thursday 21 april – 9pm

Florian Hecker (D)

Chimerization
Modulator
Synthetic Hinge 

multiple sound performance, italian première

Live Arts Week present three of Florian Hecker’s sound works. A unique occasion dedicated to his last masterpieces of text, sound and synthesis, with a sequential performance of Chimerization, followed by Modulator and Synthetic Hinge. The research project on Chimerization that Hecker initiated at the MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2011, starts from a concept derived from psychoacoustic investigations into the difficult-to-define areas between language and non-language. These investigations focus on the decomposition of sound and on synthesizing incompatible modalities, surpassing their respective particularities without fusing them, in order to obtain a narration beyond immediate comprehension, which may be deciphered through repeated, ‘active’ listening. For both Chimerization and Hinge finds Hecker teamed up with the Iranian philosopher Reza Negarestani. Hecker commmissioned Negarestani to write the experimental librettos for the works, which were recited and recorded in an anechoic environment, and then processed through an algorithmic perturbation. In the big hall of the museum Hecker creates a sort of pathway through which the works are being performed in a pandemic chimerization.

Chimerization is a text-sound piece produced for the occasion of the documenta 13 in Kassel, Germany. For Chimerization Hecker invited Reza Negarestani, to write a script, The Snake, the Goat and the Ladder (A board game for playing chimera), that has been recited by a group of speakers and recorded in anechoic and sound-attenuated chambers – rooms designed to minimize the reflections of either sound or electromagnetic waves.

Synthetic Hinge is a new sound operation on Hinge which featured the legendary artist Joan La Barbara as its main voice. In the reworking the piece is based on a computer generated version of La Barbara’s voice, with a gradational shift from the human, chimerized voice into the completely synthetic, complicating any assimilation of their respective traits. The re-polarizing phrasings of Hinge recalls minimalist narratives. Here the listener may construct a hinge, a pendulation between the right and the left obelisks; embarking upon navigation and synthesis while tracing the chimeras of nature and culture.

Between these pieces, Modulator (… meaningless, affectless, out of nothing …) reveals, in a structural and formal manner, the synthetic means of modulation and topological transformation. In a sequence of short episodes and chronics, Modulator celebrates the notion of sound as an Immaterial. Its syntheticness and modern generation is created by a bottom up and top down process across different scales, stimulating the human minds capacity to produce hallucinations of objects on the basis of auditory cues, without obvious compounding of a narrative progression.

presentation supported by Goethe-Institut Mailand

Florian Hecker, German artist, works with synthetic sound in performance, installation and artist publications dealing with specific compositional developments in post-war modernity, electroacoustic music, and non-musical disciplines. Since 1996, Hecker has given a multitude of performances, audio presentations and concerts internationally, in major concert halls and festivals for contemporary electronic music. His most recent collaboration with philosopher Reza Negarestani, A Script for Machine Synthesis (2015) was premiered at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, and Formulation (FLV Project) (2014) was presented as part of the inaugural exhibition at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris. Recent exhibitions and performances include Formulations, Culturgest, Porto; A Script for Machine Synthesis, Maison de la Radio, Paris; and those at Künstlerhaus Graz, Austria, and Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis (2015); Sadie Coles HQ, London; MD72, Berlin; Articulação, Lumiar Cité, Lisbon; documenta 13, Kassel; and Nouveau Festival, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (all 2012). Hecker has an extensive discography with over 25 releases, including: Hecker Leckey Sound Voice Chimera (Pan 2015); Articulação (Editions Mego 2014); Chimerization (Editions Mego 2012); Speculative Solution (Editions Mego 2011); and Acid in the Style of David Tudor (Editions Mego 2009).
florianhecker.blogspot.com