an important degree of variability in a system, that, in the
absence of plasticity, would function deterministically. (Ansermet and Magistretti
2007, 183, 185–186)
In other words, concepts of waves and synaptic trace, together with the idea
of plasticity and redefinable actor-networks, take use closer to the question
of the difference between the two broad notions of culture and agency,
or, in other words, situations where waves’ content is conditioned by the
materials that host it. In both cases—a network of humans and nonhumans
or a network of neural circuits—we see a group of structures that allow for
208 Chapter 13
independent parameters for each of them. Every time something is expe-

rienced, the system will output a response and modify its own parameters
accordingly.
In the specific case of the human brain, we may consider that the sys-
tem keeps recording waves as synaptic traces (to put it very simply), while
modifying them—and itself—at the same time. It is a physical, ultimately
predictable system that explains why the information circulates as it does,
but also why its output differs each time it is used even when none of its
components has been replaced. As far as the human brain is concerned, the
huge number of neurons involved, plus the fact that their configuration is
constantly modified each time they are used, explains why the circulation
processes remain too complex to be practically predictable. In a somewhat
variant version of the chaos theory, interactions involving material struc-
tures, both inside and outside human brains, are plastic—programmed to
be undetermined. Things and people change all the time.
The system described by Ansermet and Magistretti also provides a
perspective similar to the law of circulation sketched earlier: the predict-
ability or unpredictability of circulation processes relates directly to the
modifiability versus unmodifiability of the structures that host waves con-
tents; whenever forms that are either physically fixed or too complex to
be modified by human will are involved, their circulations become partly
predictable.
Before going back to how the framework of waves and forms can be
used in sinology and STS, it is time to say a few words about a controversial
conceptualization that bears strong similarities with the one presented in
this book: memetics.
Memetics
In 1976, Richard Dawkins, a British ethnologist, suggested in a book that

became an international bestseller a concept very close to what I defined
above as forms or aggregates of waves. He called it a meme.
The argument I shall advance, surprising as it may seem . . . is that, for an under-
standing of the evolution, we must begin by throwing out the gene as the sole basis
of our ideas on evolution. . . . We need a name for a new replicator, a noun that con-
veys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, a unit of imitation. “Mimeme” comes
from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like “gene.”
I hope my classicists friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme. If it is
any consolation, it could alternatively be thought of as being related to “memory,”
or to the French word même. It should be pronounced to rhyme with “cream.”
Waves and Forms 209
Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of

making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene
pool by leaping from body to body via sperm or eggs, so memes propagate them-
selves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the
broad sense, can be called imitations. If a scientist hears, or reads about, a good idea,
he passes it on to his colleagues and students. He mentions it in his articles and his
lectures. If the idea catches on, it can be said to propagate itself, spreading from brain
to brain. (Dawkins 2006, 191–192; emphasis in the original)
Shortly after the publication of Dawkins’s book, the concept of meme spread
in various circles. With the advent of the Internet, it eventually became a
widely used word in the cybersphere to describe phenomena such as when
a lot of people use one same idea, image, or tune through information
and communications technologies. Today, in blogs and other cyberculture
materials on the Web, a cute picture of a cat that everybody forwards to
friends, a popular song that spreads throughout the world in different lan-
guages, or the various uses of the Obama “Hope” poster during the 2008
presidential campaign in the United States—on restaurant menus, graf-
fiti, T-shirts—are called memes (e.g., people will say “the Obama meme”).9
Memes have become part of the common language, and, while the word
is not mentioned in most English dictionaries, it did make its way to the
Oxford English Dictionary:
meme, n. Biol. A cultural element or behavioural trait whose transmission and con-
sequent persistence in a population, although occurring by non-genetic means (esp.
imitation), is considered as analogous to the inheritance of a gene. (Oxford English
Dictionary, http://www.oed.com)
Interestingly, although largely used by a certain part of the population, the

concept never made it to the academia. Among the reasons for this situa-
tion is probably that Richard Dawkins himself did not intend the concept
to be that important.
I am occasionally accused of having backtracked on memes; of having lost heart,

pulled my horns, had second thoughts. The truth is that my first thoughts were more
modest than some memetists . . . might have wished. For me, the original mission
of the meme was negative. The word was introduced at the end of a book which
otherwise must have seemed entirely devoted to extolling the selfish gene as the
be-all and end-all of evolution, the fundamental unit of selection, the entity in the
hierarchy of life which all adaptations could be said to benefit. (Dawkins 1999, xvi)
Probably for the same reason, Dawkins doesn’t seem to have paid atten-
tion to the many works done within a discipline for which “culture” is the
equivalent of “animal behavior” for ethologists: anthropology. If a couple
210 Chapter 13
of books from anthropologists are mentioned in memetics bestsellers such

as The Selfish Gene (Dawkins 2006) or The Meme Machine (Blackmore 1999),
it is pretty obvious that memetics scholars are not familiar with the social
sciences literature.
As a consequence of this ignorance, anthropologists returned the favor
by ignoring the concept of memes, which is today almost completely
unknown in the social sciences altogether. Maurice Bloch, Professor in
Anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Science,
published an article where he discusses the concept of meme and its rela-
tion with anthropology.
Biologists would react in the same way, if, for example, they were told by a sociolo-
gist in 1999, ignorant of Darwin and Mendel, that she had made the following great
discovery: that acquired characteristics in animals and plants were not biologically
transmitted to the next generation, but rather that there were discrete replicating
units of molecular material that were passed on to offsprings. Further, she was going
to call these units of transmission “closets,” by association with the verb “to close,”
in order to stress the oddity of the fact that these units do not merge and mix into
each other in the process of reproduction. This analogy is a little unfair, but only
just. (Bloch 2005, 89)
Another problem with memetics is that the people who tried to further
develop the concept never succeeded in defining the discrete unit of
memes—what memes are physically made of—and how to account for their
insufficient copying fidelity, therefore denying them explanatory power. As
a result of these difficulties, memetics failed to develop in academia, and
after a few attempts to launch publications specialized in memetics, things
faded out.10
In my opinion, the success of the idea of meme, mainly based on its
descriptive power for something discussed for more than a century by
anthropologists, is well-deserved. It is similar to Latour’s immutable mobile
(see “Waves,” chap. 9) except that where Latour’s version insists on the
mechanics of scientific claims and uses the concept to describe how they
acquire robustness, Dawkins’s insist on the systematics of replication in evo-
lution (Dawkins actually mentions scientific facts as memes; see Dawkins
2006, 192). Both are right to focus on the idea of conservation, because it
is the central part of what we mean by the word “culture.” Indeed, when
we describe something with the words “it’s cultural,” we mostly think of
situations difficult to change, and we usually refer to something that is
conserved.
My own version of the concept with the term form does not change the
core idea, but it provides a link with materiality through its connection
Waves and Forms 211
with waves and the idea of the shape of matter. I must confess I felt tempted
to use meme as an equivalent of form because the word is already so wide-
spread on the Internet. Unfortunately, an important disadvantage is that
meme already has a strong nonscientific connotation, whereas I believe the
conceptualization based on waves (where a form is an aggregate of waves)
is a solid scientific claim. Besides, form and circulation, as words, have the
advantage of being understandable even by someone who doesn’t know
about the conceptualization, because they maintain a connection with
everyday language and current usage in the academy (see for instance
Appadurai 2010 on “circulation of forms”).11
Moreover, the idea of the shape of matter solves both the problem of the
physical discrete unit of memes (i.e., the waves) and the issue of the insuf-
ficient copying fidelity. The concept of waves, built on the one of sound
waves, accounts for creation, dissipation, and conservation of forms, all
at the same level,12 whereas memes focus on conservation processes only.
Waves allow also for the treatment of situations that involve natural objects
(such as the imaginary example of the tree discussed earlier), whereas
memetics is limited to human cultural phenomena.
To end these considerations about neuroscience and memetics, I illus-
trate the argument with two more examples of circulation processes involv-
ing artifacts and human beings. The first one is an address written on a
postal envelope that I received from a colleague living in the United States.
For the sake of clarity, we can consider that the circulation process occurred
in two steps.
Step 1. I send by email my postal address to my colleague in the United
States:
Basile Zimmermann
6, Gutenberg
1201 Genève
Switzerland
Step 2. My colleague receives the email, reads it, writes down the address
on the envelope, and sends it to me:
Basile Zimmerman
6, Gutenberg
Genève 1201
Switzerland
As a comparison between the address sent by email (Step 1) and the address
on the envelope (Step 2) shows, something in the contents of the text
212 Chapter 13
changed: “Zimmermann” became “Zimmerman” (one “n”), and “1201

Genève” became “Genève 1201.”
The differences between the two addresses can easily be linked to differ-
ences of habits of living between the United States and Switzerland. Zim-
mermann and Zimmerman are two versions of a same word: Zimmermann,
“carpenter” in German, is a common family name. The one-n version is
more frequently seen in the United States, and the version with two ns is
more common in Switzerland—hence the mistake by my American col-
league. This same pattern can be seen with regard to the postal code, which
is usually written before the name of the city in Switzerland but after it in
the United States.
This simple situation involving cultural differences is a headache if one
wants to explain exactly why things happened this way. Regarding my fam-
ily name, my colleague’s mistake must have been influenced by his existing
knowledge of the family name Zimmerman in the United States. Although
we have known each other for years, and even though my name appeared
clearly in the email I sent to him, something took over during the process
of writing and removed one n during the act of copying the address. But
for the postal code, it is more difficult to figure out what happened. Did
my colleague know about the differences between the two countries? It
wouldn’t affect the sending or reception of the envelope, but he might have
considered it was better to send it according to US standards. Or maybe it
was a mistake as well. Before coming back to this example, let us consider a
second situation involving cultural differences.
The photograph in figure 13.1 shows two Chinese people eating Ital-
ian pasta in a fancy restaurant in Beijing. I took this picture because I was
interested in how Chinese customers experience difficulties in getting fully
used to Western habits when it comes to eating (in the same way that West-
erners do when eating Chinese food with chopsticks). If you look closely at
the gestures and at the dishes, you will notice that (1) the food is “Italian”
(penne), and (2) it is eaten in the “Chinese” style: the main dish is placed at
the center of the table, and the two customers are handling their forks as if
they were chopsticks.
What I am trying to emphasize with these two examples—the envelope
and the customers in the restaurant—is that considering such situations in
terms of waves and forms is useful because it constitutes a powerful descrip-
tive tool for what remains otherwise extremely complex phenomena. In
the first example, the address was typed by me, moved from my com-
puter in Geneva to San Francisco, to an envelope sent to Geneva, where I
could read it in a modified version. Forms (the layout of the address, the
Waves and Forms 213
Figure 13.1
Two Chinese customers eating Italian pasta “Chinese-style,” sharing one dish placed
at the center of the table and holding their forks as if holding chopsticks. Beijing,
January 2010. (Special thanks to Leïla Amacker, who spotted the scene and helped
me take this picture.)
Roman-alphabet letters) circulated and were conserved, whereas parts of

the waves content (the n that disappeared, the postal code that moved)
were dissipated and created.
In the second example, we can consider human beings with a mix of
what we might provisionally label Italian forms (use a fork, mind your own
dish) and Chinese forms (use chopsticks, share your dish). Forms from one
side and the other get mixed, in a similar way to the address on the enve-
lope, in the act of eating in this restaurant. Relying on the concepts of
waves and forms, we see that the address text and the Chinese customers
214 Chapter 13
hosted waves that circulated from different parts of the world. Some came
from continental Europe, some from the United States, some from Italy,
some from China.
And the circulation process doesn’t stop there. From the envelope, and
from the customers in that restaurant in 2010, the waves circulated up to
my camera and my notebook, and finally into this book. Now that you
read this story and looked at this photograph, some of these waves are also
located in your brain as synaptic/psychic traces, where they circulate and
are conserved, dissipated, or added to other waves.
What is useful about the conceptualization of waves and forms is that
it helps us consider complex phenomena with simple vocabulary, while
keeping the discourse grounded at the same time. It doesn’t explain why
things happen in a certain way, but it says much about how things happen
in a certain way.
Circulations
I have argued that the concept of waves and forms is useful because it tells
us how to think about cultural phenomena. Once this task is achieved, my
recommendation to people interested in the design and use of artifacts in
relation to the issue of cultural difference is to focus on the phenomena of
the creation, conservation, and dissipation of waves and on the scientific act
of description of these processes (which is part of the circulation processes
too).13 In most situations, there are enough words in English to do the job,
and they act precisely as forms.14
As noted by Becker and Latour, since Wittgenstein and many others,
going back the middle of the nineteenth century, have argued against expla-
nations, we are sometimes stuck in the traditional “difference between the
empirical and the theoretical, between ‘how’ and ‘why,’ between stamp
collecting—a contemptible occupation—and the search for causality—
the only activity worthy of attention. Yet nothing proves that this kind of
distinction is necessary” (Latour 1991, 129; see also Becker 1998, 58; see
Freuler 1997, 128–133, for an overview).
In the global postmodernist/constructivist movement at the end of the
twentieth century, humanities and social sciences were confronted with the
difficulty of finding reliable dichotomies and the systematic opportunity
to dissolve them, which sometimes had a paralyzing effect. As Callon and
Latour discussed thirty years ago (Callon and Latour 1981) and as several
authors in science studies (see “Truth, Falsity, Chinese, and Non-Chinese”
in chap. 2) and cultural studies have noted,15 oppositions between “local”
Waves and Forms 215
and “global” entities, and convergences or divergences at all levels, do not

take us very far. Although I am convinced that categories and explanations
are necessary to help us think about people, things, and the interactions
between them, I also believe that there is a specific and urgent need in con-
temporary sinology and Chinese studies for earthly descriptions of waves’
circulations.
To build on Ian Condry’s concept of genba,16 used in his book on hip-
hop in Japan to insist on the performative spaces of culture as being a “key
path through which globalization travels” (Condry 2007, 207), if we man-
age to describe waves’ circulations, we may be able to grasp “the connec-
tions (rather than oppositions) between culture industries on one hand,
and creative artists and their fans on the other . . . allowing us to consider
the mutual construction of what are often viewed as dichotomous analyti-
cal categories (global/local, producer/consumer, complicit/resistant, etc.)”
(Condry 2007, 2).
In his conclusion, Condry discusses with humor the problem of achiev-
ing anything when working this way:
Can we draw some tentative conclusions about hip-hop’s overall influence in rela-
tion to the themes of each chapter of the present book? How does it score? Is racial
discrimination lessened? (A little.) Do genba performances give underground artists
a fighting chance to compete with heavily marketed pop stars? (Sort of.) Do the
battles among groups, families, and styles eventually separate the good from the bad
and lead upward toward some kind of progress? (Yes and no.) Do fans find mean-
ing beyond otaku isolation? (Yes.) Is language enriched by expanding Japanese to
include hip-hop and hip-hop to include Japanese? (To some extent.) Do women’s
uses of hip-hop empower them in a man’s world? (They might.) Will commercialism
ultimately kill hip-hop? (I doubt it.) (Condry 2007, 213)17
Although issues related to cultural hybridity, heterogeneity of flows of

agency, glocalization, circulation of cultural flows, and status of author-
ship have been widely noted, the conceptualization of waves and forms
is useful, I believe, in that it links different points of view on “culture” in
the most concrete possible way.18 For instance, it bridges the differences
between “culture” as specific to shared knowledge and “culture” as related
to artistic practices, and it explains why there is an obvious analogy between
culture-specific aesthetics and period-specific aesthetics (e.g., Chinese cul-
ture compared to American culture, and American culture in the twenty-
first century compared with American culture in the eighteenth century).
To use as an example a music video I saw recently on Happy Network, if
we consider a Taiwanese band incorporating historical accounts of World
War II, including film footage, in a hip-hop music video that criticizes Japan,
216 Chapter 13
placed on a web page commented on by mainland Chinese net surfers,19

a useful sinological account of such a phenomenon is simply to describe
the circulation processes, duly arranged in time, that brought together the
various forms which constitute this object (such as music styles from the
United States, film footage from China, video technology embedded in the
Web page, comments from net surfers, etc.).
In the same way that an art historian describes the various forms that
constitute an ancient painting—from the physical materials used, to the
semantic forms designed by its makers, and up to the reactions of the
audience—China scholars need to be able to describe accurately the con-
tents of mixed objects such as the Taiwanese music video. As Becker or
Latour would insist, such description should not need additional explana-
tory discourse as the very act of producing the description will already be
far difficult enough.
The descriptive work becomes especially important since new technical
objects differ from older ones in that their waves’ contents are quantita-
tively larger and circulate more easily. Forms embodied in a personal com-
puter, a synthesizer, or a mobile phone exceed by far those inscribed in, for
instance, a saxophone, and they are designed so that they need only a few
seconds to reach the other side of the earth. In the same way, the concep-
tualization in waves and forms situates clearly the difference between an
iPhone in 2012 and a mobile phone from the 1990s. Specifically, it illus-
trates how this type of device features a loose connection with materiality:
when a smart phone is lost and replaced, the device’s waves content can be
replaced using a backup so that the new device won’t present any notable
difference with the original; this is because of the inscriptible nature of the
device (cf. chap. 10 on Lao Li) and the facilitated waves’ circulation transfer.
Before concluding, I present one last illustration of how the framework
of waves’ circulation can be used. I will apply it to what is probably the
most intriguing issue for Westerners beyond the case studies presented in
this book: How will technology look on the day it has been reinvented by
the Chinese to fit their own needs?
Baidu versus Google
During the last two centuries, China has spent a lot of time and energy
adapting technologies developed in the West. Although Chinese people
had been able to live for thousands of years with different approaches from
Westerners to basic human activities such as eating (chopsticks versus knife
and fork) or writing (characters versus alphabet), they subsequently became
Waves and Forms 217
convinced that the Western techniques were in general more efficient

and needed to be imported or adapted. As a result (and for other reasons
as well, not to be discussed here in detail), the large majority of patents
for recent technologies used in China currently comes from the West
(Cao 2004).
At the same time, the People’s Republic of China currently invests in sci-
entific research in a way that leads many experts to believe that the country
may soon become number one in the world for technical innovation (see
for instance Lohr 2011). With this perspective in mind, one can wonder
whether China will keep relying on technologies that have been designed
for other needs, or if it will design new ones more adapted to its own con-
text. If this happens, the situation with regard to Western and Eastern cul-
tural differences that we observe in technical objects today might reverse
at some point.
On the basis of this reasoning, we can work out a research question: How
will technology look on the day it has been reinvented by the Chinese to
fit their own needs?
In an attempt to answer this question in 2010, I considered a real-world
example: search engines and the competition between Google and Baidu
for the Chinese market. Google, with its subsidiary YouTube, was the num-
ber one Internet company in the world. But in the People’s Republic of
China, strangely enough, Google was not as successful as it was in other
countries. Its search engine’s market share was well behind its main com-
petitor, Baidu.com, which had roughly 60 percent of searches on the Chi-
nese Web, whereas Google was around 30 percent.
Rather than comparing numbers and technical specificities, I relied on
the concept of waves and performed an inverted comparison on Baidu and
Google: I decided to apply some of the waves’ contents of the latter to the
first one, and then compared Google to its transformed copy. To do so, I
started by a close observation of the Web pages that constituted the main
user interface of the two search engines.
Leaving aside hyperlinks and other details and concentrating, instead,
on the forms that catch the eye, what I saw first was two logos. An obvious
difference was in the sizes attributed to the English versus Chinese name:
where Baidu used the same size for “Baidu” and 䘦⹎ (in red and blue col-
ors), the Google logo gave more space to its English name: “Google” was at
least five times bigger than 察㫴, its Chinese name.
In April 2010, the Google logo on the Chinese Web could be seen on
other websites as well. In figure 13.2, we see it displayed on Sina.com.cn,
one of the major portals in Chinese (a click on the logo took the net surfer
218 Chapter 13
Figure 13.2
Sina.com.cn home page on April 16, 2010. (I added the magnifying glass effect on
the Google logo.)
to Google China’s main page), where the difference in size between the
English and Chinese names can be observed.
Here I performed the inverted comparison: since Baidu presented itself
as a Chinese company, and since China’s economy was rising fast, I imag-
ined that Baidu would become more and more successful and would, sud-
denly, decide to use the same strategy as Google. In that case, they would
give preference to their Chinese name and try to get market share in the
United States. I applied some of the waves content of the Google logo to the
Baidu logo by augmenting the size of the Chinese characters in Baidu 䘦⹎
and reducing the size of the alphabet version.
I continued and imagined that Baidu would put an advertisement on a
major Western portal, just as Google did for Sina.com.cn. I took a screen-
shot of the Yahoo.com home page on April 16, 2010, and I added the modi-
fied Baidu logo on it (see figure 13.3).
When I showed the screenshot of Yahoo.com with the modified Baidu
logo on it to Western colleagues working at information and communi-
cations technology companies in 2010, most reacted by saying it looked
really wrong.20 We also noted that on both pages, the real Sina.com.cn and
Waves and Forms 219
Figure 13.3
Modified Baidu logo.
the imaginary Yahoo.com, only one language was used. No English words
were on Sina.com.cn—everything was in Chinese except for the Google
logo. Likewise, no Chinese characters were on the Yahoo page except for
the Baidu logo.
This is the point of performing inverted comparisons on technical
objects by inverting waves content: what someone with little knowledge of
Mandarin feels when looking at Chinese characters displayed in the middle
of English text is close to what a Chinese net surfer whose knowledge of
English is scarce—and this is the case for the majority of the people living
in China—feels when s/he looks at Google’s advertisement on Sina.com.cn.
Since they are used to seeing it, probably most Chinese users don’t actually
feel the Google logo is wrong, but they certainly feel it is foreign.
Does that mean that Google was, in the 2000s, making an enormous
mistake in its handling of the Chinese market? I would say yes.21 And this
is so from the very beginning: if you go into the Internet Archive (https://
archive.org/) and plunge back to Google’s China page from 2004 (the
date of my first screenshots), you will notice that although the logo went
through several adjustments, the basic relation between the two languages
didn’t change. Actually, the size of the English name has slightly increased
in the 2010 version of the logo.
It is easy to imagine examples other than this one. For instance, Chinese
is traditionally written vertically from the right to the left, so we could
design Web pages with vertical text on computers windows that would be
expandable to the left (and not to the right, as has been the standard for
many years). Or we could imagine computers, at the moment so good at
chess and so bad at the traditional Chinese game Go, becoming terrific Go
players and poor chess players, and so on.
220 Chapter 13
Conclusion
This book’s ambition was to discuss the cultural content of artifacts and
how, under specific circumstances, such content becomes observable out-
side the technical object. It was also an attempt to provide an alternative
to the concept of culture and an attempt to connect sinology and Chinese
studies with science and technology studies (STS). Relying on the case stud-
ies of the Chinese electronic musicians (chaps. 5–10), I introduced the con-
cept of waves, which I defined as the lowest level of shape that matter can
take, and I emphasized its relevance in relation to the study of technical
objects.
Throughout this book, I showed how waves share several basic prop-
erties. First, they are always located on a material support—sometimes
human, sometimes nonhuman. Second, their presence can be rigid (if
someone speaks a specific language it is then hard for her/him to forget
it, as it is hard to remove a song already engraved on a vinyl record or to
change the design of a computer keyboard) or flexible (as when someone is
listening to music and flows of sounds pass quickly through her/his mind,
or in a computer window surfing the Internet, where information passes
at a fast pace). Simply stated, waves’ circulations are closely related to the
physical structures that host them. It is this material support that makes the
difference between, for example, analog and digital media, and it is impor-
tant to emphasize this materiality rather than calling it a semiotic status,
because they are actually one and the same thing.
With regard to cultural difference and the waves contents of material
objects, the case studies showed that when a person uses a technical object,
the circulations can be observed in the output of the collaboration between
the user and the artifact. The exact amount of waves coming from the arti-
fact and to be found in the output depends on the specific conditions of
the usage, which includes the degree of interaction with the user, as well as,
to use a SCOT concept, his or her degree of inclusion in the technological
frame (Bijker 1987; Bijker 1995), but also the structure of the artifact itself,
both of which I defined earlier in terms of modifiability (see Modifiability”
in chap. 9, and “Unmodifiable versus Inscriptible Objects” in chap. 10). For
these reasons, complex interactions’ processes remain hardly predictable
and always need to be studied in detail.
In the introduction, I discussed how the concept of culture became a big
mess, with confusing definitions and interpretations that were rendered
useless by the complexity the authors were trying to seize. Such a view
does not pay justice to the amazing works done by many social scientists,
Waves and Forms 221
especially anthropologists, who made the issue of culture and its difficul-
ties clearer and, therefore, seizable. Having reached the end of this book, I
would like to connect the concept of waves with a few works authored by
those who are among the most famous names in anthropology and show
how it relates with their views.
Culture
Arjun Appadurai, an Indian scholar who emigrated to the United States,
became during the last twenty years a leading figure in social-cultural
anthropology and cultural studies for his arguments regarding globaliza-
tion and so-called cultural flows. He discusses, for instance, how “moving
images meet deterritorialized viewers” when Koreans in Philadelphia watch
the 1988 Olympics in Seoul through satellite feeds from Korea (Appadu-
rai 1996, 4). His most famous work is probably his conceptualization of
five dimensions of global cultural flows that he categorizes as ethnoscapes,
mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes, and ideoscapes; he uses these to
stress different streams moving across national boundaries (Appadurai
1996, 33, 46; see also this chap., n. 11).
The discussions Appadurai provides touch on many aspects of globaliza-
tion, and this is probably one of the reasons why his conceptualization has
such a broad impact. However, his focus, in Modernity at Large—Cultural
Dimensions of Globalization, is on the question of ethnic violence, a quite
different perspective from the one I use here. Whereas I concentrate on
micromovements and technical objects, Appadurai considers flows at a
macro level, paying attention to human beings’ collective imagination and
their expression through and within ethnic conflicts. This said, he also puts
his finger on the right spot when it comes to discussing the concept of
“culture”:
I find myself frequently troubled by the word culture as a noun but centrally attached
to the adjectival form of the word, that is, cultural. When I reflect on why this is so,
I realize that much of the problem with the noun form has to do with its implica-
tion that culture is some kind of object, thing, or substance, whether physical or
metaphysical. . . . If culture as a noun seems to carry associations with some sort of
substance in ways that appear to conceal more than they reveal, cultural the adjec-
tive moves one into a realm of differences, contrasts, and comparisons that is more
helpful. . . . Culture is not usefully regarded as a substance but is better regarded as a
dimension of phenomena, a dimension that attends to situated and embodied dif-
ference. (Appadurai 1996, 12–13; emphasis in the original)
The critical part of the concept of culture, as pointed out by Appadurai but
with regard to the concept of waves, is that it does not relate to some kind
222 Chapter 13
of thing but to the shape taken by things material—this is why the adjectival
form of the word sounds correct where the noun form does not. Cultural
means shaped.
Interestingly, and to move to another well-known scholar in anthropol-
ogy, a similar point can be made by linking the work of the anthropologist
Jack Goody on culture with the work of the philosopher Bruno Latour on
the concept of social. Goody, in a similar way to Baldwin et al. (discussed
in chap. 4), considers the various issues related to the use of the concept of
“culture” and suggests considering it as an aspect of the social.
We need to be fully conscious of the varying boundaries, not so much of a culture,

but of cultural practices. A recognition of these features may make us wary of sim-
plistic notions of cultural homogeneity, of the commonality of sense and non-sense.
It may indeed make us wary of the drift towards establishing a dichotomy between
the cultural and the social, or even of using the term “culture” altogether. Setting
aside these qualms, I shall . . . employ the concept as a vague pointer in the direc-
tion of the more generalized aspects of the behaviour of a particular human group,
indicating paths that might be trodden, might be explored, rather than established
domains already staked out. But as an aspect of, rather than opposed to, the social.
(Goody 1992, 18–19)
The cultural, in other words, is the social viewed from another perspective, not a
distinct analytic entity. (Goody 1992, 30)22
Goody’s view of the concept of culture is typical of British social anthro-

pologists who are uncomfortable with the idea of culture and, as their name
implies, prefer to stress the social aspect of human life rather than the cul-
tural, on the basis that the cultural cannot be decontextualized from the
practice of ordinary life (Bloch 2005, 97; see, for instance, his compatriot
Alfred Gell, whom I widely quote from in chap. 2).23
If we agree with Goody and consider that culture is the social viewed
from another perspective, the next step is to understand what “the social”
is. Interestingly, Latour has an argument on the latter. Similarly to Appadu-
rai, he argues that the social should not be conceptualized as a thing or a
substance, but as a “movement of re-association and reassembling” (Latour
2005, 7).
Most often in social sciences, ‘social’ designates a type of link; it’s taken as the name
of a specific domain, a sort of material like straw, mud, string, wood, or steel. . . . For
ANT, as we now understand, the definition of the term is different: it doesn’t desig-
nate a domain of reality or some particular item, but rather is the name of a move-
ment, a displacement, a transformation, a translation, an enrollment. (Latour 2005,
64)
Waves and Forms 223
Whenever a locus wishes to act on another locus, it has to go through some me-
dium, transporting something all the way; to go on acting, it has to maintain some
sort of more or less durable connection. . . . we end up with a superposition of vari-
ous canals as entangled and varied as those that an anatomist would see if she could
simultaneously color all the nerve, blood, lymph, and hormone pathways that keep
organisms in existence. “Admirable networks” (from retia mirabilia) is the expression
histologists have used to register some of these wondrous shapes. (Latour 2005, 220)
According to Latour, in terms reminiscent of those of Bijker and Pinch

about “working” artifacts, the social is the explanandum (what has to be
explained) and not the explanans (the explanation) (Latour 2005, 238;
Pinch and Bijker 1984, 406; Bijker 1995, 14, 75). In other words, if we con-
nect Latour’s argument with the previous one from Goody, we end up with
a conclusion close to Appadurai’s comment: “culture” (as an aspect of the
“social”), does not exist as a substance but as a dimension of phenomena, a
dimension that attends to situated and embodied difference, a movement,
a displacement, or a transformation—what I describe as waves’ circulations.
As these different quotations from prestigious works illustrate, to talk
about “culture” as it relates to waves’ circulation does not make things sim-
pler, it only makes them clearer. To paraphrase Latour, it changes an already
complicated question into a more complex one by going beyond categories
of various kinds of users, designers, and artifacts, or humans and nonhu-
mans, and by allowing for a conceptualization of change:24 waves can be
created, conserved, dissipated, displaced or fixed, while at the same time
remaining strictly connected to their physicality. The concept accounts for
movements and situations that can be localized regionally, moving inside
a network, changing shapes or not, or maintaining shape constancy while
depending on discontinuities.25
In this sense, the concept of wave is similar to the one of actor in the
actor-network framework: it is a higher abstraction than the categories of
technology or culture that subsume them. My hope is that it can be a step
in putting order to the confusion around the idea of culture, building a
clearer, more systematic link between human intentionality and the physi-
cal processes constitutive of reality. In this perspective, I use the related
concept of form (aggregates of waves) as a second-level concept, equivalent
to Latour’s immutable mobile (see “Waves” in chap. 9, or Dawkins’s meme
discussed in “Memetics” in this chap.), for creating order out of the chaos
of data.
There are many other aspects that need to be discussed, especially
how to articulate the concept with the huge existing amount of scientific
224 Chapter 13
knowledge on cultural processes. Hopefully, by getting lower on the concept

of culture we will find the beginning of a solution to a series of questions,
among which the difficulty of its definition was the most emblematic. My
wish is that the concept of wave can contribute to linking the different
human and social sciences and place issues related to technology and cul-
tural difference within larger processes, providing an enhanced, nuanced
understanding, while maintaining their rich complexity.26
In a nutshell, in this framework, we find now:
Wave: Smallest level of shape that matter can take.

Circulation: Movement where waves are either being transferred from
one material support to another, or located in a material support that is
displaced.27
Form: Aggregate of waves that is identified by a human being. Heuristic
device for ordering and classifying the empirical material human beings
deal with.
(Culture: Anything related to the circulation of forms.)
As the stories told in this book illustrate, the idea of wave derives from
music practice; this includes the name for the concept, which comes from
an analogy with sound waves. Reminiscent of the old days of evolutionism,
it is an attempt to build on what we know about natural sciences to see
what can be used in social sciences and humanities. It also allows for a new
perspective on the question of heterogeneity, in that the focus on waves
considers different kinds of physical host entities, while the “content” may
remain identical.28
It is certainly not a surprise to end up with a concept of waves’ circula-
tion in a study of electronic music, a field where this kind of phenomena
is especially obvious (as noted by Paul Théberge, see “The Roland MC-505
Groovebox” in chap. 5). To give but another example, Georgina Born’s
fascinating ethnographical work on IRCAM’s technical assistants versus
composers discusses how the use of machines to produce music became
“a practice in which authorship becomes multiple and in which it may be
difficult to reconstruct the lines of individuality,” and where knowledge
sharing occurs through artifacts over time (Born 1995, 268, 270).
Testimonies on contributions by IRCAM’s tutors (technical assistants to
the composers) to works of music are particularly revealing.
Often, working with unskilled composers, tutors joked cynically between themselves
that the musical results came out uncannily similar to the tutor’s own sounds and
music. . . . WOW was known for his individual, rich, and expressive use of the me-
dium; he himself considered that pieces that emerged from his tutoring work often
Waves and Forms 225
bore signs of his own musical personality. On the other hand, tutors were also con-
cerned with possible “guilt by association.” Being employed to help composers who
were untalented in the medium could mean becoming identified with an end result,
a piece, that was far below the tutor’s own standards, with the fear of damaging one’s
reputation. . . . it was often the tutors who did much of the actual hands-on work:
conceiving and arranging the technological configuration, writing the dedicated
software, writing the files within the programs that produced the actual computer
music output. (Born 1995, 265)
What the stories of the IRCAM tutors illustrate is that anything “technolog-
ical” is always also something “cultural.” There is no such thing as neutral
technology. The very essence of technology consists of being nonneutral,
or, in other words, cultural. That doesn’t mean that the content of an arti-
fact must be of a certain kind—it can be of many kinds—but there will
always be a content of waves.
Contemporary Sinology and the Study of the Present

At the beginning of the book, I discussed a difficulty that specialists of
China experience when they work on the present of material culture,
and the need for adequate frames of reference to study the evolving and
dynamic world of China today. In these last paragraphs, I want to suggest
what can be done concretely to improve sinological research and teaching
methodologies.
First, and without denying the need to understand the historical roots of
contemporary human society, not only sinologists but humanists in gen-
eral should spend more time and resources on the material culture of today.
A quick look at a newspaper, a TV program, or the Internet can help us
sketch a list of everyday things that should be objects of study: written or
audiovisual documents (from politicians, public figures, religious groups, or
statistical reports, advertisements, media reports); images (photographs or
illustrations, comics, reproductions); commercial products (cars, electronic
devices, cosmetics, furniture); landscapes and cities; websites; mobile appli-
cations; and so on.
The above list is not exhaustive, and the objects listed are not even origi-
nal: media studies already pays attention to press releases from extremist
religious groups; chemists study the composition of cosmetics; historians
of technology study the design of cars and electronic devices; and websites
are discussed on a daily basis in computer science courses.
But media studies are rarely able to list the Islamic references mentioned
in an Al-Qaeda video, because such an analysis requires the competences of
scholars working in Arabic studies. Chemists do not discuss the semantic
226 Chapter 13
contents of the design of a hydrating cream’s box because such a task

requires a background in art history. Web designers create software struc-
tures that have characteristics similar to the literary works of Laozi, Homer,
Balzac, Hemingway, or Lu Xun, about which specialists of literature have
much to say. Historians seldom work on the latest Renault car or the latest
mobile phone, but they could easily do this kind of research.
Maybe we should partly rely on statistical information to help us
choose from among the huge amount of artifacts available. For instance,
sinologists could distinguish between a written document (a mobile
phone, a picture, a movie, a computer, an mp3 file, and so forth) found
in China in the hundreds of thousands from another that only exists in
dozens. Similarly, the relevance of an item of information could be evalu-
ated by paying attention to how it is received, transmitted, recycled, and
so on.
Cultural studies and digital humanities have already moved in that
direction, the former more than fifty years ago. If these disciplines take
different forms in the numerous institutions that adopt them, making a
general statement rather difficult, there are two reasons why, I believe, it is
necessary to reconsider the issues they have legitimately raised. The first is
that cultural studies did not succeed in becoming an official discipline in
many, if not most, faculties of humanities. It seems to suffer from its Marx-
ist and Gramscist legacies that humanists see as being politically rather
than scientifically motivated.29 Cultural studies also mixes social sciences
methodologies and humanities, in particular the human versus nonhuman
dichotomy, which sometimes becomes a problem for humanists. In this
regard, cultural studies is a hybrid discipline, openly interdisciplinary. This
mix of approaches, I think, prevents humanists distinguishing between
concrete information located at the level of the physical object itself from
the more abstract information located in users’ minds. I am not saying one
should never work this way, but I believe that it is this specific mix with
the study of human beings that prevented cultural studies from developing
faster and better inside institutions such as the epistemological bunkers
that are faculties of humanities in Europe.
Digital humanities is in a different situation, because the sort of physical
objects on which it works is usually the same as for traditional humanities.
The difference is at the methodological level: new tools for research and,
with them, new methods. One can easily observe this aspect by consulting
courses on digital humanities available today.30 I don’t see there being a
radical change to the humanities’ traditional objects of study toward the
present.
Waves and Forms 227
Of course, disciplines in humanities have never been delimited clearly.

Today the tendency is to rely on interdisciplinary approaches, and bound-
aries are moving on an even larger scale. But this situation doesn’t change
the fact that scientists are trained to develop specific skills: you cannot read
a text in Chinese if you don’t know Mandarin. And you cannot understand
the structure of a piece of software, a car, or a magazine illustration if you
don’t have the relevant knowledge in computer science, mechanics, art his-
tory, or design history.
The choice of a physical object to be studied “in the present” must relate
to its relevance for the society that hosts it, and to the capacities and com-
petences of the person who is doing the research to extract something use-
ful from it. This is why contemporary sinology has to study in its own way
artifacts in China such as websites, mobile phones, cosmetics, advertise-
ment banners, TV series, mp3 files, computers, software, or cars: because
sinologists are the only ones with the skills required to do that job in that
particular way.
I am not criticizing what Asian studies or faculties of humanities do at
the moment, and do very well, but what they do not do. I am not sug-
gesting a reduction in the number of courses and research topics, nor do
I intend to deprecate the traditional goals and methodologies of humani-
ties. I am suggesting to add something more to them. Beyond the scientific
interest of doing so, I am convinced there would be concrete advantages for
our faculties of humanities, which are going through economically difficult
times.31 Studies on the present of everyday things has the advantage of
providing a clear answer to the question “What are humanities useful for?”
If some people think they need to raise the question for ancient Greek lit-
erature, it disappears for religious extremists’ video reports or the computer
ASCII keyboard. From the point of view of the present of things, humani-
ties are strategically easy to defend with the same arguments people use to
criticize them (criticisms often made for the wrong reasons and built mostly
on misunderstandings, but that shouldn’t prevent us from responding with
convincing arguments!).
And our students will appreciate the opportunity of working on the pres-
ent.32 For the majority of them, the physical objects they are confronted
with after they graduate too often do not correspond to what they studied
in the classroom, even though they did make a lot of applied exercises.
What is missing in humanities are case methods courses, similar to what
law schools and medical schools have been doing for more than a century.
A lawyer does not limit herself to studying law classics, but also trains to
handle real cases. A medical school student does not limit herself to reading
228 Chapter 13
medical school books and commenting them, but also trains to diagnose
from imaginary cases, based on real-life situations, which are prepared by
medical school teachers. Similarly, humanities students should not only
be asked to master the classical literature of their field, but also to deal
with problems similar to those they will find in the real world after they
graduate.33
Beyond the old debate between fundamental versus applied research,
we need to ask ourselves: Why haven’t humanists been more interested in
websites, religious extremists’ video reports, supermarket items, or software
applications? The question calls, I think, for two answers, which are com-
plementary. The first is a bit painful. We suffer from the well-known gap
(which we, ironically, often study) between the rich and the poor, between
high culture and low culture.34 Many humanists are simply not interested
in artifacts produced by or for the majority of the people that surround
them. One only needs to pick up a song or a TV program that has had a lot
of success recently to observe this fact: you will probably fail to locate this
object of study in the list of courses of the nearest faculty of humanities.
Although there are humanists who work on this kind of material, they are
a tiny minority whose number is proportionally inverse to the number of
people interested in these things outside the university.
The second answer is more abstract. We do not know exactly how to
study the present of mundane artifacts. The absence of a clear historical
perspective has a paralyzing effect on humanists, to the point that when
we see archeologists looking at small pieces of earth or stones, or histori-
ans trying to decipher old texts, we feel confident in the findings they can
bring—but in front of the billions of Web pages on the Internet, or millions
of mobile phones and pieces of computer software we see everywhere on
the planet, we feel anxious: What are we going to say about those ones?
When the day comes that we have made enough studies on the present of
things, this feeling will certainly disappear.
Notes
Chapter 1
1. Special thanks to the anonymous person (from a Christian association in Bel-

gium, if I remember correctly) who answered my Internet request seeking a copy of
this comic strip—which I remembered from long ago in my childhood—by kindly
scanning it and putting it for download on the Web. Several years later, Tony from
Tony’s Trading kindly helped me find the English version.
2. Steve Woolgar raised issues similar to Akrich’s in an analysis of interactions

between designers, technical objects, and users, based on an eighteen-month field-
work study at a microcomputer company (Woolgar 1991). Akrich’s paper was pub-
lished in 1987 in French; it did not appear in English until 1992. Probably for this
reason, English-speaking STS scholars tend to refer to Woolgar’s article, published in
1991, whereas French scholarship relies more on Akrich’s work. Compared to the
notion of script, Woolgar’s emphasis on “configuring” users—meaning, to define,
enable, and constrain (see Woolgar 1991, 69)—is slightly more on the human side of
interactions. Readers may also want to read Becker (1986, 123) and the summary by
Oudshoorn and Pinch (2003, 10) on genderscript, or how feminist scholars extended
the script approach to include the gender aspects of technological innovation and
how technologies invite or inhibit specific identities or relations.
3. I was influenced by this comment from the American sociologist Howard Becker
(2007b) on the use of stories:
Perhaps as a result of my experiences in teaching, I have become more and more convinced of the
importance of stories—good examples—in the presentation of ideas. I used to be irritated when
students told me that what they remembered from my sociology of art course was the story of
Simon Rodia and the Watts Towers, which I told in enormous detail and illustrated with slides. I
wanted them to remember the theories I was so slowly and painfully developing. Later, I decided
that the stories were more important than the theories. (Becker 2007b, 105–106)
230 Notes
Chapter 2
1. Sound studies is a relatively young field of research in STS. See the handbook
recently published by Trevor Pinch and Karin Bijsterveld (Pinch and Bijsterveld
2012), and for instance Hennion 1989; Théberge 1997; Gitelman 1999; Taylor 2001;
Braun 2002; Pinch 2003; Pinch and Trocco 2002; Thompson 2002; Pinch 2003;
Pinch and Bijsterveld 2003; Pinch and Bijsterveld 2004 (special issue of the journal
Social Studies of Science on sound studies); Sterne 2003; Tjora 2009; Sterne 2012b;
Sterne 2012a. Back in 2004, Trevor Pinch and Karin Bijsterveld defined sound stud-
ies as “an emerging interdisciplinary area that studies the material production and
consumption of music, sound, noise, and silence, and how these have changed
throughout history and within different societies, but does so from a much broader
perspective than standard disciplines such as ethnomusicology, history of music,
and sociology of music” (Pinch and Bijsterveld 2004, 636).
2. See Wyatt 2008 for a discussion on technological determinism in STS.
3. See the two first chapters in Nye 2006 for examples of technologies used differ-
ently from what the technologies’ creators expected.
4. The question of attributing an agency, and even a subjectivity, to artifacts is an

old trope in STS. It goes back to Langdon Winner’s famous paper “Do Artefacts Have
Politics?” (Winner 1980), followed by many others (e.g., Callon 1986; Akrich 1992
[1987]; Hughes 1987; Latour 1988; Woolgar 1991; Barry 2001), which I will discuss
later in the book. The approach I will rely on deals with questions also raised in STS
by what is sometimes called the postcolonial study of science and technology
(Anderson 2002), or postcolonial computing in human–computer interaction stud-
ies (HCI) (De Souza et al. 2005; Irani et al. 2010), of “coming to terms with the tur-
bulence and uncertainty of contemporary global flows of knowledge and practice”
(Anderson 2002, 644).
5. Madeleine Akrich developed parts of her theoretical arguments through a field

research in Africa, where she observed the use of photoelectric lighting kits. Here is a
full quote from the related section of the text:
If we are to describe technical objects, we need mediators to create the links between technical
content and user. In the case of non-stabilized technologies these may be either the innovator
or the user. The situation is quite different when we are confronted with stabilized technologies
that have been “black boxed.” Here the innovator is no longer present, and study of the ordinary
user is not very useful because he or she has already taken on board the prescriptions implied in
interaction with the machine. Under such circumstances some prescriptions may be found in
user’s manuals or in contracts. Alternatively, we may study disputes, look at what happen when
devices go wrong, or follow the device as it moves into countries that are culturally or historically
distant from its place of origin. (Akrich 1992, 211)
Notes 231
6. For other, more recent work in British social anthropology with a focus on things,
see the publications of Tim Ingold, e.g., his notion of “meshwork” (intended to
describe material flow, as opposed to “network” labeled approaches—such as
ANT’s—which Ingold sees as networks of connected entities), or “following the
materials,” based on Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s works (e.g., Ingold 2007;
Ingold 2011, and the overview in Ingold 2012). For a similar approach in philoso-
phy, see Bennett 2010 who provides a fascinating discussion on how to consider
matter in movement both in space and between nonhuman and human entities
(e.g., food).
7. I am indebted to Dario Gamboni, who introduced me to Gell’s fascinating work.
8. For instance, in a description of an attempt to introduce an electric car in France,

Michel Callon suggests that we fully take into account the role played by the accu-
mulators, the electrodes, the electrons, the fuel cells, and so forth (Callon 1987, 86).
9. These similarities can also be observed in the comments of other scholars. For
instance, when Pinch and Bijker discuss Callon’s work, published in 1980, they
state: “Michel Callon, in a pioneering study . . . [demonstrates] that almost every-
thing is negotiable: what is certain and what is not; who is a scientist and who is a
technologist; what is technological and what is social; and who can participate in
the controversy” (Pinch and Bijker 1984, 408, writing about Callon 1980). Antoine
Hennion, discussing Becker’s book Art Worlds, published in 1982, comments: “If no
definition is final, no frontier stable, if no principle resists to an activity where
everything depends on something or someone else and where arrangements are
made, then everything needs to be redesigned. The skill of [Becker’s Art Worlds]
falsely modest stands in this gap between the simplicity of a hypothesis and the
enormity of its consequences” (Hennion 2007a, 130).
10. Bijker, Hughes, and Pinch do not claim most of the credit for this approach,
which was, according to them, symptomatic of a generally emerging interest in a
new type of technology study. They mention, for instance, the edited books of
Rachel Laudan, Donald MacKenzie, and Judy Wajcman published at about the same
period of time. In a similar way, Becker’s art worlds approach is part of what is today
known as the social worlds framework, a theoretical and methodological package
based on Anselm Strauss’s grounded theory and other works from scholars of the
so-called Chicago School, which has been taken into STS by Susan Leigh Star and
Adele Clarke, among others (see Clarke and Star 2008 for an overview).
11. Bijker actually uses the comparison with art to argue on this point (Bijker 1995,
10).
12. Some of the main articles have recently been republished in French, see Akrich
et al. 2006.
232 Notes
13. The most well-known authors of ANT are Madeleine Akrich, Michel Callon,
Antoine Hennion, Bruno Latour, and John Law. Latour especially has popularized
the question of “non-humans” in numerous books and articles that touched an
audience outside STS. ANT publications are usually grouped under the banner of
sociology of translation or actor-network theory (both names are used interchange-
ably; ANT is the most common one in English, but its main authors seem to prefer
the first one). In French, the best possible source is probably the publication of the
founding articles by the Presses de l’Ecole des Mines I mentioned in the note 12. In
English, John Law’s Web page on the actor-network theory is a good place to start:
http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/centres/css/ant/antres.htm, last consulted April 1, 2011.
14. See for instance Corbin and Strauss 1998, 9; Latour 2005, 101, 243.
15. On social worlds, see also note 10.
16. Becker works the same way, but he attributes the methodology to his arrogance
(Becker 1982, xi).
Chapter 3
1. http://www.4sonline.org/publications. Last consulted July 1, 2012.
2. As Bijker writes:
A technological frame structures the interactions among the actors of a relevant social
group. . . . technological frames are located between actors, not in actors or above actors. A tech-
nological frame is built up when interaction “around” an artifact begins. . . . [It] comprises all ele-
ments that influence the interactions within relevant social groups and lead to the attribution of
meanings to technical artifacts—and thus to constituting technology. . . . these elements include
(to begin with, at least): goals, key problems, problem-solving strategies (heuristics), require-
ments to be met by problem solutions, current theories, tacit knowledge, testing procedures, and
design methods and criteria. . . . Thus the technological frame comprises the actors’ criteria for
“working” and “nonworking,” rather than our own hindsight knowledge. (Bijker 1995, 123–124)
3. Collins relies on his own conceptualization, illustrated by the Imitation Game

(which I discuss later in the text), to explain what makes the difference between
animals and humans. “A rabbit born without legs and eyes will never know what it
is to have a rabbit-like body. But a human born without legs and eyes can know
what it is to possess the collective human body shape; a human can share the
knowledge through the medium of a language that has been part formed through
the physical interaction with the world” (Collins 2010, 136).
4. I had an opportunity to discuss this with Collins directly at the annual confer-
ence of the Society for Social Studies of Science in Copenhagen in 2012. I asked him
about the language issue because it is usually easy to hear, or read, the difference
between a native speaker and someone who has learned a language later, for instance
through the pronunciation or the grammar of the sentences. He said he sometimes
Notes 233
uses an additional person to “translate” the discourse in order to filter only the parts
of the information he is interested in evaluating. On interactional expertise specifi-
cally, see Collins 2011; Collins and Evans 2002. Collins’s interest on expertise can be
better understood by reading Collins 1984; I am indebted to his research group,
especially Martin Weinel and Robert Evans, for conversations about this that greatly
helped me figure out the main components.
5. http://www.4sonline.org/publications. Last consulted September 2012.
6. E.g., pp. 15, 68, 253, 392, 433, 665, 778, 856, 984 (Hackett et al. 2008).
7. E.g., pp. 45, 305, 928 (Hackett et al. 2008).
8. E.g., pp. 184, 242, 410, 584, 761, 907 (Hackett et al. 2008). On “culture” defined
in opposition to something else, see also Kuper 1999, 14–20.
9. E.g., pp. 44, 185, 588. See also the discussion on the concept of culture by Marga-
ret Lock on pp. 877–878 (Hackett et al. 2008).
10. E.g., pp. 193, 631, 938, 949–950 (Hackett et al. 2008).
11. Collins does not agree at all with the actor-network framework. See p. 153, the
conclusion on pp. 165–171, and the footnotes on pp. 78, 114, 116 (Collins 2010).
According to Collins, ANT does not accept that there is a deep and fundamental
difference between humans and nonhumans (which seems to me a little bit far-
fetched).
12. Look for their European Research Council–funded research project based on the
Imitation Game called “A new method for cross-cultural and cross-temporal com-
parison of societies,” where they explicitly link the concept of interactional exper-
tise with the one of cultural difference. See also Harry Collins and Robert Evans
“Quantifying the Tacit: The Imitation Game and Social Fluency,” draft working
paper, http://www.cf.ac.uk/socsi/contactsandpeople/harrycollins/expertise-project/
draftpapers/index.html, last consulted November 29, 2012.
13. About users of technical objects, see Akrich 1992; Oudshoorn and Pinch 2003.
On how people relate to things in the domestic environment Csikszentmihalyi and
Rochberg-Halton 1981 is a good read. In the field of music studies more specifically,
Pinch and Trocco 2002 provide with a fascinating story about the making of the
synthesizer Moog, and draw attention to the role played by users, including con-
sumers, in all aspects of the development process. In Human Computer Interaction
studies, see De Souza et al. 2005. For a recent paper on the study of objects in sociol-
ogy and how they tell us about humans, see Molotch forthcoming. Taylor 2001,
31–34 discusses the various approaches to technical devices and music, and states
explicitly, “I am simply more interested in people and music than gadgets” (p. 34).
Well, I am more interested in gadgets.
234 Notes
14. A previous version of this section was presented at a conference in Naples in

2008 (see Zimmermann 2008b), and the arguments have been discussed with col-
leagues from Geneva, Zurich, and Paris during seminars in the last few years. I owe a
lot to the people who contributed through their reactions and comments. My col-
league Laure Zhang gave me the synopsis of a a short presentation she made for our
students on the history of sinology and Chinese studies, from which some of the
information in this book is inspired.
15. See Fairbank 1969 for a positioning of American sinology at the end of the
1960s by someone who pioneered the study of China within disciplines (as opposed
to sinology as an independent discipline).
16. Wang Shuo is still very influential, but recently more through his TV and film
writing, through which he reached a huge audience.
17. See Goody and Watt 1963, 326–329.
18. The abstracts of the 2013 annual conference of the Association for Asian Studies
(AAS) were not available at the moment I did the analysis. A few months later, I tried
a quick comparison by counting the panels on China and Inner Asia. The numbers
were similar, with roughly 70 percent of the panels focused on the past, and two
thirds of the remaining 30 percent on the present were social sciences, political
science, or economical science studies; 10 percent looked like something one could
call “humanities in the present,” equally divided between elite and mass culture
(http://www.asian-studies.org/absts/2012abst/main-toc.asp, last consulted Novem-
ber 25, 2012). Special thanks to Paul Clark who provided feedback on parts of this
analysis.
19. See Zurndorfer 1995 for a detailed overview of the history of sinology. The Aus-
tralian sinologist Geremie Barmé, one of the leading figures on contemporary China,
suggested a couple of years ago a practice of what he calls “New Sinology”:
New Sinology is descriptive of a robust engagement with contemporary China and indeed with
the Sinophone world in all of its complexity, be it local, regional or global. It affirms a conversa-
tion and intermingling that also emphasizes strong scholastic underpinnings in both the classi-
cal and modern Chinese language and studies, at the same time as encouraging an ecumenical
attitude in relation to a rich variety of approaches and disciplines, whether they be mainly em-
pirical or more theoretically inflected. It is an approach that recognizes an academic and human
relationship with a vital and voluble Sinophone world that is not just about the People’s Repub-
lic, or Taiwan, or Chinese diasporas.
It bespeaks an involvement not just about the People’s Republic, or Taiwan, or Chinese dias-
poras. It bespeaks an involvement that is part of the intellectual, academic, cultural and personal
conversations in which many of us are engaged, not merely as Australians, but as individuals,
regardless of our background, individuals who are energetically and often boisterously intercon-
nected with one of the great, complex and lively geo-cultural spheres of the world. (Barmé 2008,
see also Barmé 2005 from which the major part of this citation is quoted by Barmé himself)
Notes 235
20. See the previous note. In French, see the hors-série 2010 of the journal
Etudes Chinoises from the Association Française d’Etudes chinoises, dedicated to Chi-
nese studies’ methodology and teaching. Nicolas Zufferey’s article specifically dis-
cusses the use of sinology’s “traditional” methods to grasp today’s China (Zufferey
2010).
21. See Latour 2005, 93–106, for an account of someone who was involved in the
disputes.
22. In the sense discussed by Herbert Blumer between definitive and sensitizing
concepts: they do not provide descriptions of what to see but suggest directions
along which to look (Blumer 1969, 147–148, quoted in Clarke and Star 2008).
Chapter 4
1. Unless indicated so, my synthesis of the history of culture is taken from Cuche
2001; Descola 2005; Kuper 1999; Lichtblau 2012. For this paragraph, see Cuche
2001, 8–9 (Cuche relies on Bénéton 1975 for the history of the word “culture”). For
other syntheses centered on the concept of culture, see Kroeber and Kluckhohn
1952; Goody 1992; Kuper 1999; Borofsky et al. 2001; Baldwin et al. 2006; Lichtblau
2012; Triandis 2007. Special thanks to my colleague Carole Fry who helped me dou-
ble-check the Latin sources.
2. Descola 2005, 112–113.
3. The debate lasted long after that. See Holloway 1969 for an example of a publica-
tion where anthropologists discuss theoretical frameworks that attempt to establish
differences between primate and human behavior (the article is followed by several
comments and a response by Holloway).
4. Lichtblau 2012; Descola 2005, 115.
5. Descola 2005, 10.
6. Descola 2005, 111.
7. Kuper 1999; Lichtblau 2012; Descola 2005, 114.
8. While the word “shape” is often used in STS, and social sciences in general, to
account for social constructions (e.g., the title in Bijker and Law 1992), references to
the notion of shape with regard to matter go back to Aristotle. For instance, in a
discussion about the soul, Aristotle says: “In regard to all sense generally we must
understand that sense is that which is receptive of sensible form apart from their
matter, as wax receives the imprint of the signet ring apart from the iron or gold of
which it is made: it takes the imprint which is of gold or bronze but not gold or
bronze” (De anima, 424a, Book II, in Durrant 1993, 47). Special thanks to Hamid
236 Notes
Taieb who told me about this text. Aristotle had, however, a different account of
perception and knowledge of things in the world than we have, and his use of the
words “material” or “matter” needs to be understood differently than the meaning
we have today. For a recent translation and discussion of these terms see Aristotle
2011. See also the review by Tim Ingold on how Aristotle’s “hylomorphic” (to
describe compounds of matter and form) approach was used and then later aban-
doned by scholars (Ingold 2012).
9. I am indebted to Trevor Pinch, who advised me in the very last step of this manu-
script to get rid of a former appellation of “cultural elements” that I used before
(Zimmermann 2010, 2013), where “element” had the inconvenience of giving a
wrong notion of “part of something.”
10. On the “context of use,” see also Pinch 2003, 119.
11. See Kraus 2004 for a well-written and detailed summary of the changes in the
cultural policy and institutions in the People’s Republic of China from 1949 until
the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Part II
1. See, for instance, Callon 1980; 1987, 96; Akrich 1992, 211; Akrich 1993, 51; Star
1999, 382; Becker 2007a, 264; Latour 2005, 81; Becker 2008, xv, xvi; Bijker 1995, 50,
124; Pinch 1985, 96.
Chapter 5
1. See De Kloet 2001, 104–113; Baranovitch 2003, chapter 3.
2. For information about nightlife in China and its historical development, see the
publications of James Farrer, e.g., Farrer 2008.
3. I am indebted to Christiaan Virant, an American musician living in China, who

advised me to be aware of “China’s Firsts” in 2003, which eventually lead to the
writing of this section.
4. According to Farrer, transnational entrepreneurs played an important role in the

founding of contemporary Chinese nightlife and were the main group of patrons at
Chinese bars and clubs, at least until the middle of the 1990s (Farrer 2008, 14). For
an example in Shanghai in the 1990s and 2000s, see the sections about the bars
D.D’s and Y.Y., described in Field 2008, 21. The club Park 97, described in the same
article by Field, was a Shanghainese equivalent of Vogue at that time.
5. De Kloet and Wang provide similar observations about rock musicians (Wang
2007, 57, 219; De Kloet 2001, 65, 95). See also Komlosy 2008, and Baranovitch
2003, 13. The role model in music is an obvious phenomenon that has long been
Notes 237
identified and used by manufacturers for advertising. See also chapter 8 on Lao
Dong’s Internet connection and the discussion of BT’s studio).
6. This actually did happen a few years later. QU eventually split, and two of
the musicians signed with a major label in Beijing. In 2003, I noticed an advertise-
ment in town that presented this new band as the first electronic music band in
China.
7. Two had played with Dou Wei 䩎ⓗ, and one of them became a member of
Second Hand Roses Ḵㇳ䍓䐘 a few years later. The third one was a member of Gao
Qi and Overload 檀㕿&崭弥.
8. On the making and early use of presets in synthesizers, see Pinch 2003, Pinch and
Trocco 2002, 188, 212, 317.
Chapter 6
1. On the history of techno as a musical style, see Thornton 1996, 74–75.
2. As far as I understood the promotional work, these places were chosen because of
their potential customers: the bars and shops were trendy places that club goers
would visit during the week, and the foreign student community often came to the
clubs to party on the weekend. Chinese university students and ordinary bars or
shops in the city were not considered as potential targets. Indeed, in 2003–2004,
when I spoke about my research at Peking University, none of my fifteen Chinese
colleagues (master and doctoral students at the department of sociology) had been
in a club even once in their lives. On the use of flyers for advertising parties in clubs,
see also Thornton 1996, 141.
3. Xiao Deng had had a strong interest in the practice of scratch some years before,
but had given it up. This decision was probably related to the fact that he considered
himself a techno artist; scratch is traditionally the privilege of hip hop, and the spe-
cial effects achieved by altering the speed of the turntable are mostly performed on
vocal sounds (techno, in general, does not have human vocals, in contrast to hip
hop).
4. I believe Beijing clubs’ crowds at the beginning of the 2000s were composed of
people about five years older than the average crowd described in Thornton 1996
(see for instance pages 2–3, where she explains that she started the research at 23
and then aged out of the peer group she was studying).
5. I heard about lesbian bars as well but I have never been to one. The gay clubs I
visited a couple of times had a predominately male clientele.
6. Women hostesses play a central role in Chinese nightlife; for publications on this
topic see the impressive field research of Zheng Tiantian (e.g., Zheng 2008).
238 Notes
7. On the club and disco environment, see Fikentscher 2000, 23.
8. The musicians and the people who were regulars at the clubs never paid the
entrance fee for dance events (which could vary between 30 RMB and 50 RMB).
Once I had become a member of this specific crowd, I never had to pay a single
entrance fee again. When I arrived at a club, I looked for someone I knew (an
employee, someone in the audience) who then informed the security guards about
my status, saying, for example, “friend of Xiao Deng” ⮷总䘬㚳⍳. I then got a stamp
on my wrist (a common system, also used at parties in Switzerland, to distinguish
those who had already paid for their ticket from those who had not), and I got in.
9. On the question on who congregates where in clubs and the relation between
taste and social affinity, see Thornton 1996, 112–113.
10. One can also note, over the Vestax DJ mixer, a small box with fake vampire
teeth that Xiao Deng had bought for a fetishist party, “to take part a little bit in the
atmosphere,” he said. In 2003–2004, at a typical fetishist party in Beijing, most of
the audience would dress in black and white with various sadomasochist-like cos-
tumes, but in a bon-enfant atmosphere. It was not an authentic fetishist event, as I
suppose certainly exists elsewhere, but one among other themes like Halloween,
New Year’s Eve, Christmas, and so forth, for the party crowd in Beijing.
11. For example, at reggae parties, DJs may mix 45 rpm (rotations per minute)
records and speak to the audience using a microphone.
12. See also Taylor 2001, 172 and Fikentscher 2000, 81. On the general quest for the
right piece of music at the right time, or a sociology of taste and the question of
locations and moments, see the enlightening Dora’s “failed interview” in Hennion
2007b, 110–111.
13. Even several years later, there were no vinyl shops in Beijing, and the practice of
DJing started to follow changes in technology. Around 2005, Xiao Deng started to
use his laptop computer for mixing, using the Traktor software and mp3 files. He
seldom bought vinyl records, but he was still following the procedure described
above and visiting decks-records.de. He didn’t send his Japanese friend to buy vinyl
records in Tokyo anymore but looked for mp3s on the Internet instead, using a peer-
to-peer software (i.e., a cost-free and illegal way to obtain music). When I asked him
if this method worked well, he said: “The songs of this website [that you can see
now on this label’s website on my computer screen], most of the time [I] can find all
of them” 征᷒仹䪁䘬恋ṃ㫴,➢㛔ᶲ悥傥㈦⇘. On music format’s loss of materiality
during the past decade, see also Straw 2009; Fouché 2012.
14. The first dance parties on the Great Wall started around 2000, but Xiao Deng’s
group had their own “Great Wall parties” starting in 2004.
15. Hennion 1998 provides a fascinating discussion about the “importance” of a

work of art through time, with an analysis of Haskell and Penny’s work on the
reception of Roman statues.
Notes 239
16. On the role played by artifacts in Becker’s art worlds, see also Menger 1993.
17. As my grandpa often said, Switzerland is not what it used to be.
Chapter 7
1. See note 4 in chapter 6.
2. Neither this famous producer, nor Xiao Deng’s Japanese friend and promoter,
actually did any “real” production work (for a discussion of the role of producers in
pop music, see Hennion 1983). The former was only the backer of that particular
song and didn’t provide any instruction, and the latter focused on administration
and management and rarely intervened in Xiao Deng’s making of songs.
3. Chinese electronic musicians often talked about “sound” ⢘枛 issues, which,

according to them, relate to the hardware and software used for making songs. A
friend of Xiao Deng’s, commenting a vintage synthesizer he had bought, pointed
out that “big names [musicians] all use this [equipment]” ⣏䇴⃧悥䓐征᷒. In an
article dedicated to the most famous devices of electronic music, the journalist Pat
Blashill discusses the Roland TR-808 drum machine and quotes several key artists,
among them Richie Hawtin (Xiao Deng’s role model), who declares “my track, ‘Spas-
tik,’ is basically just an 808” (Blashill 2002, 106). For similar observations on the
sound and status of instruments in electronic music, see Théberge (1997, 186–213)
and Taylor (2001, 192–195) concerning the “beat” in techno music, Roland
machines, and the structure of dance songs. For classical music, see Bijsterveld and
Schulp 2004. Perlman 2004 provides also an interesting discussion on the ethic of
listening and artifacts in audiophily.
4. De Kloet 2001 and Wang 2007 make many similar observations about rock musi-
cians; see, for instance, De Kloet 2001, 208.
5. The show was supported by an impressive installation of screens displaying com-

puter music software windows that were neither used nor needed by the musicians.
I was told by Lao Dong (manager of that club at the time, see next chapter) that the
display was probably meant to make the performance look “more electronic.”
6. Why did these artists work at night? Asked about it, musicians and their friends
answered my question by emphasizing the special atmosphere of the night, calling
it “different, more pleasant” 㮼㯃ᶵᶨ㟟,㮼㯃⤥. However, the connection with the
schedule of the days when there were concerts, or, for disc jockeys, the evenings
when they had to work (the parties usually started around 10 p.m. and ended
around 5 a.m. or later) seemed obvious, as the word “nightlife” ⣄䓇㳣 was often
used by all the participants. It referred, according to the context, either to their
everyday life schedule or their work activities in the nightclubs (for employees, man-
agers, disc jockeys, etc.), thereby indicating the link between the two. Although the
musicians I knew in Geneva did not have a similar night schedule, I think it is some-
thing that can be observed in many other countries. Since then, I have noted it in
240 Notes
interviews with foreign artists, for example the humorist Patrick Sébastien in France:
“I live upside down. For example, as I work during the night, I don’t wake up before
1 p.m. (“Moi, je vis à l’envers. Par exemple, comme je bosse toute la nuit, je ne suis
pas levé avant 13 heures” [Sébastien 2004, 56]). Or Rob Brown and Sean Booth from
the English electronic band Autechre, “wearing ourselves too thin till six in the
morning like we used to” (Autechre on music, technology, and egg custard 2005).
A student at the Department of Sociology in Peking University, in her master’s
thesis on rock music in Beijing at the end of the 1990s, makes similar observations
about a sample of twenty musicians: ㆹ忂彯ᶨ᷒㫴ㇳṳ乵⎎ᶨṃ㫴ㇳ䘬㺂暒䎫䘬朆㤪䌯
㉥㟟㱽,⃰⎶孧斖奪⮇Ḯ20ἁỵ⛘ᶳ枛᷸Ṣˤ . . . ṾẔ䘬ἄ〗㖞斜⬱㌺⬴ℐ㗗湹䘥案Ὰ䘬,
忂 ⷠ 㗗 ⣑ Ṗ Ḯ ㇵ䜉奱 ,ᷕ ⋰ ㆾ ᶳ ⋰ 崟 ⸲ ˤ . . . ⇘ ⸽ ỽ 㖞 ἄ 〗 ⬴ ℐ ⍾ ⅛ Ḷ ℟ ỻ ね㘗 ␴ ⻻㖞⽫
ねˤAs well about the rather relaxed time schedules: ⤪㝄Ἀ␴ṾẔ乎⭂Ḯ
ᶨ᷒㖞斜,侴彯Ḯ30–40↮摇ㇵ奩⥿⥿㜍徇ḇᶵ嵛ᷢ⣯ˤAnd the particular motivations
which probably relate to it: ⤪㝄宜ⶍἄ⮡Ḷ⣏ế侴妨㗗⮡ṾṢ㚱䓐䘬,侴ᶼ㗗⮡冒ㆹ᷒ỻ
㛔峐䘬 ⮡ 尉 ⊾ 䘬宅 ,⛘ ᶳ 枛 ᷸ Ṣ Ẕ 徱㊑䘬冒 ㆹ 㛔峐 ⮡ 尉 ⊾ 䘬ㇳ㭝 ⇁ ᶵ ᶨ 㟟 ,Ṿ Ẕ 㚱冒 ⶙ 䘬枛
᷸ ,㚱冒 ⶙ Ὰ 伖䘬 ,朆慷 ⊾ 䘬㖞斜デ⺽栮 ᶳ 䘬䓇㳣 ,征 ṃ 㕡⺷ ⎴ 㟟 ⎗ ẍ 彦 ⇘ 冒 ㆹ 㛔峐䘬㓰㝄 ˤ
(悕⨟⨟ 1997, 3–5.) Contemporary Chinese writer MianMian seemed also to work at
night: “So, the last three years, I lived in the countryside on my own, far away from
downtown, about an hour-and-a-half drive. The area was empty, and it was only me
living there. So I wrote every night and every morning. At 4 a.m., I felt a lot of
strange energy (coming) from out of my window—it (came) to me” Loewenberg
2004. See also Born 1995, 121, Taylor 2001, 127.
7. One must note here that this kind of “relation to the foreigner” was frequent in
other contexts in Beijing at that period. The Beijing jet set that went out at night in
expensive nightclubs was composed of famous actors and actresses, famous musi-
cians, top models, beautiful young ladies accompanying wealthy entrepreneurs, and
. . . average foreigners. See my quote of Baranovitch’s study in chapter 5.
8. I unfortunately have not been able to get the version that preceded the mix at the
studio. One must also note that the mastering—the final step of the process—is
missing. It was done later in Japan, which explains why the volume is low compared
to average commercial releases and also the few seconds of silence at the beginning;
these kinds of adjustments are usually made during the mastering.
9. Talking about these details, Xiao Deng told me that there was maybe another
stereo track with guitars that he decided not to use, but he couldn’t remember
exactly.
10. The use of this plugin might be the result of discussions between Xiao Deng and
me that I since have forgotten. I was a big fan of the GRM at the time (and still am).
Also, I believe here Xiao Deng was mistaken; I corrected the information he gave me
saying that he used the “GRM Reson plug,” because if one listens closely to the song,
what one hears is the GRM BandPass plugin and not the GRM Reson plugin.
Notes 241
11. Asked if he always proceeded this way, Xiao Deng said he usually preferred start-
ing with the bass line and the drums.
12. This plugin is a software emulation of a synthesizer hardware series originally

commercialized by the Japanese company Yamaha, consisting of models DX7, DX7-
II, DX11, TX81Z, DX21, DX27, DX100, and TX802. On the history and develop-
ment of synthesizers, see Théberge 1997, Pinch 2003, Pinch and Trocco 2002.
13. See http://www.easysounds.de/ for Peter Krischker’s website (last consulted Jan-
uary 2014). According to the information on the website, as well as other Web
resources at the time, Peter Krischker was a productive and well-established German
programmer.
14. For a similar discussion but with a focus on how recording studios become more
integrated with one another via the Internet (and by other means) and how con-
cepts of space and place get (re)invented in the context of music production, see
Théberge 2004. Richard 2008 provides a discussion on the effects of “glocalization”
on social relations in the electroacoustic community.
Chapter 8
1. Lao Dong didn’t want me to talk about his parents, so for this reason I do not
provide information on his family background.
2. See Jones 1992 for a pioneering work on the Chinese rock scene in Beijing.
3. For similar observations on the influence of recordings and DVDs in the south of
China, see also chapter 5, note 5.
4. See chapter 6, note 2.
5. I collected these figures by asking the employees of the clubs and the taxi drivers.
6. The transition in these two cases seemed to go through a close relationship with
more experienced male DJs, as these two women DJs were, respectively, the former
girlfriend of a foreign male DJ and the current girlfriend of a Chinese male DJ. Eliza-
beth Hinkle-Turner, in a recent study on female composers of electronic music in
the United States, presents an impressive list of women who have achievements in
the field (over a hundred) and notes the importance of the role model (Hinkle-
Turner 2006, pp. 7, 50, 167, 247, 253).
7. On diffusion of innovations through specialized media and interpersonal rela-

tions, see Rogers (1995, 77, 89) and Warschauer (2004, 157).
8. The importance of movies and videos as a channel for exchange across linguistic
and cultural boundaries is also noted by Ian Condry in his study of hip hop in Japan
(Condry 2007, 63).
242 Notes
9. This indication was written directly in Roman alphabet transcription on the page
and its meaning was obscure. Unfortunately, I forgot to ask Lao Dong in 2001, and
when I asked him about it a couple of years later, he couldn’t remember what this
feature was.
Chapter 9
1. For academic papers on Max/MSP at the time of the observations, written by its
creators, see Puckette 2002 and Zicarelli 2002.
2. For a U.S. perspective on how musicians acquire their skills following procedures
similar to Lao Dong’s, see Pinch and Reinecke 2009.
3. http://lloopp.klingt.org/, last consulted March 2004.
4. “Midnight Buzz” was never released officially on compact disc, vinyl, or even on
an mp3. Nor was it ever played on the radio or during a dance party. Despite its
obvious qualities, I think Lao Dong did not consider this piece as being fully success-
ful. He actually never released any electronic music tracks between 2001 and 2013
(he had released records with his previous rock bands, and, starting in 2009, he pro-
duced for other Chinese DJs with his electronic music label). To my own ears, the
song is a bit long, but the track is really high-level if one considers the conditions
under which it was written at the time and the absence of mix or mastering in a
professional studio. Lao Dong told me that after he finished this recording, he
played it once to a famous Chinese producer to see what he thought. The feedback
he got was that it was “not commercial [enough]” ᶵ⓮᷂.
5. As it is easy to notice when listening to “Tribal,” Lao Dong was mostly interested
in the kind of sounds he often played as a disc jockey. The sound files he down-
loaded came mainly from drum machines known mostly, if not exclusively, for their
use in dance music (see “Writing Techno Songs,” chap. 7, for a similar observation
with Xiao Deng). For example, he had “808kit,” “909 kit,” and “TR606aiff” folders
on his hard disc which referred to the TR-808, TR-909 and TR-606 Roland drum
machines. Many Internet users put these kinds of sound files online, and they could
easily be found and downloaded in China or elsewhere.
6. He had acquired the latter three years before, after a period of hesitations and
trials. He told me he had been first to a local importer of music devices and had tried
several synthesizers. He had also consulted a great number of websites, including
some visited by Western musicians, and he had noted that people were enthusiastic
about the Nord Modular. He had asked a French net surfer he met in a musicians’
forum, who strongly encouraged him to purchase one. It is interesting to note that
Lao Dong proceeded here in the same way as his musician friends, such as the mem-
bers of the band QU (chapter 5) who came to see him in order to get information
Notes 243
about music devices and software. As pointed out by Everett Rogers: “Diffusion
investigations show that most individuals do not evaluate an innovation on the
basis of scientific studies of its consequences, although such objective evaluations
are not entirely irrelevant, especially to the very first individuals who adopt. Instead,
most people depend mainly upon a subjective evaluation of an innovation that is
conveyed to them from other individuals like themselves who have previously
adopted the innovation” (Rogers 1995, 18).
7. His decision to use waveform~ objects was in part related to the fact that he
regretted that Omnisequ focused on percussive sounds and didn’t allow him to use
longer sound files. He wanted to be able to manipulate sound loops that would last
at least several seconds. He told me he knew the waveform~ object because he had
seen it inside a Japanese programmer’s patch that he downloaded during the year
2002 (I suspect it was cyan/n from Katsuhiro Chiba, http://www.audiooo.com, last
consulted January 2014). The memory of this patch had given him the idea of build-
ing a similar structure.
8. This concept, together with the use of the word circulation, is inspired by its use
in Bruno Latour’s works, from Latour and Woolgar 1979 to his most recent publica-
tions, as well as the notion of translation (Akrich et al. 2006, Callon 1975). See also
O’Connell 1993 (and note the reference to Latour in the acknowledgments). I come
back to this theoretical point in the last chapter.
9. “Omnichord readme” file, downloaded from http://loopool.live.fm/filez/

OMNICHORD_DELUXE_(max-msp)/, last consulted January 2004; website no
longer available.
10. Although not formulated explicitly, the concept of inscription devices has several
similarities with Akrich’s later work, see Latour and Woolgar 1979, 68, Latour 2006,
49–56.
11. http://karma-lab.com/People/SKay.html, last consulted January 2014.
12. Or Trevor Pinch with the users of Moog synthesizers:
Moog’s engineers and sales reps were often bemused to discover that some rock groups used the
synthesizer essentially with only one patch setting, which would be the only sound they would
use in their performances. On one occasion a well-known British rock group became distraught
when Moog’s New York sales representative, Walter Sear, started to take out their patch wires.
To Sear’s amazement, he found that they feared they would never again be able to make the one
sound they used in live performance. (Pinch 2000, 389)
13. For an interesting article on how aspects of informal software design process can
later be found in the structure of the software artifact itself, and the general question
of the “social contents” of technical artifacts from a human—computer interaction
perspective, see De Souza et al. 2005 (special thanks to Muriel Bowie, who told me
about this paper).
244 Notes
14. On large-scale complexity of technological systems in the post–World War II

era, see Hughes 2004, chapter 4.
15. For similar points of view in STS, see how Callon discusses the extent to which
an entity is susceptible to modification in an actor-network (Callon 1987, 96), or
Wiebe Bijker concerning how artifacts can be “hard” for actors with high inclusion
versus low inclusion (Bijker 1995, 283–284).
16. See also Collins 2010, 18–19, 36, 49, 50, 72, 101.
Chapter 10
1. There exist many different usages for almost any kind of musical device, and
alternatives are constantly explored by musicians. For instance, dub music was origi-
nally produced using the instrumental parts of reggae songs played live on a mixing
console; in this case, the mixing device became a musical instrument. However, I
believe Lao Li’s use of the multitrack recorder was quite unique and specific to his
knowledge system, which I describe later in this chapter.
2. I haven’t been able to figure out what the professions of his parents were; he said
his mother was involved in religious activities in a Buddhist institution.
3. On recording devices as musical instruments, see Kealy 1979; Sterne 2007.
4. Special thanks to my student Médéric Droz-dit-Busset, who raised this question

and helped me clear it up.
5. See chapter 2, note 1.
6. This device became famous a few years later when the Beijing-based band FM3
made a homemade version of the device and commercialized it in an ingenious way
under the name of “Buddha Machine” (http://www.fm3buddhamachine.com/, last
consulted January 2014). I attended four live performances of FM3 in 2003–2004;
Lao Li played at three of them (before or after FM3) and he used the prayer device on
stage (but FM3 did not). Lao Li told me in 2008 that several of his friends criticized
FM3 for “stealing” his idea, but he himself didn’t care much. He said he would have
been incapable of turning it into a commercial product anyway.
7. It can be downloaded at http://cms.rolandus.com/assets/media/pdf/vsappgd2.

pdf; see p. 20. Last consulted March 2010.
8. The audio resellers in Switzerland I asked (a group of highly competent and pas-
sionate people who had been working in the field for two decades) had never heard
about this model, and I haven’t been able to find its production date. On a Web post
dated April 8, 2007, someone wrote that s/he bought one for about 40£ in the
United Kingdom at the beginning of the 1990s, http://www.codinghorror.com/
blog/2005/12/headphone-snobbery.html, consulted March 2010.
Notes 245
9. For another example in China, see the observations of GUO Tingting 悕⨟⨟
regarding Beijing rock musicians 悕⨟⨟ 1997: 11 (on Guo’s work see also chap. 7,
n. 6).
10. I found them on the Internet for 23€ in 2004.
11. http://www.soundman.de/, last consulted January 2014.
12. http://www.842.ch/dl/HD-25.m4a, http://www.842.ch/dl/OV880V.m4a.
Chapter 11
1. See Harvey Molotch’s work, e.g., his paper on objects in sociology (forthcoming
in Sociological Forum).
2. Latour has a special talent for formulating things in a way that is both striking
and to the point, which is why I quote him here. The distinction between descrip-
tion and explanation is an old trope in philosophy that goes back to the middle of
the nineteenth century, see Freuler 1997, 128–133 for an overview. Compare also
with Becker 2007b, 79, and 9, 15, 75. In STS, see Pinch 1985; Bloor 1999, 93.
3. Parts of this section are adapted from Zimmermann 2011, 2013.
4. For a detailed story of the development of the Internet in China at that time, see
Tai 2006.
5. UUZone.com closed a few years later. See “Chinese SNS website UUZone.com to
close in March 2009,” China Tech News, http://www.chinatechnews.com/2009/02/
05/8663-chinese-sns-website-uuzonecom-to-close-in-march-2009/, accessed July 13,
2009.
6. See for example “⺨⽫仹,” 䘦⹎䘦䥹, http://baike.baidu.com/view/1629630.

html?wtp=tt, accessed July 9, 2009. Or in its competitors’ discourse: Louislau,
“⋫㨉⺨⽫仹㲐ℴ䓐㇟彦800ᶯ㖍⛯100ᶯ孧斖慷,” ⋿㕡㉍᷂仹, http://tech.qq.com/a/
20090413/000060.htm, accessed April 14, 2009. The idea of going on the Web to
have fun, rather than for work or to look for information, is often described as one
of the main characteristics of Chinese net surfers if compared to Western net surfers.
7. I was told by a Swiss Web designer that this feature, sometimes called “foot-
prints,” is standard on many social networking sites in Asia.
8. For a newspaper article in English about this game at the moment of observa-
tion, see “Chinese ‘facebook’ friends hooked on games,” China Daily, http://www
.chinadaily.com.cn/life/2008-09/17/content_7034975.htm, accessed July 13, 2009.
9. http://www.aetv.com/parking-wars/, accessed July 13, 2009. I have been able to

find posts on the discussion board of the application Parking Wars on Facebook that
were dated from December 29, 2007, which makes it clearly much older than the
246 Notes
version on Happy Network. A short article on this game and its development for
Facebook can be found here: Simon Carless, “AGDC: Area/Code’s Lantz on creating
Parking Wars for Facebook,” http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index
.php?story=20275, accessed July 13, 2009. Several games on Happy Network are
described by Chinese net surfers as copies of existing applications on other SNS. The
complete list with references can be found on 䘦⹎䘦䥹 or Wikipedia in Chinese.
10. It was difficult to get figures for Happy Network, given the complexity of the
Chinese Web, and the competitive environment which doesn’t encourage site
owners to let outsiders know too much about their business. Some users also seemed
to open more than one account in order to get fast virtual money by playing against
themselves. Eventually, I relied mainly on my own observations, which I confirmed
with other sources such as reports in the Chinese media (see the references below
and in the other notes), and two informal interviews with former collaborators of
Happy Network that I conducted during the summer of 2013 for verification pur-
poses.
In Chinese, synthesized and fairly reliable information about Happy Network is
available on Baidu (http://baike.baidu.com/view/1629630.html?wtp=tt, accessed
July 9, 2009), Wikipedia in Chinese, (http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%BC%80%E
5%BF%83%E7%BD%91, accessed July 11, 2009), as well as in the press (e.g., 倾⯏,
‘ᷕ⚥⺷䣦Ṍ仹䪁妋⭮:15᷒㚰3000ᶯṢᶲ䗦’, ⣏㲳仹-⸧ⶆ㖍㉍, http://news.sohu.com/
20090616/n264548342.shtml, accessed July 11, 2009). Statistics are available
on China Websites Ranking, http://www.chinarank.org.cn/top500/Rank.do?
r=1247120937158 (accessed July 11, 2009), or from Alexa, http://www.alexa.com/
topsites/countries/CN, accessed July 11, 2009, as well as Google Insights for Search,
http://www.google.com/insights/search/#, accessed July 9, 2009.
11. Facebook had other ways of displaying advertisements as well, but I do not dis-
cuss them because the comparison is only used here as a tool for analysis where the
focus is on Happy Network.
12. A few weeks later I noted that some car manufacturers had a link to a commer-
cial for a real vehicle on their website, right next to the corresponding virtual car.
A blog post from December 2008 also mentioned the presence of ads for car
manufacturers on Happy Network: Tangos, “Kaixin001 has ads on apps,” China
Web2.0 Review, http://www.cwrblog.net/1231/kaixin001-has-ads-on-apps.html
(accessed July 13, 2009), dated December 8, 2008.
13. A short description of the apps on Happy Network in October 2008 is given in
this blog post from Alan Rutledge, “Kaixin001: China’s Apple of social networks,”
TechCrunch, http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/16/kaixin001-chinas-apple-of
-social-networks/, accessed July 14, 2009.
14. See Juliet Ye, “Kaixin001 v. Kaixin: Social Networking goes to court,” China
Journal, http://blogs.wsj.com/chinajournal/2009/05/21/kaixin001-v-kaixin-social
-networking-goes-to-court/, accessed July 13, 2009.
Notes 247
15. The “Great Firewall of China,” so-called, and censorship issues are often dis-
cussed in the Western media in a very truncated way, usually closer to a Hollywood
movie script (the “evil” Chinese government against the “good” dissidents fighting
for freedom) than what is really going on with the Internet in China. Tai (2006)
provides a well-informed discussion on this issue.
16. For example, in this article from February 2009, a user sells his account—includ-
ing amazing virtual goods—for 80,000 RMB (about US$12,000) “⽫仹ⶸ⎟⎓ẟ8ᶯ⃫:
慵⸮30ᶯ䘥栮㲐ℴ星䕗䉪,” ⋶潁仹-慵⸮⓮㉍,㕘恶䥹㈨, http://tech.sina.com.cn/i/2009
-07-02/10263229607.shtml, accessed July 14, 2009.
17. Articles in the Chinese media on SNS have similar concerns to those that I
heard about in Switzerland at the same time, e.g., privacy or legal issues. See for
example 仿㗾, “⺨⽫仹⇃⥳Ṣ:䣦Ṍ仹䪁桶䓇㯜崟暨冒⼳,” 䥹㈨㖍㉍,㕘⋶仹, http://news
.xinhuanet.com/internet/2009-05/11/content_11350528.htm, accessed July 13,
2009.
18. This general work procedure was confirmed by current collaborators and former
collaborators of Happy Network I interviewed in Beijing during the summer of 2013.
19. http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=2234372130, last consulted January

2010.
20. I wish I could call it the string theory, but unfortunately the name is already
taken, both in physics and in STS with Harry Collins’s concept of string (see
“Waves,” chap. 9).
Chapter 12
1. For comments on ASCII in other cultural contexts, see Norman 1999, 18 and
Warschauer 2004, 203. On the QWERTY question, which I do not discuss here, see
David 1985. Nardi et al. 2011 discuss similar issues with a Human Computer Interac-
tion perspective; the labels these authors define (comparative informatics, grounded
comparisons) are probably useful in their field, however I am not convinced about
the necessity of using new abstractions, because these concepts have already been
defined by social scientists (grounded theory in particular, and anthropology). For
similar cases involving informatics, see also Zimmermann 2008c.
2. See O’Connell 1993 for a nice discussion on metrology and “the creation of uni-
versality by the circulation of particulars.”
3. For information on pinyin, and also a different point of view than that of Ledder-
ose on the Chinese script, see DeFrancis 1984. DeFrancis 2006 also discusses briefly
the pinyin input method in PCs and mobile phones.
4. Information about the ongoing work in the matter of international standards for
character encodings can easily be found on the Web (http://www.unicode.org is a
248 Notes
good start). For a recent publication on the topic of encoding “foreign” languages,
see Anderson 2010—and notice the incompatibility with a concept of unlimited
combinations, discussed in the Renaming Children section of this chapter. For a his-
torical review of character encoding, see McEnery and Xiao 2005.
5. ⎚吪⣓㕗⸻慴㕗 transcribed in pinyin is Sidifu Sikulisi. It seems the Southern Weekly

transcribed Steve Squyres’s surname incorrectly: Sikulisi should be Sikulaisi, if
Squyres rhymes with Squires (thanks to Paul Clark who noticed this). See also Zim-
mermann 2008a for images of the newspaper article discussed here.
6. Collins discusses the example of typing; see Collins 2010, 103.
7. Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton (1981), in a study on how people relate to

objects in their immediate environment, discuss questions partly related to the kind
of phenomena I describe here. However, I am not entirely convinced by their use of
the concept of cultivation, which is not, I believe, grounded enough:
Objects are not static entities whose meaning is projected on to them from cognitive functions
of the brain or from abstract conceptual systems of culture. They themselves are signs, objecti-
fied forms of psychic energy. Whether through action or contemplation, objects in the domestic
environment are meaningful only as part of a communicative sign process and are active ingredi-
ents of that process. . . . The most inclusive term to describe the modes of meaning that mediate
people with objects is perhaps cultivation . . . —the improvement, development, refinement, or
resultant expression of some object or habit of life due to care, training, or inquiry— . . . Our
view . . . is to see nature and culture on a continuum, so that culture, or cultivation, is the com-
pletion of nature. (Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton 1981, 173–174; see also 177)
8. Mathematically speaking, the number of characters is limited, but we can con-

sider it unlimited, especially since the number of parts used in a character isn’t lim-
ited. See, for instance, the works from contemporary artist Xu Bing, who played
with this aspect of the Chinese script to invent “non-existing” Chinese characters
and display them in some of his art works.
Chapter 13
1. Harry Collins actually makes a step in what appears to me to be a similar direc-

tion by proposing a fractal model for sociology in which he calls collectivity the unit
of analysis. In his framework, collectivities are treated as “atoms” and individuals as
“molecules.” Each individual is the intersection of a set of collectivities, and the
number of possible combinations of collectivities accounts for the differences
between individuals. However, he doesn’t take into this account nonhumans, which
he tends to exclude from the framework for not being able to bridge “practice” (Col-
lins 2011, 289–290).
2. I rely on Ansermet and Magistretti 2005 for this paragraph on neoteny.

Notes 249
3. Leuenberger 2006 discusses the circulation of the Berlin Wall in a fascinating

paper that had a profound influence on me for the conceptualization I discuss here.
Her paper remains one of the best illustrations of circulation processes I have read
so far.
4. For a history of sound, its perception and understanding, see also Sterne 2003.
Here is Sterne’s own definition of sound:
Sounds are defined as that class of vibrations perceived—and, in a more exact sense, sympatheti-
cally produced—by the functioning ear when they travel through a medium that can convey
changes in pressure (such as the air). . . . We can say either that sound is a class of vibration that
might be heard or that it is a class of vibration that is heard, but, in either case, the hearing of
the sound is what makes it. . . . As part of a larger physical phenomenon of vibration, sound is a
product of the human senses and not a thing in the world apart from humans. Sound is a little
piece of the vibrating world. (Sterne 2003, 11)
5. According to Ansermet and Magistretti, the fundamental concepts of synaptic

plasticity as the cellular basis of the mechanisms of memory were first hypothesized
by a Canadian psychologist, Daniel Hebb, in 1949 (Ansermet and Magistretti 2007,
62–63).
6. Interestingly, although it goes beyond the scope of this book, Alfred Gell reaches
a conclusion that includes the idea of personhood as a set of subjective experiences
arranged temporally in the memory, which he compares to an artist’s life works—a
set of material objects—that he considers on a timeline. For instance, a painting
features ideas that are then seen again in a new work painted several years later. Gell
comments:
We can imagine the artist’s oeuvre, at the macro-scale, as one indivisible work, consisting of many
physical indexes (works) but amounting to a single temporal entity . . . The artist’s oeuvre is an
object which, so to speak, is made out of time . . . Indeed, there is every reason to think that per-
sonhood, understood cognitively, is coextensive with subjective temporal experience. To refer to
a person as a possessor of “consciousness” is to refer to a series of cognitions arranged temporally
along an axis of durée. But here we reach the crux of the matter. The chronologically arranged
set of works which comprise an artist’s oeuvre are a set of material objects; they are not a person
or a set of subjective experiences (cognitive states). . . . We can easily conceive that “remember-
ing” something which happened in the past is very like “copying” a picture that one has painted
in the past, or that “making a preliminary sketch for a picture” is very like mentally anticipat-
ing some future happening or course of action. In other words, the arrangement of individual
works in an artist’s oeuvre, each of which is partly a recapitulation of previous works and partly
an anticipation of works as yet uncommenced, seems to generate the same kind of relationships
between indexes (which are objects in the external world) as exist between mental states in the
cognitive process we recognize as consciousness. In other words, the temporal structure of index-
to-index relations in the artist’s oeuvre is artistic consciousness (personhood in the cognitive,
temporal sense) writ large and rendered public and accessible. (Gell 1998, 235–236; emphasis in
the original)
7. See also Collins 2010 for another point of view on the integration of his “strings”
conceptualization with frameworks inspired by neurosciences. Collins doesn’t seem
250 Notes
to have a high opinion of psychiatry (see p. 79), but he does consider the specific
material structure of the human brain (p. 20) as well as the attempts to mimic neural
networks in computer science (p. 74).
8. Other analogies can be made with STS frameworks. For example, Bijker’s concept
of technological frame (discussed earlier, see chap. 3, n. 2) also links social and mate-
rial aspects by transcending the social shaping of technology and the technological
impact on society—that is, social determinism and technical determinism (see Bijker
1995, 194–195). On “neither ‘semiotic conventions’ or ‘laws of nature’ but some-
thing in between,” see also Gell 1998, 15.
9. See for instance http://www.nicolasnova.net/pasta-and-vinegar/2009/10/20/

ubiquitous-obama-representations (last consulted October 2014). Special thanks to
Nicolas Nova, who told me about the similarity between the concept of waves with
the use of meme in the cybersphere.
10. See http://cfpm.org/jom-emit/ for the papers published in the online Journal of
Memetics, last consulted February 2014. Edmonds (2005) provides an interesting
graph that illustrates the fade in-fade out of memetics with the advent of the Inter-
net, showing the relevance of the concept in the context of information and com-
munications technology.
11. Talking about “forms of circulation” and “circulations of forms,” Appadurai

emphasizes that the current period of time (especially with regard to the Internet) is
“characterized by the flows not just of cultural substances, but also of cultural forms,
such as the novel, the ballet, the political constitution, and divorce, to pick just a
few examples” (Appadurai 2010, 7). His definition of forms is the following:
By “forms” I mean to indicate a family of phenomena, including styles, techniques, or genres,

which can be inhabited by specific voices, contents, messages, and materials. Unfortunately, the
philosophical conundrum of separating form from content cannot be unraveled in this essay.
In using the word “form” I simply wish to temporarily place the issue of global circulation on a
slightly more abstract level. (Appadurai 2010, 9)
12. I should mention here Latour’s concepts of intermediaries versus mediators. The
first one is what “transports meaning or force without transformation,” whereas the
second category can “transform, translate, distort, and modify the meaning or
the elements they are supposed to carry” (Latour 2005, 39). The main difference
with waves’ circulation is that Latour’s emphasis is on the vessels that carry the
actions or the meanings, whereas I focus on what is actually carried by those
vessels.
13. A similar point and a handy summary of the Francophone and Anglophone
traditions in the anthropology of techniques has been made recently in a publica-
tion of the Journal of Material Culture, where Myriem Naji and Laurence Douny sug-
gest paying attention to movements of making and unmaking, doing and undoing, as
well as recycling processes of the material world (Naji and Douny 2009).
Notes 251
14. The writings of the American sociologist Howard S. Becker illustrate well how it
is possible to describe, and explain, complex ideas and phenomena using common
language. Becker has published a book on the issue of writing in which he discusses,
at length, the methodology he relies on (Becker 2007b).
15. In music studies, see for instance Ian Condry (about hip hop in Japan): “Part of
the challenge of understanding cultural globalization involves recognizing that the
global and the local are not so much matched pairs as they are symbolic crystalliza-
tions of more fluid, ongoing processes unfolding over time” (Condry 2007, 86). Or
Nimrod Baranovitch (about rock and pop music in China):
In my view popular culture is a complex and dynamic sphere, a web of interwoven relations and
axes in which multiples forces (rather than just two) interact and negotiate, creating a plurality
of relationships between them (rather than just one, which is always conflict-oriented). . . . The
binary framework adopted in many studies on popular culture is problematic, not only because
it basically allows for the existence of only two forces but also because it often assumes clear-cut
categories that are often difficult to substantiate. (Baranovitch 2003, 7)
See also De Kloet 2001; Danielsen and Maasø 2009.
16. 䍘⛢, xianchang in Chinese, literally “scene; site, spot” (Condry relies on the
Japanese version of the word).
17. The difficulty of using a methodology based on categories is even more obvious
in Jeroen De Kloet’s brilliant account on Chinese rock music, wherein he discusses
Beijing’s rock scene in the 1990s and concludes on an impressive series of analytical
paradoxes that he suggests regarding not as contradictory but as complementary:
global versus local, rebel versus accomplice, inclusive versus exclusive, territorialized
versus deterritorialized, productive versus destructive, copy culture versus copyright, and
speaking versus silencing (De Kloet 2001).
18. For theoretical alternatives to hybrid cultural phenomena, see for instance the
concept of “pollution” in De Kloet 2007, the discussion on “cultural borrowings” in
Casilli 2005, and the discussion of hybridity in Dujunco 2002.
19. http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XOTkwMzU2Mjg=.html, last consulted March

2010.
20. See the video presentation on http://www.klewel.com/conferences/lift10/index.

php?talkID=31, last consulted February 2014.
21. It is easy to find other evidence for this question. McDonald’s and Coca-Cola’s
websites in China during the same period of time used only the Chinese versions of
their names—English versions didn’t even show up. American scholar and prolific
blogger Tricia Wang posted in 2010 some of her own ethnographic observations on
this question. She discusses the difficulty a Chinese-speaking person faces in dealing
with an English word such as “Google” (http://culturalbytes.com/post/340498962/
googleandchina, last consulted January 2011). Google’s policy in terms of trade-
marks would make sense if it was selling, say, Swiss watches. Rolex, for example,
252 Notes
does keep its foreign name in China visible. But it is a different question for a soft-
ware tool that is aimed at the general public. If you never studied Mandarin, perform
an inverted comparison and try to memorize a word like Yinqing (“Engine,” in Man-
darin,) and you will get the feeling.
22. The discussion on the opposition between the social and cultural is an old trope
in anthropology, see Kroeber and Parsons 1958.
23. Here is Gell’s statement on culture:
My view is that in so far as anthropology has a specific subject-matter at all, that subject-matter
is “social relationships”—relationships between participants in social systems of various kinds.
I recognize that many anthropologists in the tradition of Boas and Kroeber, Price among them,
consider that the subject-matter of anthropology is “culture.” The problem with this formulation
is that one only discovers what anybody’s culture consists of by observing and recording their
cultural behaviour in some specific setting, that is, how they related to specific “others” in social
interactions. Culture has no existence independently of its manifestations in social interactions;
this is true even if one sits someone down and asks them to “tell us about your culture”—in this
case the interaction in question is the one between the inquiring anthropologist and the (prob-
ably rather bemused) informant. (Gell 1998, 4)
For a similar point of view on culture in Germany, see the works of the sociologist
Bielefeld Niklas Luhmann, discussed e.g., in Lichtblau 2012.
24. Law and Mol make a similar point when discussing what they call “the spatiali-
ties of globality.” The authors insist on the importance of taking into account fluid-
ity:
Often enough ideas, facts, information, even technologies, turn out to spread in a manner that is
much more fluid. It is precisely a lack of rigidity that most helps movement. . . . Raï music started
in Algeria and as it moves to Paris it remains both similar and yet it also changes. McDonalds, fre-
quently cited as the gold standard for global uniformity, reveals impressive variations as it moves
from one site to the next. If it is successful it is not because the formula is rigid. It is precisely
because it can change shape. . . . Understood in this way globalisation is not about networks but
about fluidities. About movements that go more easily if there is less control. About things that
take on the shape of their surroundings. That are adaptable. (Law and Mol 2003; emphasis in
the original)
25. In this sense, the waves concept groups the different aspects listed in Law and
Mol 2003 in that it provides one single space for objects that Law and Mol locate in
four spaces: region, network, fluid, and fire.
26. The example of the mirror discussed by Alfred Gell illustrates well the quasi-
impossibility of grasping exactly the flow of interactions that moves constantly and
at a fast speed: “If we look into the mirror and dislike what we see, we are respond-
ing, as patients, to an index (the mirror image) of which we are the agents” (Gell
1998, 49).
27. When thinking of the concept of agency, we often relate to ideas of design and
of displacement. To open a door, to close a door, to say something to someone—
intentional actions connect with physical displacements of one’s body, of external
Notes 253
objects, of air particles, and so on. Unsurprisingly, a wave, an imprint in matter, is

actually a design and a displacement—hence the connection between culture and
agency.
28. Which goes well with Sterne and Akiyama’s chapter on sonification (the trans-
formation of nonsonic data into audible sound), especially their argument about the
plasticity of data and the dissolution of the old knowledge about the senses, in their
contribution for the handbook of sound studies quoted earlier (Sterne and Akiyama
2012).
29. For a discussion on this point in French academic circles, see Maigret 2005. For
an overview of cultural studies, see During 2007. For the point of view of an anthro-
pologist on cultural studies, see chapter 7 in Kuper 1999.
30. For instance, King’s College London, one of the first institutions to work
on digital humanities. Http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/ddh/study/pgr/index
.aspx. See also http://www.digitalhumanities.org/. Consulted April 4, 2011.
31. An illustration of the crisis can be read in a recent paper published in the New
York Times, Fish 2010, http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/11/the-crisis
-of-the-humanities-officially-arrives/, consulted March 22, 2011. See also Martin
2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/15/business/colleges-begin-to-confront-higher
-costs-and-students-debt.html?smid=pl-share, consulted May 15, 2012.
32. See Zimmermann and Sartoretti 2012 (in French) on how to conduct seminars
based on the arguments discussed here.
33. For a discussion of the history of case methods in universities, see Garvin 2003.
34. The high-versus-low culture argument is inspired by Maigret 2005. Special

thanks to Valerie Gorin, who told me about Macé and Maigret’s works.
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Index
Ableton Live, 127 Arabic, 187, 191–192, 225

AC/DC, 65 Archaeology, 182, 228
Actor-network theory, 18–19, 24–25, Aristotle, 235n8
31, 68–69, 139, 203, 207, 222–223, Artifact. See Physical object; Technical
232n13 object
Address. See Postal address; DNS; E-mail; Art worlds, 21–22, 146, 231n9, 231n10
URL ASCII keyboard, 3, 113, 133, 138,
Advertisement, 43, 93, 109, 177–180, 185–197, 220, 227, 247n1. See also
193–194, 218–219, 225–227 Roman alphabet
Agency, 7, 11, 15, 17–19, 68–72, 88, 90– Asian studies, 34–37, 42, 227, 234n18.
92, 104–105, 171, 207, 253n27 See also Sinology
Akai MPC sampler, 112–113, 126, 128 Association for Asian Studies (AAS),
Akrich, Madeleine, 5, 15–16, 25, 56, 234n18
138, 146, 229n2, 230n5. See also Audience, 57, 61–63, 66–68, 76–82,
Actor-network theory 85–91, 153, 237n4, 238n8, 238n10
Alphabet. See Roman alphabet Audiovisual material, 66, 116, 120, 128,
American, 49, 65, 71–72, 115, 127, 215–216, 225, 227–228.
136–137, 168, 212, 234n15, 236n3. See also Video
See also United States Authorship, 105, 145, 224
Anderson, Warwick, 230n4
Ansermet, François, 205–208. Baidu, 216–219
See also Plasticity Baldwin, John R., 52–53
ANT. See Actor-network theory Bar Street 惺⏏埿, 61, 63–64
Anthropocentrism, 40 Baranovitch, Nimrod, 64, 71, 111,
Anthropology, 17–21, 27–29, 47–51, 69, 251n15
104–105, 122, 209–210, 221–222, Barmé, Geremie, 44, 234n19
235n3, 252n23 Bass player, 62–65, 72
Appadurai, Arjun, 211, 221–223, Becker, Howard S., 16–18, 21–22, 90–91,
250n11 94, 105, 146–147, 149, 214, 229n3,
Apple computer. See Macintosh 231n9, 251n14
computer Behles, Gerhard, 127
270 Index
Beijing Chess, 12, 219

city of, 6, 13–16, 34, 57–59, 61–97, Chicago School, 25, 52, 231n10
107–119, 126–132, 149–154, 161, China studies, 33. See also Sinology
188–194, 212, 238n10, 238n13, Chinese calligraphy, 36–37, 40, 192
240n7 Chinese language, 3, 12–16, 33, 59, 117,
Dance Academy, 73–74 161, 187–197, 216–219, 252n21
Sanlitun, 61, 64, 95 (see also Clubs; Chinese New Year, 14, 75, 180, 238n10
Bar Street) Chinese studies. See Sinology
Belfast, 83 Chopsticks, 50, 212–213, 216
Bijker, Wiebe, 11–12, 22–24, 28, 31–32, Circulation. See Wave; Form
44, 55, 58, 83, 147, 156, 220, 232n2, Clarke, Adele, 25
250n8. See also Social construction of Clubs, 59, 61–95, 107–112, 128, 236n,
technology 237n2, 237nn4–5, 238n8, 239n6,
Bijsterveld, Karin, 56–57, 66, 168, 240n7
230n1 Cmusic, 125
Bike wheel system notice, 189–190 CNNIC, 177
Biographical level observation, 16–20. Collective action, 20–23, 90–91
See also Gell, Alfred Collins, Harry, 28–31, 51, 141, 147,
Bloch, Maurice, 51, 210, 222 185–186, 194, 232n, 248n.
Bloor, David, 19, 23 See also Tacit knowledge;
Boas, Franz, 48–49 Interactional expertise; Contributory
Born, Georgina, 70, 125, 145, 153, expertise; Imitation Game
224–225 Communist, 81, 108
British social anthropology, 17, 20, 222, Compact disc, 74, 79–80, 96, 114,
231n6 131, 158–161, 165, 169, 171.
Buddha machine, 244. See also Tibetan See also CD-ROM
monk’s praying box Complexity, 146, 173.
Buddhism, 152 See also Modifiability
Buscatto, Marie, 111 Composition. See Music composition
Computer encodings, 185–197
Callon, Michel, 15, 19, 21, 23–25, 68, Computer keyboard. See ASCII keyboard
133, 139, 207, 214, 230n4, 231n9. Computer music, 20–21, 70, 93–147,
See also Actor-network theory 150, 204, 225, 239n5
Cao, Cong, 217 Computer programming, 70, 101–103,
Cars. See Parking wars 125–126, 130, 133, 144–145
Case method, 227 Condry, Ian, 82, 84, 111, 215, 241n8,
CD-ROM, 121, 151, 152. See also 251n15
Compact disc Conservation (of waves), 16, 54, 138–
Censorship, 247n15 139, 210–211, 214
Centre de sociologie de l’innovation Contributory expertise, 16.
(CSI), 25. See also Actor-network See also Collins, Harry; Evans,
theory Robert; Interactional expertise;
Characters. See Chinese language Imitation Game
Index 271
Conventions, 16, 21–22, 68, 94, Downloads, 82, 94, 111, 115, 119–120,
146–147, 186 127, 132, 242n5. See also Software
Corbin, Juliet, 36, 150 programming
Creation (of waves), 54, 176, 211, 214 Drugs, 81
Crowd. See Audience Drum ’n’ bass, 67–68
Cubase, 100–101, 116–120 Drums samples, 94, 242n5
CUI Jian Ⲽ‍, 108–109 Dynaudio, 97–98
Cultural difference, 5, 9, 15, 28, 32, 55,
58, 68–72, 105, 122, 136–137, 146, Electronic music 䓝⫸枛᷸, 57–172.
211–225, 233n12. See also Culture See also Computer music
Cultural flows, 215, 221. Electronic music festival, 64, 107, 149
See also Appadurai, Arjun Electronic musician number 1 (EM1),
Cultural studies, 27, 32, 37–41, 44, 214, 61–72
221, 226, 253n29 Elite culture. See Culture
Culture Email, 84, 115, 127, 189–192, 194, 203,
definition of, 10–11, 27–34, 47–54, 211–212
137, 202–204, 209–210, 221–225, Encodings. See Computer encodings
235n1, 252n23, 253n27 English language, 12–14, 59, 95, 110,
mass/elite, 40–43, 228, 253n34 115–117, 153, 161–162, 186–197,
217–219, 252n21
Dance music, 67, 75–76, 109 Equalization, 85–86, 97, 156–157.
Darwin, Charles, 48, 210 See also Sound effects
DAT recorder, 164–165 Ethnography, 55, 168, 175
Dawkins, Richard, 208–210 Europe, 33, 59, 90–91, 113, 127, 153,
Defrancis, John, 247n3 188, 226
De Kloet, Jeroen, 71, 111, 152, European Association of Chinese
251n17 Studies (EACS), 42–44
Descola, Philippe, 122–123. Evans, Robert, 10, 16, 28, 30–31, 51.
See also Totemism See also Interactional expertise;
Description, 6–7, 175–176, 181, Contributory expertise; Imitation
214–216, 245n2 Game; Tacit knowledge
Determinism. See Plasticity Everyday things, 9, 41, 225–228
Diachrony, 90, 105, 207. Experimental music, 64, 149–153.
See also Past/present See also Music composition;
Dichotomies, 10, 40–43, 51, 214–215 Computer music; Electronic music
Digital humanities, 38, 226
Disc jockey (DJ), 64, 67–68, 73–92, Facebook, 177–182, 245n9
93–94, 108–111, 238n13, 241n6 Farrer, James, 236n4
Dissipation (of waves), 176, 189, 211 Festival. See Music festival
Distortion, 94, 125. See also Sound FM7, 101–105, 241n12
effects Foreign, 61–63, 71–72, 75–79, 110, 113,
Domain name system (DNS), 179, 189–192, 219, 247n4, 252n21.
192–193 See also Western
272 Index
Fork, 212–213 Heterogeneous network.

Form, 5–6, 54, 141–142, 204, 210–217, See Actor-network theory; Wave
223–224 Hinkle-Turner, Elizabeth, 241n6
circulation of, 16, 176, 180–182, Hip hop, 67, 82, 84, 215
193–196, 208 (see also Conservation) Hong Kong, 74, 99
French, 5, 48, 52, 65, 70, 99, 121, 149, Hughes, Thomas, 28, 230n4,
189–191 244n14
Human brain, 185, 194, 202–208
Gay and lesbian bars, 77 Human computer interaction (HCI),
Geertz, Clifford, 7, 49–53 230n4, 233n13, 247n1
Gell, Alfred, 17–21, 69, 90, 92, 104–105, Human intentionality, 19, 104–105,
249n6, 252n23 223, 253n27
Genba, 215, 251n16 Humanities, 10–11, 33–45, 175, 202–
Gender. See Women 203, 214, 224, 226–228
Genelec, 97–98, 113 Hybridity, 215, 226, 251n18
Geneva, city of, 34, 63, 113, 125–129,
162, 212 Imitation Game, 29, 233n12. See also
German, 7, 36, 48, 86, 89, 104–105, Collins, Harry; Evans, Robert
120, 127, 189, 212 Immutable mobile, 139, 176, 210, 223.
Gifts. See Virtual gifts See also Form; Meme
Glaser, Barney, 24–25 Inductive theoretical journey, 9, 24,
Go (game of), 219 39, 54
Goody, Jack, 222–223, 234n17 Ingold, Tim, 231n6, 235n8
Google, 94, 178, 216–219 Innovation studies. See Rogers,
Government of the PRC, 18, 132, 177, Everett
181, 193, 217, 247n15 Inscriptible object, 146–147, 166–172.
GUO Tingting 悕⨟⨟, 239n6, See also Modifiability
245n9 Inscription device, 139, 243n10
Great Wall rave party, 86, 238n14 Institut de Recherche et de
GRM Tools, 99, 240n10 Coordination Acoustique/Musique
Grounded theory, 24, 36, 231n10 (IRCAM), 70, 125, 145, 157, 224
G-string, 180–182 Intentionality. See Human
Guitar player, 62, 65, 71, 107–109 Interactional expertise, 30, 232n4,
233n12. See also Imitation Game;
Hackers, xii, 117–123. See also Pirated Collins, Harry; Evans, Robert
software Internet, 78, 94, 107–124, 130, 135,
Happy Network ⺨⽫仹, 176–182, 215 176–183, 191–193, 209, 217–219,
Hawtin, Richie (Plastikman), 93, 95 228, 238n13, 242n5, 247n15. See
Headphones, 79, 85, 96–99, 108, 114, also Website
160–172 Internet Explorer, 191
Henke, Robert, 127 Inverted comparison, 191, 217–218,
Hennion, Antoine, 19, 79, 231n9, 252n21
232n13, 238n12, 238n15, 239n2 Italian, 212–213
Index 273
Japanese, 36, 66–70, 75–76, 79–80, 84, Mastering, 168, 240n8, 242n4
96–99, 110, 138–143, 215, 241n12, Material culture, 10–11, 225, 251n13.
243n7 See also Physical object; Technical
Jazz, 87, 111 object
Jones, Andrew, 241n2 Materiality, 5, 9, 51, 69, 137, 141, 149,
204, 210, 216, 220
Karaoke, 63 Material object. See Physical object
Katz, Bob, 168 Max/MSP, 125–147, 242n1
Kluckhohn, Clyde, 49–50, 53 “Meditation,” 154–168
Komlosy, Anouska, 64, 111, 236n5 Meme, 208–211, 223. See also Form;
Kranzberg, Melvin, 68 Immutable mobile
Kraus, Richard C., 236n11 Menger, Pierre-Michel, 239n16
Krischker, Peter, 101–105, 241n13 Microphone, 135, 156, 159, 170, 204,
Kroeber, Alfred, 49–50, 53 238n11
Kuper, Adam, 28, 233n8, 235n1, 235n7, MIDI, 101–104, 113–114, 120, 154
253n29 “Midnight Buzz,” 252n24
Minidisc, 135
Lao Dong, 12–13, 107–147, 179 Minimal techno, 36, 67, 79, 127, 132
Lao Li, 149–172 Modifiability, 143–147, 166–172, 173,
Latour, Bruno, 22–23, 25, 68, 139, 185–197, 205–208, 220. See also
176–177, 203, 214, 222–223, Complexity
250n12. See also Actor-network Modul8, 66
theory; Immutable mobile Module system, 187
Law, John, 19, 31, 232n13, 252n24, Mol, Anne-Marie, 252n24
253n25 Molotch, Harvey, 233n13, 245n1
Law of circulation, 16, 147, 185–197 Money, 63, 74–80, 84, 109–110,
Ledderose, Lothar, 187–188 113–114, 154, 179–181
Leuenberger, Christine, 249n3 Monolake, 127
LLOOPP, 130, 138–141. See also Max/ mp3s, 81–84, 111, 238n13
MSP Musical feeling, 78, 81, 88, 97, 156–158,
Long-term potentiation (LTP), 206 163, 166, 169–170
Loudspeakers, 97–98, 113, 162–163, Music composition, 57–172
169 Music devices, 57–172
Music festival, 64, 107, 129, 149
Macaques, 205 Music keyboard, 95, 132
Macintosh computer, 37, 83, 96, 98, Music label, 83–84, 93, 95, 99, 107,
110, 113–114, 125–126, 129, 138, 151–153
154, 166 Music performances, 21, 61–64, 71,
Magistretti, Pierre, 205–208. 75, 91, 126–127, 149, 160, 237n3,
See also Neurosciences 239n5, 244n6
Mandarin. See Chinese language Music producer, 75, 93, 96, 99, 109,
Marx, Karl, 90, 226 126, 239n2, 242n4
Mass culture. See Culture Music studio, 70, 96–99, 113–116, 126
274 Index
Nanfang Zhoumo ⋿㕡␐㛓, 205–208 Pirated software, 66, 97, 117–123, 129.
Native Instruments, 101, 121. See also Hackers
See also FM7 Plasticity, 202–208, 249n5, 253n28. See
Nature/culture debate, 10, 24, 27, also Neurosciences
48–51, 122, 248n7, 250n8 Plato, 39, 122
Neoteny, 202, 249n2 Plugins, 97–106, 116, 121, 240n10,
Neurosciences, 202–208, 250n7. See also 241n12. See also Software
Plasticity programming
Newspaper, 192, 205–208, 248n5 Polanyi, Michel, 28. See also Tacit
Nightlife ⣄䓇㳣, 63, 236n2, 237n2, knowledge
238n6 Popper, Karl, 54
Noise music, 151–153, 165 Popular culture, 34, 40, 251n15
Nonhuman. See Actor-network theory; Porter, Richard, 53
Agency Portishead, 205–208
Nord Modular, 113, 126, 132–133, Postal address, 211–214
242n6 Postcolonial computing, 230n4
Norman, Donald A., 247n1 Predictability, 30, 51, 202, 206–208, 220
Present of things, 37–45, 227–228
Omniseq, 130–133, 136–147 Programming. See Software
Oudshoorn, Nelly, 12 programming
Pro Tools, 97–98, 128, 132, 166
Parallel compression, 168 Psychic trace. See Synaptic/psychic trace
Paris, city of, 25, 28, 42, 99, 145, 151 Psychoanalysis, 205–206
Parking wars ḱ弎ỵ, 179–180, Putonghua, 187–188. See also Chinese
245n9 language
Parsons, Talcott, 49, 252n22
Parties. See Clubs; Dance music QU (the band), 61–72
Past/present, 39–44, 67–72, 90, 123,
171–172, 234n18, 249n6. Recorder. See Roland VS-880; DAT
See also Diachrony recorder
Patch. See Max/MSP; Cmusic Recordings, 80–83, 109, 120, 132–135,
Peking University, 14, 76, 107, 237n2, 151–171, 236n5, 244n3.
239n6 See also Sound files
People’s Republic of China (PRC). Recording studio, 56, 96–99. See also
See Government of the PRC Music studio
Phil Kieren, 83–92 Remix, 99. See also “TK Remix”
Physical object, 10–20, 37–45, 122–123, “Restaurant” 椕椮, 133–137, 156
141, 175, 202–205, 227, 249n6. Reverberation, 85, 97, 142.
See also Technical object See also Sound effects
Pinch, Trevor, 12, 23, 30, 56–57, 93, Roads, Curtis, 150, 162
109, 149, 168, 171, 230n1, 236n9, Rock music, 61–72, 95, 107–109, 151,
237n8, 241n12, 243n12 236n5, 239n4, 239n6, 241n2,
Pinyin, 188, 193–197, 247n3 245n9, 251n17
Index 275
Rogers, Everett M., 110, 112, 193, Software programming, 14, 38, 66,
241n7, 242n6 81, 93–147, 154, 163, 166–167,
Roland MC-505 Groovebox, 61–72 176–183, 188, 195–196, 225–228,
Roland SP-808, 62 239n5, 241n12, 243n13.
Roland TR-808, 94, 112, 239n3, See also Pirated software
242n5 Songwriting. See Music composition
Roland TR-909, 112–113, 242n5 Sound, disappearance of, 169–171
Roland VS-880, 151, 158–172, 244n7 Sound effects, 62, 66–69, 75, 85–86, 97,
Roman alphabet, 186–197 114, 116, 142, 150, 156–157, 161,
164–169
Samovar, Larry, 53 Sound engineering, 54, 90, 96–99, 120,
Sample. See Sound files 126, 142, 156–169
San Francisco, 212 Sound files, 62, 94–99, 131–136,
Science and technology studies (STS), 155–168, 242n5, 243n7
5–7, 23–25, 27–32, 185–197 Sound spatialization, 166, 171–172
Search engines. See Baidu; Google Sound studies, 9, 57, 156, 168, 230n1,
Semiotics, 19, 50, 220, 250n8 253n28
Sennheiser headphones, 97, 99, 114, Sound system, 109, 169
169–171 (see also Loudspeakers)
Sensitizing concepts, 45, 235n22 Sound waves, 54, 141–143, 167,
Sequencer, 113, 116, 130, 154, 162. 204–205
See also Cubase Southern Weekly. See Nanfang
Shape of matter, 3, 5–6, 54, 141–142, Zhoumo
173, 182, 202–205, 211, 222–224, Star, Susan L., 25, 31, 90, 231n10,
235n8. See also Form; Wave 235n22
Shenzhen, 74, 79 Sterne, Jonathan, 21, 61, 156, 230n1,
Siemens 3618, 12–16 244n3, 249n4, 253n28
Sina.com, 217–219 Stotz, Oliver, 138–146
Sinology, 11, 24, 32–45, 175–183, Strategic sites, 55
215–219, 225–228, 234n15, 234n19, Strauss, Anselm, 24–25, 36, 56, 150,
235n20 231n10
Social construction of technology Strings, 141, 147, 250n7.
(SCOT), 19, 22, 32, 220 See also Collins, Harry
Social networking sites (SNS), Strong program, 23
176–183 Swiss, Switzerland, 34–35, 63, 97,
Social worlds, 25, 231n10 113–114, 126, 129–130, 153–154,
Sociology of science. See Science and 160–162, 203–204, 212, 239n17,
technology studies 252n21
Sociology of technology. See Social Symbolic interactionism, 52, 175.
construction of technology; Science See also Blumer, Herbert
and technology studies Symmetry, 19, 23–25, 59, 68
Sociology of translation. Synaptic/psychic trace, 202–208, 214,
See Actor-network theory 249n5. See also Plasticity
276 Index
Synesthesia, 155 Unicode, 189, 247n4

Synthesizer. See Roland MC-505 United States, 32–33, 48, 72, 177, 188,
Groovebox; FM7 193–194, 209, 211–212, 216, 218.
See also American
Tacit knowledge, 28–31, 185, 194, URL, 115, 190–191
233n12. See also Collins, Harry
Tai, Zixue, 245n4, 247n15 Velocity, 101–103
Taiwan, 37, 215–216, 234n19 Video, 66, 120, 126, 128, 215–216,
Taylor, Timothy D., 57, 75, 103, 111, 241n8, 252n20. See also Audiovisual
233n13, 239n3, 239n6 material
Technical innovation, 205 Vinyl records, 7, 73–92, 108, 113–114,
Technical object, 3–7, 10–16, 56–59, 196, 204, 220, 238n13
173, 186, 201–202, 216–217, 220, Virilio, Paul, 68
229n2, 230n5. See also Physical Virtual gifts, 180–182
object Virtual instruments, 101
Techno (subgenre), 36, 67, 73, 76, 79, Virtual presence, 83–84, 89–90, 101
81–86, 91, 94–99, 111–112, 127, Voice, 99–101, 131–135, 142, 156,
132 159–161
Technological determinism, 3, 11, 21, VST plugins, 116, 121
230n2, 250n8
Technological style, 28. See also Hughes, Wajcman, Judy, 111, 231n10
Thomas Wang Shuo 䌳㚼, 34–35, 234n16
Théberge, Paul, 66–67, 70, 133, 239n3, Wang, Qian, 64, 72, 236n5, 239n4
241n14 Warschauer, Mark, 241n7, 247n1
Thick description, 7 Wave, 5–6, 51–54, 141–143, 173,
Thornton, Sarah, 67, 73, 75, 77, 83, 185–186, 201–225, 250n12, 253n25.
237n2, 238n9 See also Conservation; Creation;
Tibetan monk’s praying box, 159–161. Dissipation
See also Buddha machine circulation of, 16, 146–147, 160,
“TK Remix,” 93–106 170–171, 176, 180–182,
Tokyo, 84 191–197
Tootell, Roger, 205 waveform~, 133–135, 243n7
Totemism, 122–123 Waves (plugins), 97–98
Traktor, 81, 238n13 Web portal. See Yahoo; Sina
Transeau, Brian (BT), 115–116 Website, 83, 94, 115–120, 127, 129–130,
“Tribal,” 132 138, 163, 175–183, 190–194,
Turkle, Sherry, 111 216–217, 242n6. See also Internet
Turntables, 79–89, 108, 113, 237n3 Weibo, 181
Twitter, 181 Western, 12–16, 32–33, 36, 45, 49, 56,
Tylor, Edward B., 48 59, 64–65, 71, 76, 81, 95, 115, 153,
191–192, 196, 212, 217–218, 242n6.
Underground, 64, 67–68 See also Foreign
Underworld, 109 Wilson, Frank, 112
Index 277
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 214

Women, 62, 77, 237n6, 241n6
Woolgar, Steve, 15, 22–23, 40, 139,
196, 229n2, 230n4
Xiao Deng, 73–106, 110–112, 115,

120–121, 128, 152, 158, 177–179
Yahoo, 192, 218–219

Yamaha DX synthesizer, 267, 41n12
YouTube, 178, 217
Zhang Yadong ⻈Ṃ᷄, 109

Zheng Dao, 81, 91
Zimmermann, Basile, 211–212, 234n14,
236n9, 245n3, 247n1, 248n5,
253n32
Zurich, city of, 91, 126, 128
Inside Technology
edited by Wiebe E. Bijker, W. Bernard Carlson, and Trevor Pinch
Basile Zimmermann, Waves and Forms: Electronic Music Devices and Computer
Encodings in China
Andrew J. Nelson, The Sound of Innovation: Stanford and the Computer Music
Revolution
Sonja D. Schmid, Producing Power: The Pre-Chernobyl History of the Soviet Nuclear
Industry
Casey O’Donnell, Developer’s Dilemma: The Secret World of Videogame Creators
Christina Dunbar-Hester, Low Power to the People: Pirates, Protest, and Politics in FM
Radio Activism
Eden Medina, Ivan da Costa Marques, and Christina Holmes, editors, Beyond
Imported Magic: Essays on Science, Technology, and Society in Latin America
Anique Hommels, Jessica Mesman, and Wiebe E. Bijker, editors, Vulnerability in
Technological Cultures: New Directions in Research and Governance
Amit Prasad, Imperial Technoscience: Transnational Histories of MRI in the United
States, Britain, and India
Charis Thompson, Good Science: The Ethical Choreography of Stem Cell Research
Tarleton Gillespie, Pablo J. Boczkowski, and Kirsten A. Foot, editors, Media
Technologies: Essays on Communication, Materiality, and Society
Catelijne Coopmans, Janet Vertesi, Michael Lynch, and Steve Woolgar, editors,
Representation in Scientific Practice Revisited
Rebecca Slayton, Arguments that Count: Physics, Computing, and Missile Defense,
1949–2012
Stathis Arapostathis and Graeme Gooday, Patently Contestable: Electrical Technologies
and Inventor Identities on Trial in Britain
Jens Lachmund, Greening Berlin: The Co-Production of Science, Politics, and Urban
Nature
Chikako Takeshita, The Global Biopolitics of the IUD: How Science Constructs
Contraceptive Users and Women’s Bodies
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Nanotechnology
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Interaction in the Age of Computers
Gabrielle Hecht, editor, Entangled Geographies: Empire and Technopolitics in the Global
Cold War
Michael E. Gorman, editor, Trading Zones and Interactional Expertise: Creating New
Kinds of Collaboration
Matthias Gross, Ignorance and Surprise: Science, Society, and Ecological Design
Andrew Feenberg, Between Reason and Experience: Essays in Technology and Modernity
Wiebe E. Bijker, Roland Bal, and Ruud Hendricks, The Paradox of Scientific Authority:
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Park Doing, Velvet Revolution at the Synchrotron: Biology, Physics, and Change in
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Building Our Sociotechnical Future
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Peter D. Norton, Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City
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Movies on Video
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Comparative Politics of Health Care
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Charis Thompson, Making Parents: The Ontological Choreography of Reproductive
Technology
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Dominique Vinck, editor, Everyday Engineering: An Ethnography of Design and
Innovation
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Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star, Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its
Consequences
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International Standardization of Telecommunications
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Practices
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Research in Nineteenth-Century France and America
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War America
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Wiebe E. Bijker, Of Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs: Toward a Theory of Sociotechnical
Change
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Geoffrey C. Bowker, Science on the Run: Information Management and Industrial
Geophysics at Schlumberger, 1920–1940
Wiebe E. Bijker and John Law, editors, Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in
Sociotechnical Change
Stuart Blume, Insight and Industry: On the Dynamics of Technological Change in
Medicine
Donald MacKenzie, Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile
Guidance
Pamela E. Mack, Viewing the Earth: The Social Construction of the Landsat Satellite
System
H. M. Collins, Artificial Experts: Social Knowledge and Intelligent Machines
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Waves and Forms

A complete list of the series appears at the back of the book.

Electronic Music Devices and Computer Encodings in China

The MIT Press

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

I Culture, Chinese Studies, and STS 1

2 An Inductive Theoretical Journey 9

3 Science Studies and Cultural Difference 27

4 Culture and Materiality 47

II Electronic Music Devices in Beijing 57

5 The Band and the Roland MC-505 Groovebox 61

6 The Vinyl Records of Xiao Deng 73

7 The FM7 Software and Xiao Deng’s “TK Remix” 93

8 Lao Dong’s Internet Connection 107

9 Omnisequ, or The Path of Complexity 125

10 Lao Li and the Inscriptible 149

III Social Networking Sites and Computer Encodings in China,

11 Beta Testing the Framework: Sinology 175

12 Beta Testing the Framework: Science and Technology Studies 185

IV Waves and Forms 199

13 Waves and Forms 201

next to me at the Public Library in Geneva, to which this book is dedicated.

I am also grateful to the publishers listed below for permission to reprint

In this book, I will discuss how technology creates, transmits, or sup-

Designers . . . define actors with specific tasks, competences, motives, aspirations,

In a nutshell, the strength of the binomial framework waves and forms is

the theoretical and methodological findings are summarized, and I suggest

This book relies on a bottom-up, inductive style of presentation. This is

as texts, paintings, sculptures, ceramics, or almost any kind of artifact,

different conditions they have a status of explanandum3—and how this spe-

One year later in 2005, this interesting punctuation phenomenon had

forms (sketched in chapter 1) provides another perspective. We can say that

In a well-known book on the sociology of art, the American sociologist How-

Art as Collective Action

For instance, compared with my scientific activity as a specialist of China,

(Bijker et al. 1987, 3).10 SCOT scholars insist on using “a ‘multidirectional’

some of the craft character of scientific activity through in situ observations

Truth, Falsity, Chinese, and Non-Chinese

Michel Callon’s proposition of general symmetry, mentioned earlier, is a

Generally speaking, during that period of time, sociologists of sci-

on inductive processes of research and argued that data collection should

If sociologists of science and technology have appropriate methodologi-

Similar remarks apply to subfields of STS; for instance, sociologists of

authors, Collins redesigns tacit knowledge (“knowledge that is not expli-

wheelchair-bound person has exhibited practical understanding even though he

By using an external judge to evaluate the difference between a person with

new technical objects is explained by referring to the capacity of groups to

lower level of observation) and Gell’s biographical level of analysis, before

From Sinology to Chinese Studies

If it is important to know about the status of artifacts and the concept of

designate the broad field of the study of China. In European universities,

a teaching assistant at our unit of Chinese studies in Geneva University,

Anecdote 1: What Is Important?

1. My advisor gave me complete freedom as long as I could convince him

I eventually fixed my choice on Wang Shuo 䌳㚼, a famous Beijing writer

Anecdote 2: “Where Is China?”

The Present of Things

While considering these two anecdotes, it is important to keep in mind

achievements in philology, history, literary studies, cultural studies, and

such as texts, paintings, sculptures, music scores, movies, or buildings, and

anthropocentrism. Similar to the way that we needed a long time to accept

Using these six rough categories, if we go back to anecdote 2 involving a

academy considers, in general, the study of artifacts. The intriguing point is