Florian Hecker - Resynthese Favn - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Resynthese FAVN is a ten-CD box set and publication presenting a new realization of Florian Hecker's 2017 thirteen-channel installation of the same name. First exhibited at Kunsthalle Wien in the exhibition InchHalluzination, Perspektive, Synthese,Inch and elaborating upon ideas first presented in the 2016 project FAVN, the ten works that comprise Resynthese FAVN present iterations of a synthetic timbre produced using machine-listening processes of analysis and further resynthesis -the sonification of a machine caught in the act of listening to itself. Accompanying the audio are three booklets containing three new essays offering critical and historical context for the work, developed in collaboration with the British Urbanomic. FAVN and it's resynthesis point back to Stéphane Mallarmé's 1876 poem InchL'Après-Midi d'un Faun,Inch and it's subsequent musical and choreographic interpretations by Claude Debussy and Vaslav Nijinsky. A faun, straddling reverie and reality, recounts a sensuous meeting with several nymphs. It is unclear whether the experience was an illusion; asks the faun, InchDid I love a dream?Inch Hecker, in turn, asks listeners to examine their own sensory perceptions. What forms do our human minds make out of the algorithmic timbres and synthetic voices that unspool across the versions of Resynthese FAVN? Sound drags, ascends, chirps, warps, and growls with manic irregularity. Definite but indescribable differences emerge across the ten 53-minute tracks. Language-occasionally emerging through a synthetic voice, sourced from a libretto written by Robin Mackay-proves unstable within the hallucinatory textures set loose by Hecker's composition. As chimeric shapes materialize and fade away, one might further ask are we listening for the faun, or do we become faun through listening? Across the three newly published essays, Quentin Meillassoux contextualiz