Resynthesizers

An electroacoustic, olfactory, and textual project by artist Florian Hecker.

Florian Hecker is an artist whose work is realized through the technical manipulation of sensory data. By utilizing machinic scales and registers, Hecker creates environments marked at once by overwhelming complexity and vexing subtlety, where audience members are led to dwell on the outer limits of their own perceptual capacities.

Resynthesizers took place in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles, in the Fitzpatrick-Leland House, a tri-level residence designed by Rudolf Schindler and built in 1936. Centered around a trio of compositions produced using a novel algorithm for texture synthesis, the exhibition also featured three olfactory accords selected by Marc vom Ende and Philip Kraft of Symrise, and three electrophoretic displays transmitting a libretto by Robin Mackay.

The molecular construction of sensory experience enabled by the technical manipulation and synthesis of materials emerges as a central theme of Resynthesizers. The regime of these ‘immaterials’ disjoins sensation from inherited conceptual models, and in the encounter with its resyntheses we are challenged to reintegrate sense and formulate new concepts.

Designed by NORM, Zurich, this meticulously assembled document features exhibition documentation by Fredrik Nilsen Studio and data visualizations by Axel Roebel alongside essays by Wendy Hui Kyong Chun and Alex H. Barnett, Marc Vom Ende and Philip Kraft, Robin Mackay, and Luciana Parisi.