Florian Hecker
Fellows & Affiliates
Presentation by Stefan Helmreich, MIT Professor of Anthropology, followed by book signing and reception.
Florian Hecker’s book Chimerizations introduces new ways of visually representing sonic experiments. Chimerizations documents six of Hecker’s most recent projects with an introduction by Tate Modern curator Catherine Wood and an essay by MIT Professor of Anthropology Stefan Helmreich. The book will be available for sale at the event.
Chimerizations is at once a record of Hecker’s sound works and an artistic foray into the nature of visualization and psychoacoustic (sound perception) practice. Images, graphs, and texts are transformed through what Hecker calls chimerization, a process of decomposition and reconfiguration that relies on the same computerized SIFT flow algorithm. The projects included in the book are “Magnitude Estimation,” 2010; “Hecker Leckey Sound Voice Chimera,” 2011; “Bregman/Deutsch Chimera,” 2011; “Chimerization (MIT Project),” 2011; “Chimerization” 2012; and “Hinge,” 2012. In his essay, Stefan Helmreich traces the cultural and biological concept of the chimera — a term that stems from Greek mythology and refers to a three-headed hybrid beast — as the underpinning of life and evolution as well as the inspiration behind Hecker’s experimental sound interventions. The book was published by Primary Information, a non-profit organization devoted to artists’ books, writings, and out-of-print publications. Learn more about the book…
This event is presented in collaboration with the MIT List Visual Arts Center.