Pareidolia

Driessens & Verstappen

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

Pareidolia (2019)

It is a fascinating idea that all the faces of all the people who have ever lived and will ever live, may be found within the enormous quantity of grains of sand existing on earth. And even though finding a face is very rare, you know that innumerable faces are concealed among them, if you search long enough in the well-nigh inexhaustible volume. Pareidolia* is a fully automatic robotic search engine scrutinizing grains of sand in situ.

This proceeds as follows: there is a dosing funnel in the machine that sprinkles the sand across a slowly rotating glass disc. The microscope above the disc detects the individual sand particles and applies face detection software to each of them. If a face is discovered within the scattered grains, a portrait will be recorded photographically. All photos are unedited and true representations of the grains in question. Finally, there is a swiper swiping the sand that has traversed around the circuit away, making space for new grains. In addition to the optics and the mechanics of the robot installation, the artists developed the face detection software themselves, utilizing AI and artificial neural networks.

The artists keep a tally of the top 100: as more grains are evaluated, this top 100 comprises ever better faces. The top 100 are shown on a large screen and its rounded form refers to the ocular nature of the microscope.

The work offers a more profound insight into the morphology of sand grains and the inconceivable number of their unique variants. In addition, the work comments in a playful and absurdist manner on the extreme implementation of an anthropocentric worldview, whereby everything revolves around Man who wishes to see his own image even in the tiniest grain of sand.

*Pareidolia is an illusion in which the observer perceives something recognizable in something it is not.

Pareidolia is supported by the Dutch Creative Industries Fund.

Driessens & Verstappen (NL)
The Amsterdam-based artist couple Erwin Driessens (1963 Wessem) and Maria Verstappen (1964 Someren) have worked together since 1990. After their study at the Maastricht Academy of Fine Arts and the Rijksakademie Amsterdam, they jointly developed a multifaceted oeuvre of software, machines, and objects. Their research focuses on the possibilities that physical, biological, and computer algorithms can offer for the development of image-generating processes. They strive for an art in which spontaneous phenomena are generated systematically. Art that is not entirely determined by the subjective choices of a human being but instead is created by autonomously operating processes. A major source of inspiration is the self-organizing processes in nature, especially the decentralized processes, the bottom-up processes that have their attention. In addition to working with natural processes, they use the computer to program digital processes that generate fictional worlds.

Driessens & Verstappen participated in numerous exhibitions a.o. Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen Rotterdam, Centre Pompidou Paris, Garage Museum Moscow, IVAM Institute Valencia, Museum Kröller-Müller Arnhem, Neue Pinakothek München, Les Abattoirs Toulouse, V2_ Rotterdam, Eyebeam New York, Science Gallery Dublin. The couple gives lectures and presentations at universities, art academies, festivals, and conferences, a.o. Siggraph Los Angeles, Sonic Acts Amsterdam, Second Iteration Melbourne. In 1999 and 2001, their Tickle robot projects were awarded first prize at VIDA Telefónica Spain, an international competition for Art & Artificial Life. In 2013, the couple received the Witteveen+Bos Art+technology Award for their entire oeuvre. The artists are represented by gallery DAM in Berlin.

driessensverstappen.nl

Header Graphics: “Pareidolia” installation by Driessens & Verstappen, photo: Helen Vink.
Portrait photo: Simone de Kinderen.

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
7c.marcodonnarumma.com

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

I’m not a Robot

Cadie Desbiens-Desmeules

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

I’m not a Robot (2021)

As the modern saying goes: “If something is free, ‘you’ are the product.” It encapsulates the internet and the error of our ways. We use services for free, but pay with our data and free labor. The consequence is that half of online platform workers earn less than $2 per hour, while the Big Four (Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple) rake in trillions of dollars by harvesting human attention and intelligence. Media artist Cadie Desbiens-Desmeules examines these disparities through “I’m not a robot,” a series of artworks that explore the murky world of digital labor and human intelligence tasks.

Machine learning is nothing on its own: it requires millions of hours of human work to train an algorithm before its “intelligence” is realized. For AI to successfully identify something as a car, it first needs humans to identify thousands of images of cars. The discrete human workers behind this training process are known as “crowdworkers” performing “microtasks” or “microwork”, yet these micro actions have huge macro benefits for tech companies.

Amazon recognized AI and machine learning’s gigantic need for human intelligence and labor. In 2001, it created Mechanical Turk, a crowdsourcing website that enables businesses (known as Requesters) to hire remote crowdworkers to perform discrete on-demand tasks that are currently beyond the capabilities of computers. In 2018, The Atlantic called this work platform a “new kind of poorly paid hell.” Amazon’s Mechanical Turk has set valuable human labor on a freefall race to the bottom.

Yet it’s hard to demand better pay when we’ve collectively been training AI for free for decades by solving Captcha puzzles. Google’s reCAPTCHA service offers website owners a trade: if a site makes its users decipher hard-to-read text or match images, plus allows Google to track its users, Google promises to stop bots and spam in return. What seems like a fairly innocuous annoyance to a user is actually a powerful and lucrative method of extracting free labor. The company has used this tech to digitize the archives of The New York Times, to help Google Street View, to digitize books from Google Books, and more. To date, Google has extracted $7.3 billion worth of free labor using this method.

Data labeling is the fuel that powers machine learning. Desbiens-Desmeules was inspired to mess with this process and generate images that are impossible to identify, even for humans. The artist fed thousands of images of cats to an AI model specialized in identifying cars. This tongue-in-cheek experiment resulted in absurd-looking creatures that are neither cat nor car, yet somehow both at once. Desbiens-Desmeules then created a simulation of the Captcha challenge that asks users to identify either cats or cars, over and over and over… Regardless of the selections made, the application will continue to ask for more. The viewer is encouraged to click and click, offering an ever-increasing amount of precious intelligence training for free.

Modern tech companies have succeeded in surreptitiously manipulating human beings to be both free trainers for artificial intelligence and providers of valuable personal data. It would be comical if it wasn’t so unethical, and “I’m not a robot” ingeniously reflects this fact.

Cadie Desbiens-Desmeules (CA), born in 1985, is an artist working between generative art and live performance. Her practice is either site-specific or installation-based, spanning immersive environments and augmented reality. Drawing on her background experience as a journalist, she casts a critical eye on technological trends with artworks that provoke thoughts and internal discussions about how we relate and engage with new technologies. Desbiens-Desmeules has presented her work worldwide, including digital art festivals and art galleries such as Arsenal Contemporary Art, the International Symposium for Electronic Art (ISEA), and TodaysArt.

In 2019, We Are Europe (WAE) selected Desbiens-Desmeules as one of the 64 artists, speakers, and public figures they consider the most inspiring European personalities. In 2021, her work was selected for the 5th International Digital Art Biennial (BIAN) alongside artists like Refik Anadol and Ryochi Kurokawa. Desbiens-Desmeules is currently based in Lisbon, Portugal. She continues to be active as a creative director and visual artist at Push 1 stop, collaborating with top industry talent and agencies such as Silent Partners Studio, where she has been working for Riot Games, Beyonce, Jay-Z, BTS, Billie Eilish, and Bruno Mars just to name a few.

desbiens-desmeules.com

Header Graphics: “Cat_C” by Cadie Desbiens-Desmeules. Courtesy of the artist.

Requiem for an Exit

Frode Oldereid & Thomas Kvam

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

Requiem for an Exit (2024)

This towering and monumental creation is set to deliver a monologue that tackles the complex question of evil. Through the lens of the robot, envisioned as a machine-human hybrid, evil is not portrayed as a product of political ideologies, moral deficiencies, class distinctions, or religious beliefs. Instead, it is depicted as inherent dispositions embedded within the human genome. This approach introduces a provocative stance of biological reductionism as the project’s foundational premise. 

At the heart of this investigation lies the intriguing presence of Neanderthal DNA within the genetic makeup of contemporary human populations. This genetic legacy is the outcome of ancient interbreeding between Neanderthals and early modern humans as they ventured out of Africa into Europe and Asia. Studies indicate that about 1.5% to 2.1% of the DNA in individuals with Eurasian ancestry can be traced back to Neanderthals, with variations noted across different populations. A persistent mystery surrounds the abrupt disappearance of the Neanderthals: What circumstances led to their extinction? The installation’s robot presents a haunting theory, positing that the eradication of Neanderthals might constitute the first instance of genocide committed by humans. Seen through the prism of Nietzschean philosophy, this primordial act of genocide reverberates through history, manifesting in various forms from the conquests of Genghis Khan to the atrocities of the Holocaust.

The robot suggests that the remnants of Neanderthal DNA serve as a living memorial to this ancient genocide, a permanent mark of an entire species wiped from existence. As the narrative unfolds, it probes the implications of this genetic heritage for the future, especially as humanity stands on the brink of becoming an interplanetary species. This contemplation extends beyond a mere reflection on the past, urging a reconsideration of what such genetic legacies might mean for our ethical and existential journey forward.

This speculative framework allows for a deep exploration of the biological underpinnings of behavior, pushing the audience to reconsider the origins and manifestations of what is traditionally deemed ‘evil.’  Are we not already encoded, with behavioral algorithms inscribed in the double helix of destiny that is our DNA?

“Requiem for an Exit” by Frode Oldereid & Thomas Kvam.

Frode Oldereid (NO)
Frode Oldereid (born in 1966 in Norway) is a university college lecturer in audiovisual subjects. His career in the music industry took root in Bergen during the early 1980s. By the 1990s, Oldereid had immersed himself in Oslo’s vibrant experimental art and theater scene, showcasing his versatility as a composer and sound designer.

His creative outputs span music compositions and sound designs for both art installations and theatre productions. Oldereid has also made his mark on the international stage, touring extensively with a variety of performances and installations. From 1997 to 2004, he dedicated himself to “The Machine Project,” a period marked by significant touring and exhibitions in various venues, including galleries, museums, and concert halls.

With education as a sound engineer and in documentary filmmaking, video editing, and photography, he has worked in all these fields. He has significantly contributed to numerous Norwegian studio productions in the capacity of a sound engineer. His visual works range from commercial productions for TV, art installations, to scenographic elements in the form of still image tableaux. Academic education in TV production, urbanism, sociology, media, and mass culture has influenced his productions.

Supported by Arts Council Norway / Co-produced by TEKS

Thomas Kvam (NO/DE)

Thomas Kvam, a Norwegian artist and author born in 1972, has carved out a distinctive niche in the art world through his integration of art, activism, and technology. His repertoire, spanning conceptual art, publishing, and literature, showcases his utilization of diverse mediums, from robotics to painting. Kvam’s scholarly background, with master’s degrees from the National Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo and Goldsmiths College in London, along with a Ph.D. from The Art Academy in Oslo, underpins his often controversial artworks that probe deeply into socio-political issues.

Kvam’s artistic journey encompasses three distinct phases. Initially, beginning in 1995, he gained recognition for his installations that combined robotics, video, and sound, captivating an international audience until 2004. He then transitioned to creating animation films, with political satire as a central theme. His work “Eurobeing” (2006) was notably included in the collection of the Pompidou Center.

In 2010, Kvam embarked on a venture into independent publishing with his Office for Contemporary Anarchy, releasing titles such as “Emokonseptualisme” (2010), “Rantology” (2011), and a provocative compilation of censored war photographs from Iraq and Afghanistan, titled “nowthatsfuckedup/Krieg dem Kriege” (2011). The war photography book laid the groundwork for a decade-long project titled SchizoLeaks. In the installation work “The Chosen Five” (2015), Kvam used facial recognition software to identify five US soldiers as war criminals, based on photographic evidence of breaches of the Geneva Convention.. 

“SchizoLeaks,” a comprehensive retrospective at Haugar Kunstmuseum in Norway (2021), encapsulates Kvam’s conceptual art philosophy. The exhibition showcased how Kvam, drawing inspiration from WikiLeaks’ strategies, utilized art as a platform for unveiling undisclosed documents. This approach forced viewers to face unsettling truths, thereby exploring the legal and ethical boundaries within contemporary political discourse.

As a writer, Kvam published his first novel, “Homo Sacco,” released by Cappelen Damm in 2017. His literary work, spanning from conceptual poetry to essays and shorter stories, complements his visual art, offering both narrative and theoretical contexts to his art production. Kvam is a co-founder and editor of the biannual art and literature publication Gespenster, to which he also contributes as a writer.

Kvam’s art, installations, paintings, and video works have been displayed in a variety of settings, including solo and group exhibitions, in museums and galleries internationally. Kvam’s career, marked by a continuous commitment to challenging audiences, is a testament to his ability to provoke critical thought and dialogue through his art. His works are not just visual experiences; they are a deep dive into the complexities of human psychology, aesthetics, and ethics, and the challenging balance between public knowledge and private life.

thomaskvam.org

Header Graphics: “Requiem for an Exit”, courtesy of the artists.