7 Configurations: The Cycle

Marco Donnarumma

Meta.Morf 2024 – [up]Loaded Bodies / Kjøpmannsgata Ung Kunst / April 18 – August 18 /
Curators: Zane Cerpina, Boris Debackere, Espen Gangvik, Florian Weigl.

7 Configurations: The Cycle (2014-2019)

7 Configurations (2014-2019) is a cycle of three performances and two installations by artist, performer, maker and theorist Marco Donnarumma. The cycle is a substantial milestone in the artist’s research on the hybridization of human and machine bodies through sound, movement and AI prostheses, an investigation he has been pursuing since 2010. Conceived, created and performed by Donnarumma with the support of scientific and artistic collaborators, the cycle focuses on the integration of new technologies in human bodies and lives, as well as its implications. At its core lies the question: How to understand the effects of AI and robotics on interpersonal and institutional power? 

The cycle begins with the birth of hybrid bodies without predefined identities, the amorphous figures of Corpus Nil and Amygdala. It then shifts to the coalescence of multiple identities into one body, the monstrous and graceful assemblages of Eingeweide. Taking a wider view, Alia: Zǔ tài  concentrates on the relations between mongrel bodies struggling to co-exist. Finally, Calyx exhibits bodies as relics, remains of what once was or could have been. Through movement and sound, each episode of the cycle creates tensely intimate and physical experiences for both audiences and performers. By using choreographic methods based on the ideas of coercion, use and abuse, supported by interactive sonic environments created with amplified sounds from the performers’ bodies, movement and sound become one language. 

By coupling art with science, movement with sound and dramaturgy with technological design and engineering, Donnarumma has created artworks that combine human bodies, robotic hardware, machine learning software and microorganisms into particular ‘configurations’. These are hybrid forms of embodiment, where each element of the human and the machine affects the other, until the borders between them become confused. This  idea of configuration as an alternate form of embodiment was elaborated during the past eight years by the artist through praxis, scientific investigations and theoretical writings (most freely available on his website). The notion is indebted to his active engagement with the feminist academic community, whom theories of human and machine and critical studies of disability constitute the conceptual scaffold for the works – the artist is, in fact, late-deafened and identifies as a disabled person. 

Hence, 7 Configurations is the result of an iterative feedback between artistic practice, theoretical research and the making of custom technologies. The artist applied the idea of configuration to his creation process, using it as a blueprint as he engineered, designed and fabricated the sensory and robotic prostheses that appear in the cycle. These include software and wearable hardware for physiological computing, systems for spatial sound and interactive music/light and robotic prostheses driven by custom AI software (the latter based on a framework developed by the Neurorobotics Research Laboratory in Berlin and programmed by Donnarumma). 

Expanding Donnarumma’s work on biophysical music, each of the pieces in the 7 Configurations features an interactive musical composition that the artist created by amplifying and digitally processing sounds from the performers’ bodies. Using the sonic prosthesis XTH Sense – a wearable biosensor created by Donnarumma in 2010 – the sounds of muscle contractions, blood flowing and bones crackling of the performers are captured and fed to a custom software. The software enables performers to manipulate their own bodily sounds in real time, creating improvised music that is inherently coupled with their movements and physicality. This bodily sound, also known as mechanomyogram, is a subcutaneous mechanical oscillation (i.e. acoustic sound) produced by muscle fibres and blood vessels; it is composed of very low-frequency vibrations. These are captured by the XTH Sense through chip microphones on the skin surface, and are fed to a computer in real time. A custom software deploys mathematical and learning models to understand and interact with the muscular activity of the performer’s body. 

Using sound design techniques based on psychoacoustics, Donnarumma treats the sounds of the performers’ bodies so as to create acoustic effects which have tangible resonances on the bodies of the audience members. When a performer’s muscle vibration becomes tangible sound breaching into the outer world, it invades the spectators’ bodies through their ears, skin and muscle sensory receptors. The fleshly sound makes their muscles resonate, establishing a nexus between player and audience. A recurring musical idiom of the 7 Configurations is the use of particular rhythms and sonic forms that induce a sense of flow, or entrainment, in both the audience and the performer. The composition of pulsating sound forms, combined with the bodily configurations on stage, aims to alter and heighten the visitor’s perception. In so doing, the experience of each piece becomes akin to a ritual; a ritual of bodies, machines, sounds and lights to mark the existence of the new bodies on stage.

The XTH Sense sensory prosthesis is accompanied on stage by a set of custom-made robotic prostheses. These, driven by AI software that imitates the sensory motor system of mammals, are not programmed to perform predetermined movements, but rather to ‘sense’ their environment and improvise movement together with their human partners, embodying thus uncanny configurations of the machinic with the organic. They are useless prostheses, paradoxical objects designed for the body, but not to enhance it, rather to subtract or upend some of its functions: Amygdala is a skin-cutting robot with a steel metal knife; Rei is a facial prosthesis which blocks the wearer’s gaze with a mechanical arm (as seen in the performance Eingeweide); C and B are two robotic spines that function as additional limbs without a body (performing in the piece Alia: Zǔ tài). All the robots were custom-made by the artist, purposely avoiding off-the-shelf technologies and their limitations. Each of them was designed according to the anatomy and performative skills of the human performer that would engage with it on stage. The prostheses’ morphologies, their materials and functions are, thus, the embodiment of individualised somatic relations between a robot and a performer.

7 Configurations was born from the cross-pollination of disciplines, a deeply transdisciplinary approach at the core of Donnarumma’s work. This combines his various expertise, enmeshing elements of hybrid art, body art, sound art and dance theater with AI, neurorobotics, computational creativity and biological sciences. The result is a multi-layered art form focused on performativity of machines, of bodies, of gender, of non-human agents. Today’s ethico-political polarisation and systemic discrimination are, more than ever, reinforced by new technologies. This demands from artists to reflect deeply on their use of technology. The 7 Configurations is a statement on the effects of new technologies on body politics as much as on their transformative potential. Through artistic research, new technologies can help reframe the notion of “human” as a vulnerable, open and leaky creature that is dependent on and enriched by both its human and non-human kin. 

Credits
7 Configurations cycle – performances and artworks (in chronological order):
Artistic and visual concepts, artistic direction, performance, staging: Marco Donnarumma
Music, interaction programming, physiological computing software and hardware: Marco Donnarumma
Corpus Nil light design: Marco Donnarumma
Corpus Nil additional machine learning programming: Baptiste Caramiaux
Corpus Nil external eye: Margherita Pevere
Amygdala and Calyx artificial skin garments’ research and fabrication: Marco Donnarumma
Artistic mentorship for Amygdala and Calyx: Jan Verwoert
Eingeweide artistic co-direction, co-staging and performer: Margherita Pevere
Eingeweide wearable biofilm and robot skin for Rei: Margherita Pevere
Eingeweide light design: Andrea Familari
Alia: Zǔ tài choreography, and performer: Nunu Kong
Alia: Zǔ tài performer: Ling Ling Chen
Alia: Zǔ tài light design: Eduardo Abdala

Marco Donnarumma (DE) is an artist, performer, inventor, stage director and theorist weaving together contemporary performance, new media art and interactive computer music since the early 2000s. He manipulates bodies and invents machines, crafts choreographies and composes sounds, thus combining disciplines, media and technology into an oneiric, sensual, uncompromising aesthetics. He is internationally acknowledged for solo performances, stage productions and installations that defy genres, and where the body becomes a morphing language to speak critically of ritual, power and technology.

Touring consistently for the past fifteen years across major and independent theaters, concert halls, parking lots, squats, festivals and museums worldwide, Donnarumma’s work has been shown, among others, at Volkstheater Wien (AT), Münchner Kammerspiele (DE), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (DE), NRW Forum (DE), Ming Contemporary Art Museum (CN), Laznia Center for Contemporary Art (PL), Chronus Art Center (CN), ZKM (DE), IRCAM (FR), LABoral (ES), Kontejner (HR), tanzhaus nrw (DE), Romaeuropa Festival (IT), Ars Electronica (AT), Donaufestival (AT), Nemo Biennale/HeK Basel (FR), musikprotokoll (AT), CTM Festival (DE), transmediale (DE), Panorama Festival (BR).

Donnarumma holds a Ph.D. in performing arts, computing and body theory from Goldsmiths, University of London. Currently he is an Associate Researcher at the Intelligent Instruments Lab, Reykjavik, while recently he was a Medienkunst Fellow at medienwerk.nrw and PACT Zollverein, Essen. He has held research positions at the Akademie­ für Theater ­und Digitalität, Dortmund and at the Berlin University of the Arts in partnership with the Neurorobotics Research Laboratory. His work was funded by European Commission, Goethe-Institut, Berlin Senate, Fonds Darstellende Künste, Rockefeller Foundation, British Council and New Media Scotland. His writings are published by MIT Press, Oxford University Press, Routledge, ACM and Springer, amongst others.

marcodonnarumma.com
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Header Graphics: “Eingeweide”, Donnarumma & Pevere, photo Manual Vason.