Florian Hecker: Speculative Solution (2011/2012) [EN, FR, JP, FLAC]

Speculative Solution is a CD and book with contributions by Florian Hecker, Elie Ayache, Robin Mackay and Quentin Meillassoux. Originally commissioned by Urbanomic and developed over the year 2010, this collaborative project brings together Hecker’s sonic practice and psychoacoustic experimentation with philosopher Quentin Meillassoux’s concept of ‘hyperchaos’ – the absolute contingency of the laws of nature.

In an apparent departure from Hecker’s previous release Acid in the Style of David Tudor (eMEGO 094, 2009), the four titles featured in Speculative Solution contain a series of micro-chronics and sequences of auditory contingencies, ranging from extreme stasis to the most dynamic intensities, crisp dramatisations of what Meillassoux calls in his text ‘extro-science worlds’.

As Mackay states in his contribution to the book, Hecker’s composition “participates in a circuit in which it, the accompanying texts, and diverse other objects, enter into a perpetual catalysis that must annihilate all priority, representation, reference, and even entity.’. Both ‘scripture and prescription’, Speculative Solution invites its users to integrate its sonic and textual components, as they enter into an accelerative cycle, becoming “truly ‘literalist’ marks which have no reason to be as they are, and which could have been – and still could be, at every moment – otherwise”. With Speculative Solution Hecker proposes that the concepts of absolute contingency and hyperchaos offer a rigorous new alternative to the employment of chance and randomness in avant-garde composition.

Japanese version was produced on the occasion of the exhibition Tokyo Art Meeting (III) Art & Music – Search for New Synethesia, October 2012 – February 2013, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo.

English/French edition
Publisher Mute Song, 2011
Editions Mego 118 / Urbanomic UF13
Edited by Robin Mackay
159 pages

Japanese edition: Speculative Solution and 3 Channel Chronics
Translated by Natsuko Jimbo
ISBN 9780956775030
81 pages

review (Brainwashed)
review (Ian Latta, TinyMixTapes)
review (Adam Strohm, Dusted)

publisher (EN)
publisher (JP)
exhibition in Tokyo (EN)

Download (English/French, removed on 2013-2-7 upon request of the publisher)
PDF (Japanese, no OCR)
Download (full album in FLAC, removed on 2013-2-7 upon request of the publisher)
related: Florian Hecker: Chimerization (2012)

Journal of Sonic Studies, Vol. 1-2 (2011-2012)

The Journal of Sonic Studies is a peer-reviewed, online, open access journal providing a platform for theorists and artists who would like to present relevant work regarding auditory cultures, to further our collective understanding of the impact and importance of sound for our cultures.

Founding editors: Marcel Cobussen, Vincent Meelberg
Associate editors: Jan Nieuwenhuis, Sharon Stewart
Publisher Leiden University Press

View online (Vol. 2, HTML articles)
View online (Vol. 1, HTML articles)
More recent issues

Pauline Oliveros: Software for People: Collected Writings 1963-80 (1984)

Collected writings of an acclaimed composer, performer and humanitarian. The book includes articles on new music, women as composers, sonic meditation, attention and awareness, and technique.

Publisher Smith Publications, Baltimore, MD, 1984
ISBN 0914162608, 9780914162605
276 pages

PDF