I purchased a buddhamachine last weekend.

Created by FM3 (Christiaan Virant and Zhang Jian), this anti-ipod not only puts generates ambient loops (Brian Eno grabbed a bunch of them), it has a little Buddha in the machine. And it has another feature that I discovered this morning, by accident:

When a cellphone is ringing nearby, the drones become loud, distorted, and frenetic. I had plugged mine into the speakers in my bedroom into which I usually plug my iRiver I let the loops run, and then, as I was coming out of my shower, I heard something that sounded more like Autechre than like Eno. Sure enough, my cellphone was ringing. Likewise, when a text message is incoming, the unit buzzes.

I’m trying to put some sort of interpretive spin on it, but really, it’s just kind of cool.