Florian Hecker - 1935

Florian Hecker - 1935
Year: 2018
00:00-06:58 CC weight = 0.1 iter = 500
07:01-11:53 scattering transform Q = 12 J = 10 sc = tf wvlt = gam
11:53-19:35 CC weight ordered
What do machines hear that humans cannot? Artist Florian Hecker explores the formal, perceptual, and aesthetic possibilities afforded by custom machine-listening software in “1935.” Through the use of computer audition, Hecker explores degrees of perceptual resolution hitherto inaccessible via human listening.
1935 dramatizes two trajectories of machine-listening analyses that subsequently transform and resynthesize new computer-generated sounds. On the one hand, Hecker employs algorithms to share authorial agency with highly formalized yet dynamic processes, and, on the other, to explore the formal, conceptual, and perceptual possibilities afforded by machine listening. In 1935, the computer’s specific capacities for synthetic sensation are materialized through resynthesis to become the very raw materials that Hecker uses for composition. Through the use of these by-products of computer audition, Hecker asks how we might grapple with this paradoxical invitation to listen to the machine’s listening, which, in turn, imperfectly models our perception.
At the heart of these processes of machine listening, analysis, and resynthesis are two computational frameworks: first is a model for audio texture synthesis, using time-frequency scattering, developed by Vincent Lostanlen (heard at 07:01-11:53 of the work); second is an algorithm for the synthesis and transformation of sounds from time frequency statistics, developed by Axel Röbel and members of the Analysis/Synthesis group at IRCAM, Paris (heard at 00:00-06:58 and 11:53-19:35). The algorithmic process of the latter begins with the analysis and extraction of statistical “descriptors” from a given input sound. The computer identifies structures in audio data and subsequently generates a representative model-a statistical “descriptor”-of that sound. Crucially, the identification of relevant structures is informed by psychoacoustic theories of perception; such theories are programmed into the analysis phase of the software to ensure that descriptors are as perceptually “relevant” to human listening as possible. What results is a high-dimensional representation of the original sound to subsequently drive “realistic” resynthesis-or, more interestingly and more relevant to 1935, taking specific statistical descriptors derived from the analysis of an input sound and resynthesizing the same sound with scaled weightings. These descriptors may well correspond with relevant perceptual categories intuitive to phenomenal listening. They may be used to resynthesize an input with fidelity and realism from the perspective of a human listener. But, behind this capacity for representation, they often exhibit measures of abstraction and scales of resolution foreign to human conceptual and perceptual capacities. It is precisely this capacity for abstract description that Hecker instrumentalizes in 1935. Here, Hecker does not resynthesize input sounds to the end of “realistic”-that is to say, normative-representation per se. Instead the aim is to highlight the inner workings of machine listening-by showing that there is a fundamental, generative difference between synthetic and human listening.

[@lochlynreed2253]

Bumping this one at da function

[@cletusjones5460]

How’d it go?

[@laszloperesztegi]

Great

[@laszloperesztegi]

Especially the soundtrack :)

[@user-ob9zo9cr4c]

lit

[@user-ob9zo9cr4c]

2024

[@oh_minus]

@@user-ob9zo9cr4c !

[@jk.studios]

that's more like it