Loumavox revelations, the story of the forgotten Synthesizer and the mysterious developers Louise and Marc Vokzinski is fake.. a synth soap opera
At Christmas 2022, it became public that French students had found a mysterious forgotten analog Synthesizer. Lumavox was the name of this synth. But it quickly turned out that this was a fake.
It was a school project from a French school class. The idea was to invent a fake story and analyze the impact. It was a true news scoop in 2022/2023. At SynthFest France 2024, there was Christian Lamalle, the creator of the Lumavox hardware, with whom I made an interview
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Article From January 2, 2022
On December 17th, I published news about a mysterious, forgotten Synthesizer that was discovered by a school class in France. According to the video, this analog synth was made by the unknown developers Louise and Mark Vokzinski. There was also a complete story of how the device was found, who the developers are, etc. If it is true, this would be a milestone for Synthesizer history.
But doubts quickly arose. On the one hand, because the instrument still works so smoothly, the knobs look like they were from a 3D printer … A well-known YouTuber wrote early on my IG posting: “If a story sounds too good, it is often not true”.
Loumavox Revelations
And he and many others should be proved right. The story is fake. The Synthesizer is real, works great, but neither the developer nor the history around of the device has ever existed.
It was recently revealed in a new video. It is about a school project about the fictional and real world in which Jean Michel Jarre was also involved. Here is a translation of the words from the makers:
So there you go, it’s over, off the masks. You searched, you may have found. Like us for over two years now.
The story of Louise and the Loumavox is the most beautiful of stories: an idea imagined by two young girls who firmly believed that a little Moselle girl helped by her brother could have revolutionized the history of electronic music, almost exclusively reserved for men. And their teacher and their class ended up believing it too.
We all dreamed it together and we told our dream. Crafted, built, tinkered with between two or three confinements and re-confinements with the help of a mad scientist, a patient director and a few enthusiastic accomplices.
The Loumavox exists, we have met it. Ok he’s not that old but he’s already matured well and he sings like no other! As for Louise, something tells us that she is no longer very far from us.
Unfortunately, it remains a story or, as I like to say, a synth soap opera. Nonetheless, you have to congratulate the school class for this great project. Above all, that they managed to make many believe in a real Synthesizer Christmas fairy tale.
This whole thing still makes me angry.
Fairy tales are meant as fictions and are framed as such, at the very least by adults. An actual fairy tale would have been interesting. Adding something to the video’s documentation to let people in on the “secret” would have gone a long way to make the inordinate effort somewhat worthwhile.
This wasn’t presented as a tale.
Let’s not congratulate Dupont or Weber. What they did isn’t recommendable. As teachers, they both should know better than to contribute to the spread of misinformation, however benign and “beautiful”. As a specialist, Weber could have led by example in terms of how to properly treat an old synth.
Had this been real, both of them should have provided a lot more documentation about the synth. At this point in time, an actual documentary produced by High School students with help from a university professor should raise the bar above yellow journalism. Dupont mumbled a few words about the difficulty to separate truth from fiction. His answer was mystification, not providing conceptual tools for people to apply critical thinking.
Did Lamalle do a good job of creating a fake vintage synth? Hard to tell from what we have so far.
Did the students do a good job of acting out a believable story of amateurs trying their hand at reporting? Maybe. Even in the “big reveal”, they don’t sound that enthusiastic about the whole thing.
As for Jarre expressing regret, that actually surprised me a bit. His reputation hasn’t exactly been spotless, over the last few years. This one bit of authenticity could help clean a stain or two.
Still, thanks for your coverage. Thanks to you, fewer people have been led astray by this deceitful hoax disguised as a school exercise.
God, who fucking cares?
Teachers, filmmakers, researchers, journalists…
You are still angry because you fall for it. You are actually angry at yourself and you know it. They taught you a lesson. Time to be an adult. Learn and move on.
Wrong assumption. While I heard from people who did fall for it, the jig was up by the time I tried watching it. Found it excruciating like so-called “Reality TV” and wrestling.
Excellent work! As a fan of electronic music I find it nice that young girls and boys are interested in old machines. And creating a story around synths rather than covid or the end of the world is pleasing to me. And obviously (looking at the comments) it’s a joy for many people in this community of machine lovers! So yes, there are some grumpy people. But the enthusiasm of these young people is so much better than the grumblers 🙂
Young people enthusiastic about deception and lying. Great thing to put on resume. Lot of corporate employers will be interested. Maybe even government.
Totally agree. How is it any different than the rest of the fake news trend out there? – a tactic used in most “communications” today whether it be major news outlets, social media or even people’s instagram posts. It all looks so fake. I find it no different than the rest of the fake news out there. Why not just make it known that is was not real. I honestly do not believe that anyone actually thought it was real. I may be wrong. Maybe people believe all of those spoof comedy movies or reality tvs shows that are made too – but I have not known anyone who does. To me, this just seemed the same as every other sensationalized “news” item of today. The fake sensationalization of it actually took away from a great documentary/movie idea they had. They should have focused on that and made a great little movie that would have been remembered for a longer time. Instead they are known as liars, which is probably not what they intended. Sad times.
Invent circuits, not stories.
Man, what a whiny, sensitive bunch. This isn’t like they were trying to SELL a non-existent synthesizer. They didn’t take anybody’s money. They didn’t start a “go-fund-me” page and embezzle your cash. Other than some people feeling “butt hurt” by it, what harm did it cause? It wasn’t hard to figure out it was fake. You guys probably read “The Onion” and wonder why no one else is upset that Donald Trump was kidnapped by aliens and subject to an anal probe.
This Synth News exercise is actually interesting post reveal. The panel at a glance offers nothing new or interesting, but could it sound beyond Moog? What’s wired up under the hood? My RSS previews didn’t color the news this way so I never followed up. Honestly, without any hint of CV or AUX I/O I wouldn’t care anyway, I have 2 osc+sequencer synths on my phone that sound fat.
The campaign however, is like a proof positive of restlessness and obsession. It might be that a story like this makes waves in a community as a point of interest, an artifact, or an arc of the covenant, here we are in a slow news cycle reviewing a classroom ad copy just to be together!
I remember watching the “documentary” a few months after it first came out, and was fascinated. But it didn’t take long to see that it had been made up. The comments had all the clues listed up and then there was an admission from someone involved that it was a class project. I applaud this endeavour whole-heartedly because it was fun, it took a lot of planning and caught everyone’s imagination. It brings to mind other examples of similar creative fake stories, probably the most famous one is H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds radio broadcast which made a few naive and credulous people angry and yet managed to become a classic. Another infamous fakery is the Necronomicon, H.P. Lovecraft’s forbidden book of dangerous magical incantations, supposedly written back in the 8th century… are we angry at these people ??? No, we marvel at their creative spirit!
In other words gIrL PoWeR
Lol.
I think it was hilarious, and initially I fell for it. Just because you would like something to be true doesn’t make it true. It serves as a mirror and a good lesson.