DOCUMENT UFD003 Florian Hecker Robin Mackay Sound Out of Line: In Conversation with Florian Hecker In this discussion from the 2009 Urbanomic event Sound Out of Line, Florian Hecker discusses the evolution of his work, sound synthesis, and the nature of collaboration URBANOMIC / DOCUMENTS ROBIN MACKAY: In the work that you’ve done, both in RM: The net effect of these sudden changes is of- your own name and in collaboration with others— ten to disorient or surprise the listener: I have the URBANOMIC.COM and we’ll talk a little about this later, the fact that a impression that it’s not a simple matter to produce lot of your work has been in collaboration—the only such an effect, and that this is the nexus of the con- constant seems to be change: With every release ceptual work and the technical demands of com- and every installation you never repeat the same ex- position in your work. To disrupt the expected or periment twice, and each work uses different tech- orthodox reception of sound or what the listener ex- niques to address a series of related questions about pects from musical experience, firstly demands that sound. So the simplest way to begin might be to ask, you have an analysis of what those expectations is there any one guiding principle behind what you are and where they come from. Much of your cur- are pursuing in your sound work? rent work comes from looking critically at theoreti- cal models of how sounds are received and unified, FLORIAN HECKER: I can’t yet see such a principle and formed into consciously-understood sonic entities. I believe this could be answered differently at dif- And you have to evaluate those models in order to ferent times. However, one answer here would be subvert or disrupt those mechanisms of unification the notion of the production of apparent change or normalization. and surprise and what this produces (in us) while experiencing it. For me sitting here now and think- ing about this, this notion of surprise or change in I simply wanted to get rid of all of these a sound piece is something that has been my main things that constitute something like a focus in all the different pieces over the last year. classical tune—melody, pitch/note So, in the perception of a sound work, what does relations, etc.—and then see what’s left it mean if something changes from one state to something very different, something which on first hearing does not connect straightaway to what FH: Yes, looking into different models of sound per- you perceived before? I would not want to call this ception in various branches of psychoacoustics – a break or rupture, but rather a situation where sound being perceived as a ‘stream’, or as an ‘event’, one state is being followed by another which is or as an ‘auditory object’; when I started doing all quite different, a sort of a sequence of events of this, it was a very intuitive and unconscious ap- and episodes…. proach: I simply wanted to get rid of all of these 1 things that constitute something like a classical went into this theater, they were aware that they tune—melody, pitch/note relations, etc.—and then were going to spend forty minutes in there, during see what’s left if you take this all away. this quite hectic time of the opening of the Venice Biennale. And for me this was one of the important RM: So you’re trying to expose the listener, in the features of this piece: that it was this engagement absence of those recognizable criteria—they don’t in this particular space that would bring it together. have anything to hold on to. But this raises the prob- lem, a philosophical problem, I think: there can never In terms of the segregation of the elements, this really be a raw experience of sound (or indeed of vi- happened on quite a few levels: There was noth- sion). Because our minds always impose—as a func- ing like a deliberate ‘hotspot’ in this theatre, from tion of what Kant might have called a ‘transcendental where you could listen in the ‘best’ way; there was principle’ that is necessary in order for there to be no place where you would see Cerith’s film in the experience per se—the necessity to unify, to gather best way. Nevertheless, in fact the ‘cheap’ places at together, to reconstruct, in order to make sense of the very end of the theater had the best view on the what’s being heard. Which in turn recalls Duchamp’s piece, and the people who paid the most and sat in principle that ‘it is the viewers who make the pictures’. the first rows just saw this blurred-out digital image. That is, the result is that the audience is forced to However they got to hear in a different perspective play an active, participatory role in creating the piece. than someone sitting in the opposite direction. This was quite an explicit principle, I believe, behind your collaboration, for Venice 2009, with Cerith Wyn RM: So this was like a spatial expression of the prin- URBANOMIC / DOCUMENTS Evans, in that Cerith’s film had no explicit connec- ciple that each member of the audience puts it to- tion with your sound piece, and so the audience was gether themselves—you get a different impression URBANOMIC.COM forced to make sense of the coupling. So they end up depending on where you are. ‘making’ the piece even if it’s involuntarily, by default. FH: Yes. FH: It’s called No night No day. Cerith and myself did this in a very lush opera house in Venice three RM: Looking at the CD releases, what is striking is weeks ago. It consisted of a film projected on one that their totally uncompromising nature. Each one screen, and my contribution, a computer-generat- is the result of a process of experimentation, and ed sound piece that was distributed on twenty-four this process is presented without any concessions speakers in the space. And in the process of work- to the listener—there is no attempt at pedagogy, no ing on this, people would often say to us, Oh, you careful gentle leading of the listener into this space. haven’t shown each other your work while you’ve Would it damage the work were you to do so? Is this been working on it? deliberate? RM: So you worked in isolation? FH: Yes, I think it would partly compromise the work; but what we’re doing here tonight is a kind of ‘guid- FH: Yeah, in so far as we didn’t show or play to the ed tour’, so it’s different to how a CD is circulating other what we’re doing. But over a period of two once it’s been released and someone picks it up years, we had an ongoing discussion: that there’s somewhere. going to be this event sometime in the future, we’re going to do this somewhere. And soon it became Also, it changed a little bit from release to release. apparent what we didn’t want to do: We didn’t want In a couple of albums, like the record I made with to have human performers in there, and we want- Rephlex in 2006,1 I wrote liner notes, but it was more ed to do something that dealt with projected media. to embrace this spirit of electro-acoustic records And I feel that this notion of collaboration changed from the seventies, which always had to have liner very much in terms of what can a collaboration be. notes—adapting to a certain style, and seeing what I could put into this. Or like our collaboration on the But what brought things together was these two elements being in the same space. The audience 1. Recordings for Rephlex (Rephlex, Cat. 181 CD, 2006). 2 latest album,2 taking this in a very strict direction— RM: So if we take the example of Sun Pandämonium,3 which went so far that people said ‘oh, the music this would be the fruit of a period of experimenta- sounds okay, but why the hell are these liner notes tion of how long? there’—or the other way around. FH: To a certain extend this started in 1999 when RM: I haven’t heard the response that way around I did a year-long workshop on physical modelling yet, I’m looking forward to it! synthesis at ZKM in Germany where I met Alberto de Campo, who worked with Curtis Roads on the I was thinking of the idea, for instance, of ‘intelligent original Pulsar Generator software. Together with techno’, as proposed originally, I guess, by Warp: ‘in- him I started to look at Iannis Xenakis’s stochastic telligent listening music’ that presents elements that synthesis and also at software works around Trevor are perhaps a bit avant-garde or exploratory, but Wishart, the English composer, the Composer’s within an accessible form that is ultimately still ‘mu- Desktop Project and the idea of analysing and ed- sical’ in an obvious way; that’s something completely iting sounds on the scale of wavesets and putting different, I think. them together again. So there was a process over several years to get it done. But then I think the ac- FH: Yes, these releases were still working with this tual process of doing the album was very quick; as musical garbage I wanted to get rid of! Rhythms in the collaboration with Cerith, when you’re speak- and melodies and the format of a track, convention- ing with someone about two years to do something, al short durations for a track….