Florian Hecker - A Script for Machine Synthesis

A Script for Machine Synthesis is a sound piece, an experimental drama, a model of abstraction that recalls Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty as much as Beckett’s minimalist narratives and neo-imagist poetry. It is the climactic third chapter in the trilogy of text–sound pieces that Hecker created with the writer–philosopher Reza Negarestani (after Chimerization, dOCUMENTA13 and Hinge, Lumiar Cité, Lisbon; both 2012). The suggestive encounter with a pink ice cube is a conceptual point of departure for a scene in which linguistic chimeras of descriptions of smell and sound are materialised through synthetic trophies, auditory objects, and theatrical props. Exeunt all human actors, A Script for Machine Synthesis is an experiment in putting synthetic emptiness back into synthetic thought, featuring the voice of Charlotte Rampling; a perfume created by Frédéric Malle, Editions de Parfums and Carlos Benaïm; IFF, a synthetic voice designed by Rob Clark and the Centre for Speech Research Technology, University of Edinburgh; a CAL 64 Column Array Loudspeaker System by Meyer Sound; and a synthetic paper booklet designed by NORM, Zurich.

Performance