Mackay, Negarestani Hecker - CD A Script for Synthesis

BLACK BOX NG P]NK (A Script for SVnthesis) Reza Negarestan (Each o represents one second si ent gap.) (Beneath the audib e thresho d:) three o whlte a abelisks a o triodic morker a filled with three distinct tremors o crawd o cubic chunk of pink o rnaccessrble ta the crawd a smell a portable o materiolized inta ct rubber trophy o occessib/e io the crowd o sound o of o graup, an indittdual and a synthetic being saft shreds of lysergic light stretched clcross the horizan exeunt oll humon octors a save far th-^ cube (Texts ln brackets are read against a background pu sating sound that reenacts the contraction and dilatlon of the text.) lThe ice cube on stoge o is somewhot speciol. lt is furnished \ilith o synthetic kind af emptlness. Volumetric a shoped os o unit af pmkness a trctnspcuent ao through ond through oo like o void protruded inta lhe spoce within yaur reoch. The tronsporency af the ice cube is a twisted register af its utter opoc)ty a its outer pink o symptam af its inner blockness a its integrity o function of its synthetic emptlness. Pink o is not mode of ice. lt is the ice thot is pink thraughout. a Pink is a chromotic deman. lt hos pervaded the inner being af the plotonic ice. lt is intimote with the synthetlc emptlness of the ice cube. oo Pink is the ghost in the ice cube. a Ta fathom the empliness, one hos to cammunicote with this ghost. oa outside in and iced over o The pink ghost noylgoles ocross the ice a tincturing its tronsporency a The glocioted void is mapped by the guiding demon o lts success ond foilure, tronsit and obstruction o to poss fram one level to the next. from one icescole to onother oo Ihls ls on experiment in putting synthetic emptiness bock inta synthetic thought. ooo but to da so, one hos ta first get under the skin of pink:) A b ock o{ resistance aga nst any further descriptlon, the ice cube is a b ack box for exper ence. lt is equipped w th an essent a time sensit ve per shab I ty. n order to prevent th s play - the game of exper encing the content of the black box from continuing indelinite y, the ce cube must rne t w th n a man festly brief time. Wh le t s true that the only way to uncover the contents of a back box (or lack thereof) is by playing w th t, a set of ru es s necessaTy in order to prevent us Irom sl pp ng nto false perceptual awareness. The ce cube is not suggestively fac ng toward our experience. lt s neither a ready-made oblect of experience, nor are its contents read ly given as elements of exper ence. The black box must be treated as a desgnated ste of sensory deprvation where sensory nteract on w th the ce cube is d scouraged. Reduct on of direct senso ry stlmul from the ice cube does not lead to an experient al crisls, it ls an oppor tun ty for syntheslz ng the contents of the black box. Just as the superflcial uniform ty of pink ns nuates a synesthesiac b ankness, the absence of stimul prompts a rigorous conceptual plastcty. Haptc and gustatory analyses of the bLack box are forb dden. The natural penalty for such perceptual transgress ons is the increase of entropy in the ice cube and the qulckenlng of its rate of ique faction. The brute force of anaysls might break the box open, but only at the expense of creat ng a new bLack box a together. The stage does not dlsplay the rce cube; t guards it. Untouched, untasted, but the ce cube h des nothing. lt s transparent. ts transparency is tinctured w th plnk. The game of ga n ng entry to the g aciated box starts w th a mental experiment fo low ng the permeatlng specter of the p nk within the cube. Prohibited from coming into contact wlth the lce cube, the strategy to get under the sk n of pink s not a matter of an in tu t ve de iberatlon. lt s a procedure of abstract on. Two synthetic agents - one sonic, the other o factory are de egated the task of commun cat ng wlth the chromat c demon. Their mission is to s mulate the behavlor of p nk n the ce cube, to reinvent pnk as a hypothesis for fathoming the transparency of the cube and scrutiniz ng the black box. But in order to carry out thls mission, these synthetic agents or characters - the sound and the smel rnust flrst be intro duced into the cubic body of pink through a feat of mental abstraction Rather than selective y subtract ng the tangible propertles of the sound and smel so as to render them abstractly commensurab e with the cubic body of p nk, a new model of abstraction must be devised. We beg n by d sturbing the total homogene ty of the pink ce cube. Suppose a v rtual cavity, a oca d scontinuity ln the homogeneous body of the p nk. The pink s no onger through and through s nce, by way of a thought experiment, we have generated a cav ty a ocus of inhomogeneity n it. This v rtual cav ty is a souTCe of a des gnated instabi ity, a site for the deployment of our manipulatve abductve agents. We have thus catastrophical y rearranqed the parameters responsib e for the behavior of the system, the p nk ce cube. Tendenc es, ramificat ons and nav gation pathways iberated by this catastrophic reconfrguraton reveal new sa eirt points about the behavior of pink across the structure of the ice cube. n other words. they reveal the true face of pink, as that which has thorough y invaded the ce permits us to see through the pers stent opacity nherent to the cube's trans parency. Becom no intimate with pink s an exerc se n abstraction. t beg ns with design ng a technlque of destabi izat on or provocation: A v rtua cav ty is chosen or a des gnated polnt of nstabll ty s plotted, n th s case a ocal discon t nu ty n the homogeneous pink. The second phase nvolves occupy ng th s v rtual cav ty with agents of some sort, and to study tens ons ar s ng from this destab izinq hole n the heart of p nk. What conceptual behav ors emerge. what structura complex ties come nto view, and what new tendenc es are disenthral ed in the theater of the pink ice cube? The abstract theater of fol low ng the chromatic demon beg ns not on y w th the exp usion of al human characters from the stage, but a so with an emphatic reorientation toward an art frcial catastrophe that preempt vely overthrows all dramatic conc us ons whether of trag c or comedlc nature - a black box whose opening wreaks havoc, or a box that stubbornly refuses to open.

Ithe scent, a cylindricol tower o modernized pyromid with apex ot infinity built in chilled o azone a pink tap level, it speaks a the language af this warld the bose, sunken a beneoth the descriptive threshold between the two o a mixed level desert the cylinder mimics the cube it is the hierarchy of the ice cube made odar tronsporency mode oir o mode tronslucid o mode pink 618 on cadmlum silver from the summit, white florol mist o ralling aver crystctl dunes closer yet, allusive micrascapic ripples loced with an inargonic twist blurrrng o bleeding trail of something o not of thts warld slender stems dragging up a silver veined air cleor fruit a af a cleor metol the smell, o synthesizer sitting on the skin of pink) Wlth a local inhomogene ty inlected into the homogeneous pink, to say that the ice cube is pink no longer enta ls it be ng plnk ai the way through. From now on, the wander ng of the chromatlc demon in the frozen void according to this gap maps the conceptual behavlor of 'seeing the cube p nk'. The carving of a virtu a cavity means that the conceptual brehav or of'be ng pink' s nowhere se f-s m ar in the cube, lnsofar as 'be ng pink' no longer means being pink homogeneously or p nk through and through any more. Indeed t denotes that there may be hypothet cal sites resistant to 'be ng plnk' anywhere and at every leve of the ce cube. The virtual cav ty rs a s te of inhomoqene ty for pink, t represents an obstruct on for the navigat on of the chromatlc demon. But rather than count ng as an impediment, the obstruct on enriches the navigat on map of the chro matlc demon and diverslfies the conceptual behavor of pink through the lce cube. lt operates as a hypothesis that brings about not on y the poss bility of gradual y unravel ng d fferent sca es of the ice cube as hypothet ca marks of lnhomogeneity, but also the posslb I ty of var ous modes of synthes s between these structural and functional levels. Th s control ed and calcu ated tampering with the box of pink therefore opens up vistas in the ice cube otherw se hidden from the perspect ve of a v ew from transparency. Ak n to a confidence scheme, by deceptlvely confidlng n the transparency of the ice cube represented by the homogenelty of pink, the ice cube has been tr cked rnto revea ing tse f. The real a[t s now to take th s cogn tive scam to its furthest outcomes. lere the inhomogenelty s an operat ve ie, a manlpulat ve abduct ve inference aimed at ncit ing the mplct behaviors and maklng explicit the hdden tendencies of the e us ve ice cube. The man pu ation exerc ses a hybr d, that is to say synthetic, form of reason ng const tuted of imag nary, discurs ve and practtcal resouTces and techniques. The new hybr d exercise of thlnking in do ng n ,nag nrng rs able to tease out new observables in a terminally opaque situaton. Whether introduced nto the narrat ve of pink as a designated instabi ity or as a carefuly crafted ie, the agent provocateur is but an aperture, a peephole nto the nnermost depth of the ce culle. The vector of hypothetlcal reasoning mobi ized by the abstract estab ishment of a conjectura inhomogeneity a well designed pragmatic lie, a local destabi izer - forces the dominant state of the ice cube toward a catastrophlc reorientatron. A catastrophe without tragedy, a reconstitutlon that is neither a penalty oI wrong y play ng with the b ack box nor a punishment exacted by gods or t me. lt is the catastrophic reorganization of pinkness from 'homogeneously spread through the ce cube' to 'inhomoge neously distr buted' that replaces the dominant stabi ity of the system with a new and more dynamic one. lf the concept of 'be ng pink' or 'a cube of p nk' rests on homogenelty as an attractor that guarantees its conceptual and func tional stabil ty, the hypothetical dehomogenizat on of pink drives the system of conceptual hor zon toward a new attractor that generates stabi ity around breaks and inhomogeneites. Ths is a conceptual stability that does not orgi nale from a frxed uniformity, but from a synthet c ntegration of variatlons and ruptures. t is not undergirded by the se f sim larity of the concept across differ ent domains but driven by a fusion of d fferent conceptual maps. As the plnk ice cube is tricked with a manipulative hypothess, the system loses its exlstlng stab llty. t begins to go through unstable phases and transitive configurat ons untl t once again finds its stab lity around a more supple attractor, a new do marn shaped around internal var atrons and breaks across d fferent scales of the ce cube ... a new k ngdom of lce crysta I zed around a catastroph ca ly decon structed pink demon. lnathing a baotstropped to elite modern from waves underneoth the olgarithmic ocid seeps thraugh discretely o out of nathing the sound o logic of ct bottom-up emptiness a repeoting o breoking a Itse/f o to sound spontoneity averridden by on outamaton a self-contained music box o synthesizing self fram nothing thegroin o clear o meonlngless o offectless a not a fram o this a world o modern emptiness on o rclndam walk o bridging pathways o with more rondom wolks o drifter o emuloting chaos o forgetting where a it is caming from cohering out af swerving grains and empty spoce o everything else a mere thought to exist isoloting o the function af transparency o extrocting o lts essence o gronulor o stepwlse a out af nathing) Unvel ed by the chromatic demon's hypothetlca actlvity, what was up unti now perceived as an nnocent transpar-oncy is revea ed to be an invlsible h erarchy of d fferent alien states of the ice cube. From the surface, a rnacroscopic level endowed w th ts own effect ve inferentra pathways and descriptive parame ters of ordrnary anguage. This is where the cube is pink through and through. The second level s a vast nterrnediary m croscoplc stratum again w th ts own

inferent al maps, autonomous truth values and a descript ve system cont nuous to but different lrom ordinary anouaqe. t s where the face of p nk begins to peel away. Just beneath the mesoscape, the intuitive continuity sudden y breaks: The third level, a deepen ng atomic sca e be ow the descr ptive threshold, discontnuous to the words above Ths s the abyss of possbilty spaces where the manifest plnk is completely wlped out. The ice cube s doubly h erar ch cal: top down, lt is pink cubely; bottom up, t s not, through and through. V ewed from llottom and top, the hypothetical pink demon sees two contrasting portraits of the lce cube at dlfferent eevatons. Spread between the two, an amp e and mu t modaL expanse of conceptual behav ors d str buted over a nested organ zation of scales and heterogeneous propert es defects, non monotonous cont nua, d s ocat ons and gra ns which further d versify the space of the ice cube. The bottom-up portrait ls too descrptivey mpoverished, it acks manipu at on conditiona s for exp or ng any opportun ty of construction. '/f the fragrance smells of the mounta nous a r, it evokes w d flowers' such a man pu ab e cond tiona cannot f Lrnct on at the atomic scale. ts optimal engineering insight, ts abductive power for eaping further, is who y scrambled. The top-down portra t, on the other hand, cannot fathom the sca lng asymmetry across the space of the ce cube, its defrnit ons always risk overextendlng themselves and turning into propositlonal dogmas (for exampe, the ca m that'the ice cube s p nk' once b own out of proportlon). Comm tment to one portra t to the exclus on of the other not on y restricts the scope of construction, but also sanct ons conceptual inflat on and explanatory conflation between different sca es. The faces oI the ice cube are fina y before us. But what ls rea y the ce cube, which ls lts true face? Th s s a I but the question of what s to be done, or more pract cal y, what s to be synthesized? lbelow a pink-cubely, o cubtc bulk ar po, rLles ane a is not the ather inside out the smell af tap daes not come o from below na fresh wind a blaws from o seo af porticles to the skin of pink the chasm between the twa a neither cllpine o nor oldehyde the cube o the smell a the sound o strata o asymmetric o disjointed the puzzle of the demon: how to lift the oromo fram below ta fly a dawnword in the cube conceptwtse, swim a upstreom ond swim o downstreom) there is an lnorganic mela ic twist in this floral scent and that there s Benzenepropana n the compound, or that the sound s rhythmically pulsat ng and that t s partculate through and through, to say X is such and such on one explana tory ev-o and also such and such on another? What mode of abstraction, transport of informat on acToss sca es and engineer ng does it take to atrive at such mixed eve propositlons'l But more mportantly, what does one have to do n order to qual fy as saying someth ng synthet c, articulatlng a mlxed- evel exp anation? And what is one requ red to say n order to determife those do fgs? Only by reorgan z ng the transparency of the ice cube as a subtle plastic ty that m croscopical y weids constructab I ty at the macro leve of engineering w th atomrc leve of physica behav ors and poss b llt es, s t feas ble to answer these questions. f 'being pink' s the marker of a macroscopic evel of behav ors de scribable by ord nary anguage, the hypothet ca non p nk represents the bottom up space of atomic scale ength. The now unve ed transparency of the ice cube must lle refabricated as a non triv al cont nuum where the behav or of the black box changes accord ng to the change of viewpoints from d fferent length sca es. Within this cont nuum, the manipu ab e wor d of the fam iar ptnk reltnes the bottom leve mode s of structure and behav or. and the unfam liar lower scale wor d nforms and deepens the macroscop c model of the surface. The hospita ity of the upper scale rnodel to concrete engineer ng prob ems gives the ower scale domain an or entation and the posslb llty spaces of the ower scale model deepen and llroaden the scope of constructron access ble from the upper scale doma ns. The m xed eve reconftgurat on oI the ice cube br ngs w th it the possib lity of a perpetual broaden ng of constructab lty, an mprovement in con struct on and a refinement of models. ldemonoinodetoils from here the cube a o nesting bax pink a o cube individuoted by color cleor is grainy dark the inhomageneaus pink o a bipalor being a mentally stoining the cube each level o equipped with o functianol level o endowed with o limit the chosm o on ctsymptatic bridge the tap appraximatlan of the middle opproximatian af the battam o ot infinity the battamless o depth sculpted a into a cylindricol lodder a reverse pyromid, the zenith prajecting dawnword to inftnity each level o step a the cube, o cylindrical o lodder with a globaltwist the demon climbs the ladder from both ends far to ascend is nat the some os ta descendl See ng the ice cube was never a matter of raw sensory experiment, but rather an engineering problem. lt s a matter of construct on accordlng to a synthetic mage and n whch the aTmamentaTUm of engneering s fuly depoyed: an The sound and scent are experimental agents n exerc sing the prec slonist guage desgn, analyss of conceptual behavlor, navigation of nferental pathways, fus on of d fferent elevations of the concept, and coher ng opportunities of construct on and man pu able cond t onals of the top w th the detai ed infor rnat ve physics of the bottom. What does t mean to say that the ce cube is pink and that the lce cube s not ice cube at the same t me? To s multaneous y say on y a s mulated unit. They are allstract eng neers whose task s to fo low the consequences of a set of pract ca comm tments or construct llie pos t ons to the r remotest possib llt es. As engineers, the r objective is to unravel the'What else?' of the r comrn tments in a pract ca functiona sense, and to constant y push the lront ers of construction further whi e refinlng what has already been logcof mixed evel configuratonof thewholespaceof whichthe cecube s

constructed. The engineer is a renormal z ng synthes zer insta led on the skin of the famil ar world but capable of retrofltting and enhanclng its constructs in the ever deepening space of posslb llt es. By fol ow ng the lead of the pink demon, the catalysts of abstraction the o factory and sonic agents have now en tered the new kingdom of ce ... where transparency is an interface for synthes s between different scales and worlds ... where the lack of an ultimate foundation is an eng neer ng advantage and a prospect for further construction. Their new assignment is to harvest the function of the ice cube's synthetc transparency through a program of abstraction. Once the functlon lmp icit ln the pink lce cube s extracted, it is only a matter of time to reproduce, propagate and reapproprl ate it on every level of this space ... n the obe isks, in the imagination, through the concept, within reasonlng, lnsde Imemory a the light a us o lhe ombient sky o flooting o above o the orbit a a o volume o of pink o squore replico a af eorth solid a cubic a ta the warld immobile a impasing o doubed o white a frasted a si/ver o n.rlst o spots no wind fram here, rafts set out at night never return bock a fram a the cubic window no wind vopor a swirlinQ o slx o rlmed o sldes frozen color shard a in imaginotion world seed crystal annex o all o Io o se/f o nucleolus o pink cubino o oll a oo milky oo glaw oo in oo pin o k o un o boxing o the o (beneath the audible threshold) worldl ,I (A) Menta Abstractlon / (B) Gesticulating a Designated lnhomogeneity Tr Scent / Top Down Model T; Sound / Bottom Up Model (c) The bifurcat on of the cube into two states top down and bottom uP foLlowed by the dep oyment of a hypothet ca site of nhomogene tY ns de the homogeneous space of p nk. The scent and sound abstract the functions associated with the bifurcated states of the ice cube.

SKIN GAMFS: A PR MFR ach eved either n the readynrade (free semant c determ nation of the obiect as artwork) or the specifrc ob.lect (co determ nation of v ewer and oblect in phe Rob n Mackay Over the past decade, Florian lecker has used d g tal sound techno ogies to transform phys cal spaces nto s tes for the dramat zation of the hear ng pro cess. n h s work th s process itself becomes audible the human mind's reconstruct on (or indeed ha luc nation) of objects on the bas s of auditory cues. Drawrng on psychoacoust c research, Hecker carefu ly designs and contro s such cues, us ng the imit condit ons of 'son c oblects' as h s mater a . ln these nstallatlons 'it is the aud tor who comp etes the work'; but not because they are interpe lated as the art st's helpmeet, tasked w th refin ng the raw matter he presents and frx ng lts indeterm nate meaning an nterpretat ve role that is said to constitute the 'freedom' of the subject of contemporary art l Rather than offer ng a spur ous perspectiva liberatlon, Hecker amplifles the constrain ng condltions of the auditor's perceptual apparatus. The subject's occupat on of space and reception of materia a lows t the freedom to exp ore Its own perceptua automatlsms. Perhaps thls work can be more profitab y compared to the mode of perspect ve operative n minima ism, where the viewer's perambulat ons around the 'speclf lc oblect'awaken them to thelr own ro e in constituting it as a perceptua object. The physica sound waves Hecker synthes ses are often integrated by the aud tor dfferently depending upon ther position in space and the way they dlrect the r attent on, so that sound-matter, auditor and exhiblt on space are a I com ponents of the work. Unl ke tl-re freeform interpretative play of the readymade, rnin malism's theater rs one of suspense. Vary her perspect ve as she may, ts v ewer never ga ns ac cesstothespecficoblect,whose'holowness,'itsreticencetoreveal tsinternai const tutio|r, is precisely what is enthralllng: a primed .lack- n the (b ack) box that ls never sprung, the oblect remalns opaque and obdurate as the vewer crrc es it. lvl n ma ism's nterrogation of oblecthood ends with the s mple tension between the gesta t of the oblect as unity and the experient a ser es of the viewer (a ser es that is endless, or wh ch, unsat sfactor ly, 'lust ends'). Workjfg with sound alows Hecker to more deepy ifterrogate the process of objectconsttuton,introducngcompexbfurcationsintothisexperentia series that go beyond a changing spatia po nt of view. The unity and homogenelty of the perceptual object are themseves disrupted, as shfts in the audtor's perspect ve cause what seemed to be stab e 'objects' to change n nature, to be dlsp aced, to fracture or become deloca zed. In effect, the auditor's 'degrees of freedom' (movement through space, dlrect on of attent on) are prosthetica ly enhanced in lecker's nstallat ons, coupled to a more intang b e set of var ables, afford ng them a deeper participat on n the synthesis of the oblect than is I On ndeterm nacy as the axiom of contemporary art. see the work of Suhai N/la lk. n particular his recent Artist's Space lectures at httpr//art stsspace.orgl programs/on-the-necessty of arts ext from contemporarV artl. nomeno og ca space.). Between sound encoded digitally and the work done by the auditor's nervous system, this process hioh ghts what the artst has referred to as a'phenome no ogica gap': the apparently unbridgeab e d sparity between homogeneous perceptual oblects and the mater a structures through which they are techni ca y produced, and n which no such oblects are'present'. Most of the concepts that inform processes of sound synthes s do not speak to the qualit es we wou d descr be as being heard. And nversely, most terms we wou d use tn the phe nomeno oglca descrlptlon of sound are ft ed by psychoacoustics under 't mbre,' a catch a I 'mu t drmens onal waste basket category'2 for everything ntractab e to ana ysis. This 'translation problem' between the h gh y control ed synthesis of mater a s and the semantc reconstruction and redescriptjon of perceptua oblects, s related to a problematic presented by phi osopher Jean-Franqois Lyotard n h s 1985 Pompidou exhibition Les lmmaterioux.3 As the or ginal remit - to nvesti qate'mat6riaux nouveaux et cr6ation' - suggests, Lyotard's' mmater a s' have lltt e to do with the much vaunted 'demateria izat on' of art. nstead, Lyotard had in his sights the accelerat ng cyc e of postmodernrty ln wh ch technologica instruments afford us a clrasp of matter beyond the human perceptual gamut, decomposing the oblects of everyday perceptjon nto systems of impercept b e structures, wh ch are then recomposed through the use of automated machine anguages lnto new, 'always precarious'a mater al organizations. As Lyotard argues, with these developments we can no longer trust our ntu t ve al ocat on of oblects, and their'mattet' can no longer be understood as a given that corre ates natural y with our language. For new symbo ic operalions, whose dense operations we can no longer fathom, shape the synthesis of the ' mma terials'that become a part of our everyday ives; and their products confoLlnd natura language, confronting us with experiences we don't yet have the words to descr be. The c assrc modern (Cartesian) conception sought to expel 'secondary qua ities' from matter-as-pure extens on; their sens b e reception wou d be only a 'theat- rca effect'of the body, as a 'confused speaker' which 'says "soft," "warm," "blue," "heavy".'s the science of mmater als nstead grasps these qual tles as the 2 Albert Bregman and Stephen McAdams, 'Hear ng Musical Streams', n Camputer Music Journal 3 (4) (Cambrjdge, MA: MIT Press, 1979), 26 43 3 Or g nal y commiss oned cy the Centre de Cr6at on lndustr e le curated by 4 5 Jean-Franqo s Lyotard and Thierry Chaput See the exh bt on cataogue, aong w th Lyotard s presentat on at the accompanying sem nar, N4atter and Time in Jean Franqois Lyata"d, The lnhutron trans. G. Bennington and R Bow by (London: PoLlty Press, 1993). Jean Franqois Lyotard, MatlerandTme'41. bid,37-8.

effects of reatlve disparitles between memory systems. The human mind lle comes on y one of a ser es of'transformers' that fleetingly generate mmaterials as they extract and contract flows of energy. Lyotard's thesis suggests precise y the pos tlon of the part c pant in lecker's sound exper ments: 'even the transformer that our centTa neTvous system s 1...] can only transcribe and nscribe according to its own rhythm the extractlons which come to it'5-a synthes zer among synthesizers. n hls recent Chimeras series o{ works, Hecker's preoccupation with psycho acoustic process becomes expl c tly a matter of such disparate rhythms Ac cording to psychoacoust cal research, the brain functions that serve to dentify the 'what' and the 'where' of a sound operate upon different timesca es, a frndlng Hecker exp olts to produce sequences n wh ch the fine t me structure of one voce is sheathed in the ampltude envelope of another, producing an entity that rema ns recogn zab e as a voice whi e being spatially de ocalized and semantica y scrarnb ed, and which the listener must reconstruct as a unifled yet lnvolves conceptual y shutt lng between the 'continuum mode' of an oblect vewed at a macro scale, where t ls characterlzed by'a few phenomenologica paTameters' apparently ndlfferent to their atorn c suilstrate, and the man pula t on of meso- and mlcro-scale structures for wh ch these a l-over attr butes no longer have any meaning.rl Take, for instance, the formulation of a new scent: The parfumier beglns with a natural language description of the desired effect (a flavor ess, p nk ce cube...) and must translate thls into the taxonomy of sources and accords, then subse quentLy nto register of chemica formu ation and u timately molecular structure. He uses precisron instruments to formulate these structures, producing a cand date scent that wj I then be cal brated according to its sat sfaction of the nitia sent ment. On the other hand, take Hecker's own bottom up'particle synthesis' of computer-controled'grains of sound'which are have no perceptual status as units, but when depoyed en masse rresistibly invite analogical description (Ihis sounds ]ke...), oniy for this recogn t on to falter and break down as the imposs ble synthet c creature a ch mera.8 partic e structure shifts. C.D. (A Script for Synthesls) sets the stage for a new procedure, extending At the molecular eve, scent no longer exlsts, hav ng been ana ysed into 'qualityless' chemical comp exes; nverse y, at the evel of the human listener, the part c e structure of the sound s no onger present, replaced by an al -over percept on. But the disc p ine of creat on or englneer ng nvolves navigatlon in the lntermed ate cont nuum. What s unique to CD. is ts demand that the audl ence too be initiated nto this disclpine. Hecker's dramatization of auditory synthes s nto an invitation to part cipate ln a chlmericaL synthesis or mmatera ization across muJt pe perceptua and conceptua registers. Fo low ng Les lmmotdrlaux's 'dramaturgy of informat on,' whch staged the uncertainty of a disruptve moment in the history of matter, ampl fying 'the chagr n that surrounds the end of the modern age as we I as the feel ng of]ub latlon that's connected with the appearance of someth ng new,' and sought 'to activate th s cl sarray rather than to appease t,'e C D a so seeks to dramat ze the mmaterial conditlon and to activate ts dlsarray. Reza Negarestani's I bretto for the p ece. addresses this not so much as a prob em of art or phi osophy as one of engineering. The artist may choose to uxuT ate n the sensuous, and the ph losopher may dream of attaln ng an ultimate leve of rea ty that wi e mlnate it. The engineer, though, s obliged to bridge the 'phenomelo oqical gap between the two, to courteract the'tyranny of sca es' that seems to irnit us to a choice between top down or bottom up vlews, phe- nomenologica or reductive character zat ons of matter. The eng neer must 'model across scales,'r0 understanding the obiect as a superposton of differ ent gralns of matter, each w th ts own behavlors, stTuctures, and languages, and none offering an exhaust ve clescript on. So vlng an eng neer ng prob em 6 Lbid 13. 7 Tachaty M.Smth, Bertrand DegltteandAndrew J Oxenham. Chmaera sounds revea d chotom es n aud tory perception', Noture vol 416 7 March 2AA2: B1-gA. 8 See Florian iecket Chimerizotiors (New York: Primary nformat on. 2013). 9 .lean Franqo s Lyotard, nter view w th Bernard B istdne, Flash A,rt 121 ([/]arch 1985) 10 Robert Batterman,'The Tyranny ol Sca es, n The Oxlard Hondbaak af Philaso phy af Pftysics, ed. R Batter nan (Oxford and New Yorkr Oxford Un vers ty D,^.-0) ) )86:)'6 At C.D's center is a presentation of phiosopher W lfrid Se lars's favorite exam ple of the p nk ice cube.r2 As a perceptual object we exper ence the p nk cube as homogeneous-pink a I the way down and at every point. t y elds no further nformation. Un ike the min ma ist oblect it hides nothing, yet the cube of pink s no less a black box foral that. f we are not simpy to passlvey accept ts taciturn c osure, the quest on is how we m ght break into this perfect homoge ne ty without mmediate y reduc ng it to something e se, os ng the obl-.61 e1 perception n favor of a mass of coorless partces. C.D.'s l bretto recounts this breaching of the plnk cube's hornogenety, wth other compofents of the performance be ng empoyed as agents to exert a conceptua pressure on its homogeneous perceptual sk n, overcoming its ret cence to g ve up any further nformation about tse f. Scent and sound become orientat on markers for the conceptual a ienat on of the cube, as they them seves are unwrapped, subjected to varying perspectves, and'ch merized'ln the I bretto s descr ptions. I brd..294. l2 See. :or example, W lfrd Se lars, Ph losophy and the Sc ent frc mage of Man, . Fr.rtiers of Science and Philosaphy. ed. Robert Co odny (P ttsburgh. FA: L.ln vers ty of P ttsburgh Press, T962): 35-78

What is demanded here s a radlca shft of perspective on the object, a shift which is not a matter oI interpretat on, which no longer takes place on y in physlcal space and which goes beyond Hecker's prev ous experiments ln ob ject disruption. C.D. asks us to abandon what meets our eyes and to concep tual y reconstruct the object as a m i efeui le of conceptua maps that concur rent y structure the cube, we are then challenged to reconstruct and ntegrate th s mu tlp icity of reg sters. No onger a homogeneous colored mass n space that can be broken down lnfin te y nto smal er masses of pinkness, the pifk cube becomes a ramlfied nest of concept-spaces, traversed n a ka e doscopic focus pull operated by a 'chromatic demon,' a movement as conceptual as it s perceptual. The very hytrlothes s of inhomoqeneity precipltates a 'catastrophe'that disturbs the famil ar parameters of the oblect: The plnk cube's perdurance can no onger be regarded as that of a substant a oblect sheathed n a homogenous percep tua skin. lt holds on y n so far as these rnu tiple evels are held n a tenuous stab ty, disturbance of which wlll opef up a new continuum of immaterla possibl ties. The homogenety of the object-an nevitabe inlta conditon of our perceptua encounteT ls not a given but an obstruct onl transparencv s opacty; ntuitve fami iarity is an tfpediment to nteraction oblects only block immaterials. Thls game is ndeed ncomplete wthout ts audience, but lt obiges you to obseTve certaln ru es of play. Th s is a theater that neither simp y te ls a story nor grants you the spur ous iberty of choos ng your own adventure. nstead, it en gages you ln a process oI synthet c construct on. C.D. on y comes nto ts own as a 'p ece n so far as you reconstruct t svnthet ca ly, as something ke the parfurfier's stratified column, in which top mdde and base notes are brought nto a precarlous accord from the plquant mmediacy oJ p nk to the greyness of conceptua labor, from the chorus afd their synthetic robes to the monollth ic oudspeakers, from the syrrthet c sk n of thls book et and the dryness of its prose to the rubber dlsc that is the vehicle for the scent, and the gra n of the reader's vo ce.... The program of abstraction constructs C.D. as a s ngu ar com plex in which the conceptua and perceptllal are equal y and 'immaterial y,' svn- thet c. For Lyotard the histor cal moment of Les lrnmaterioux pro[r ses new forms of creativity even as t hera ds the end of the progressive program of modernity. Henceforth there wil be only a complexificat on of matter 'in which energy comes to be reflected, without hurnans necessarly getting any benelit from th s,'13 mp ying a prolound cris s of aesthet cs and therefore of the contemporary arts.'r! For 'if we have at our d sposa nterfaces capab e of memorrz ng. n a Iash on access b e to us, v brat ons natural y beyond our ken [...] then we are '13 Lyotard Matter and Trme, ,15 '14 tbd..50. extending our power of d fferentiation and our memories, we are de aying reac t ons which are as yet not under contro , we are increasing our materia iberty'. l-h s berty comes at the price of security,ls at the pr ce of a counterfrnal ty of techn que and a 'forec osure of ends.'r6 The orientatlon of synthet c thought offers lttle n the way of comfort or certainty bLrt what is the alternative'? We ive n an eng neered world, where cultura product-say, Brltney's atest h1t-is de ivered as a perfect y packaged who e, its high y po lshed surfaces vvidwithlmmediacy.Thsartilicia skin,brstl ngwth rresstibleaffect, sworked by a dense and fathomless compact on of mmateria s coded and man pulated so as to metrculously frnesse and tweak response patterns and ensure max mum receptvity. Concreton atthelevel of irnmediate' cutura experience the me niscus of the ho on, more opaque the more transparent it appears to be ls the ach evement of n'rass ve abstract on atta ned co lectively through countless techn cal and creatlve microcultures and the new languages and conceptual structures that emerge from them. The mmateria s refrned by these forces of productron are sel-octed, processed and distributed accordlng to supple and respons ve practices of coding and decoding, technique and modu ation. The task for contemporary creativ ty, C.D. suggests, s not that of res st ng such unth nkable abstract ons by corrall ng audiences into'free' nterpretat ve spaces, but that of in tiating a d scip ned apprenticeship in allstraction itself: tampering w th and breaking open the black box of synthetic productlon, gett ng under the skin of immater al processes that would other\i/ se tyrannize us. For the ncom mensurabil ty of perspect ves is emp oyed w thout compunct on to dlvide and conqueri to produce sub.lects who are passive transformers faced wlth oppres sive double-blnds: n hi st c reduct on to elementary part c es or the opaque transparency of ived exper ences to be pass vely enjoyed: sc ence or cu ture; engineering or creatlvityt ana ysis or sensationt concept or percept. The means to engrneer our own art frclal lmmater a s and anguages to 'act vate not appease' begin w th the hypothesis that whatever is whole, homo geneous and seif evdent can and must be peeed open, and the processes of abstract on encrypted in pL.rre percept on tracked through a painstaking change ln perspect ve that unfo ds ts ram fred conceptua depths. As Negarestan 's i bretto asserts, this 'program of abstract on ' far from being destruct ve, reduct ve, or e m nat ve, s generative and ndeed creatlve. CD gu des us as we grasp the 'recipes' operat ve at d fferent sca es and learn to nav gate between percep tual objects and their technical preparation, ln order to ntegrate what once seemed I ke ncommensurab e components, through 'a k nd of mutual adlust ment' which. to an englneer of irnrnater als such as Hecker, must prove 'comp ex, fasc naling, and unavoidab e'.17 'TVrannV of Scales' 283

C.D - (A Script for Synthesls) November 9, 2013; 7:30 pm November 10, 2013; 3:00 pm & 7i30 pm Peter B LewsTheater,Solomon R. Guggenheim Vllseum NewYork . Wrtten and produced by Floran Hecker . Libretto Block Box/ng Pink (A Script lor Synthesrs) bv Rez€ Negarestan . Voice by Char otte Rampl fg recorded by O iv er Pasquet at IRCAM, Par s ' Perfume createcl by Car os Bena m, FF and Fraddric \y'a le Ed tlons de Parfums ' CAL 64 Co umn Atray Loudspeaker System bv N/leyer Sound . Text les n col aboration with Kvadrat . Costume Desigf by Alnea l'/lsk v . Chorls compostion and voca des gn by Joan La Barllara . Chorus: B raj Barkakaty, Amy Carr gan, Valerle Klehne, Br an Mccork e, Br an Rady, .lean Carla Rodea, Kama a Sankaram, Tatyana Tenenba!m . Producer: .lul a Slmpson . Performa Techn ca Director an.l Sound System Log stlas for Florjan Heckerl Mlke Sk nner . Clrrated by N,y'ark Beas ey . For tl'e Guggenheim: Nat Trotman, Assoc ate Cutator; Brenda Gray, Productlon Manager: and Ju ia lahn C.D. (A Scrpt fotSynrhesls) s a Performa Commsson .Co-presentedbyPerformaandthesolomonR.GuggenhemMusellm,NewYorklwththe support of Sad e Co es HQ London; Edrt ons de ParfLrms Fr6d6ric lvla e: Ga erie Neu Ber in institlrt firr Auslandsbezleh!ngen; FFi Kvadrat end lvleyer Sound Ber n . CoLrtesvtheartst.SadieCoes HQ, LondonandGaerieNeu. Graph c Des gn Paper Pnnting & Blndrng Copyrights Acknow edgments NORIvl, Zurich Tesln,115q/m? DZA Drlckere zLr Allenburg GmbH, Germany Biack Baxilg Pink (A Scrpt for Svnrhesis) O Reza Negarestani Skin Games: A Prtner O Rob n ['/ackay The art st wishes to thank Reza Negarestan for his commitment to the prolect and Char otte Rampl ng for het performance Specia thanks to Car os Bena m Fr6ddr c Ma le, Kvadrat and Meyer Sound for the r nva uab e contribulon and Joan La Barbara for her coi aboration specia appreciat on to Sadie Co es Pau ine Daly, Alexander Schroder and Thi o Wermke for their important assistance; s ncere appreclat on to N4igue Abreu, [.y'ark Beas ey, She eV Fox, RoseLee Goldberg Rob n Mackay Esa Nickle NORM, Ol vler Pasquel, Paul Pinto and Nat Trotman About Performa . Found,.d n 2004 lly art hlstor an and curator Roselee Goldberg, Performa s the leading organizat on ded cated to exploring the cr t cal ro e of I ve performance i[ the h story of twent eth centlry art and to encourag ng new ditect ons n peTformance for the twenty irst century. The Performa bienn aL is the onLy blenn al ded cated to comm ssion ng, presentifg and exp or ng new visual alt performance across dlscip lnes. O PERFORMA 13 GUGGENHEIM IO,OdTOI F?T'3Ei|Ei}X|YE (G,,M SCHQ IEI rrr^*-^'*""***''