FLORIAN HECKER (DE)
Residency period: May-July 2023
Florian Hecker’s residency project was at the intersection of synthetic sound and aroma-chemical engineering and attempted to tie some of the strategies he uses to create auditory objects (and to influence their perception) to synthetic scent design.
Processes of analysis and resynthesis have a central role in both auditory and olfactory research paradigms. While they have been intrinsic to computer music and digital signal processing since the second half of the 20th century, they have also played a significant role in scent chemistry and in the field of odorants and aroma-chemical engineering with synthesis of the first artificial scents and components dating back to the late 19thcentury. But if analysis and re-synthesis have become standardised protocol in aroma-chemical engineering, the “what else” that happens in these processes, generally on the fringes of human perception, is still largely unexplored.
The goal of Hecker’s research at La Becque was to explore, expand and probe the so far unsung relationship of olfactory perception with sound, delving deeper into the use of tools of analysis and synthesis of natural source materials as a mode of thinking across ways of sensing.
At the crossroads of performance, installation and publications, Florian Hecker (born in 1975) works with synthetic sound, the listening process and the audience’s auditory experience. Since 1996 Hecker has performed internationally in major concert halls, clubs and festivals for contemporary electronic music. Hecker has also an extensive discography that begins in the late 1990s and is characterised by a long-time association with the Mego/Editions Mego labels, as well as with other major proponents of contemporary electronic sound such as PAN.
1-3: Florian Hecker, La Becque, 2023, photo Matthieu Croizier
4-6: Florian Hecker, Inspection II, 2019. Installation shot at La Becque, Open Studios, 2023, photo Aurélien Haslebacher