Florian Hecker's installation is structured into several zones throughout Rudolph Schindler’s Fitzpatrick-Leland house. The central element of the project is a computer-generated sound piece divided into temporal episodes using a loudspeaker display system. Core to this project is the intersection of two conceptual trajectories dramatizing the idea of the unnamable. The first stems from considerations which led the philosopher Jean-François Lyotard to his concept of immaterials. Crucially, Lyotard points to time spent in Southern California and the “architecture that Frank Lloyd Wright and his school implanted in the region” as having guided the development of his theory, which rests broadly on a complication of the idea of interiority. Second is the notion of musical timbre, described by psychologist Albert Bregman as a “multidimensional waste-basket category” for everything intractable to sonic analysis. Timbre remains a challenging yet experientially rich concept.

Florian Hecker utilizes language and synthetic sound as materials in his installation, live performances, and publications. Hecker’s installations consist of restrained arrangements of industrial audio equipment and acoustic paneling situated in a range of architectural contexts. In addition to his studies in visual art, Hecker received formal training in computational linguistics and psycholinguistics. He assumes the role of composer, collaborating closely with an array of specialists—not instrumentalists per se but software developers, audio engineers, architects, designers, theorists, vocalists and more—in order to orchestrate an experience that is layered and extremely precise. Exhibitions include Passages: Luke Fowler, Florian Hecker, Susan Philipsz, Adam Ant Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Wellington, 2019; Synopsis/Seriation, CU Art Museum, Boulder, 2018; Halluzination, Perspektive, Synthese, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, 2017; Synopsis, Tramway, Glasgow, Scotland, 2017. Performances include SynAsTex Korrektur, ART CITY Bologna, 2019; Synopsis As Texture für Computer und Frei Systemtechnik Filterbank, SWR Experimentalstudio, Germany, 2018.

Robin Mackay is a philosopher, director of the British arts organization Urbanomic, and is Associate Researcher at Goldsmiths University of London. Additionally, he is the editor and publisher of Collapse Journal of Philosophical Research and Development. His work addresses contingency and hyper chaos. He has written about, interviewed, translated and published the key thinkers associated with speculative realism and non-philosophy. In 2010, he organized an event addressing art and contingency at Thomas Dane Gallery. The resulting papers and discussion were published by Urbanomic as the book The Medium of Contingency (2011). Mackay will be working with Hecker to produce an analysis and synthesis of the ideas Jean-François Lyotard.

Founded in 2014, Equitable Vitrines is a Los Angeles-based nonprofit organization committed to examining theoretical and discursive approaches to contemporary art with the intention of determining their veracity and usefulness. At times, Equitable Vitrines enlists practitioners to produce artworks for spaces and audiences that lie outside of the contemporary art world’s immediate sphere of influence. Equitable Vitrines also produces exhibitions meant for audiences familiar with contemporary art, but which challenge orthodoxy. In either case, Equitable Vitrines’ intention is to advance a manner of speaking and thinking about art that is nuanced, widely accessible, and which strives toward coherence.