Marco Donnarumma


Marco Donnarumma is an Italian performance artist, new media artist and scholar based in Berlin. His work addresses the relationship between body, politics and technology. He is widely known for his performances fusing sound, computation and biotechnology. Ritual, shock and entrainment are key elements to his aesthetics. Donnarumma is often associated with cyborg and posthuman artists and is acknowledged for his contribution to human-machine interfacing through the unconventional use of muscle sound and biofeedback.
From 2016-2018 he was a Research Fellow at Berlin University of the Arts in collaboration with the Neurorobotics Research Lab at Beuth University of Applied Sciences Berlin.

Life and education

Donnarumma was born in Naples, Italy. Between 2003 and 2004, he studied painting at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan before moving to the Venice Academy of Fine Arts, Italy, and completing his BA in New Technologies for the Performing Arts in 2007.
He obtained a Master in sound design from the Edinburgh College of Art in 2012, and a PhD in performing arts, computing and body theory from Goldsmiths, University of London in 2016. His supervisors were performer Atau Tanaka and media theorist Matthew Fuller.

Career

2004–2010

Originally a musician and sound designer, Donnarumma's early artworks include sound and video compositions for fixed media,
web-based sound installations and participative concerts. In 2007, a collaboration with a butoh project by Latvian dance company I-Dejas created the foundations for his shift to body performance. Between 2007 and 2010, he explored hybrid forms of performance with computers and new musical instruments, playing multimedia performances with an augmented electric bass guitar, interactive software and live visuals in various configurations.

''XTH Sense''

In 2010, feeling increasingly constrained by the conventional ways of interacting with computers on stage, such as digital interfaces and hand-held instruments, Donnarumma began exploring wearable body technologies. In 2011, for his Master in sound design at the Edinburgh College of Art, he created the XTH Sense as a new instrument for music and body performance. The XTH Sense is a wearable electronic musical instrument that amplifies and manipulate muscle sounds, blood flow and bone crackles from within the human body to make music and sound effects. As a performer moves, the sounds from within the body are captured by a chip microphone worn on arm or legs. Those sounds are then live sampled using a dedicated software program and a library of modular audio effects driven by physical gestures; the performer controls the live sampling parameters by weighing force, speed and articulation of the movement.
In 2012, the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology named the XTH Sense the "world's most innovative new musical instrument" and awarded Donnarumma with the first prize in the Margaret Guthman Musical Instrument Competition. He later released the schematic and the software of the XTH Sense to the public under open source licenses sparking widespread interest in the international media and the artistic scene. Since then, several artists and researchers have been adopting the XTH Sense as a creative and learning tool in different field of practice, such as dance, music, theatre and engineering.

2011–present: The body series

Donnarumma gained international recognition with a series of works focused on the interaction between human body, sound and technology, including Music for Flesh II, Hypo Chrysos, Ominous, Nigredo, 0-Infinity and Corpus Nil. Key to these works is the new kind of human-computer interaction afforded by the XTH Sense and the other technologies developed by the artist himself, such as interactive algorithms, artificial intelligence software and psychoacoustic systems. These custom technologies allow the artist to use the human body as an instrument by amplifying human bodily sounds and capturing physiological and corporeal activity.
Aesthetically, Donnarumma's body series integrates performance art, computer music, light and sound design into surreal, intense and confrontational performances.
Conceptually, they are influenced by a critical approach to technology, which emphasises the relations of machines to ritualism and body politics.
These works are based on a combination of choreographed and improvised movements exploring physical tension and bodily constraint. The series marked a new step in performance and new media art, paving the way for a new form of live art known as biophysical music,
and contributed to the field of human-computer interaction, by creating unconventional computing techniques to physically interface human and machine.
In Hypo Chrysos, a work inspired by Dante's Inferno, Donnarumma pulls two heavy concrete blocks in a circle for twenty minutes. His blood flow, muscle sound bursts and bone crackles produced during the action are amplifyed as surround sound through an eight-channel sound system and visualized as abstract organic forms through a panoramic video projection. The extreme strain of the body is thus diffused in the space and forces the audience to participate in the performer's vexation. "This process encourages tuning in to the inner state of the other and finding resonating states in one's own body."
The interactive installation Nigredo offers a private experience in a black booth. The visitor's body is fastened to a chair and wired to biosensors; the acoustic signals from her own heart, muscles and veins are captured and feed back to her body in the form of new sounds, vibrations and light patterns. Light and sound dynamics vary according to the unique properties of the visitor's body, thus providing an individual experience of the work. The feedback creates an acoustic phenomena known as standing waves inside the visitor's body thus altering self-perception, body & mind awareness and experience of the self.
In Corpus Nil, the performer's tattooed body slowly mutates from an amorphous shape to an animal-like form by contracting and quivering as if struggling against powerful constraints. The body is wired to an artificial intelligence software which autonomously generates light and sound patterns in response to the performer's body signals. As a result, white pulsing lights illuminate the scene while synchronised computer-processed sound fill the theatre space. "The performance evokes a sense of a psychedelic and alien reality, at the border between physical and virtual."

Works

Performance art and biophysical media

Donnarumma collaborated with a range of artists across disciplines including performance art, cyberart, spatial sound, and live cinema.
In 2012, together with cyberfeminist artists Francesca da Rimini and Linda Dement, Donnarumma performed in the 12-hour saga The Moving Forest, conceived by new media artists Shu Lea Cheang and Martin Howse. The work expanded the last 12 minute of Kurosawa’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Throne of Blood, into a sonic performance saga.
In 2014, he collaborated with computer science researcher Baptiste Caramiaux to create a new work, Septic, commissioned by transmediale festival's Art Hack Day.
In 2015, the spatial sound collective 4DSOUND commissioned him a new monumental work, 0-Infinity, which premiered at TodaysArt Festival in The Hague within the program Circadian.
In 2016, he collaborated with experimental filmmaker Vincent Moon in a series of live shows during the Michelberger Music event in Berlin.

Main exhibitions

Donnarumma's work has appeared in numerous exhibitions and festival worldwide including, among the others, Venice Biennale, Steirischer Herbst, ZKM Center for Art and Media, Sónar+D Advanced Music Festival, ISCM World Music Days, ISEA International Symposium on Electronic Art, Electronic Language International Festival, RPM: Ten Years of Sound Art in China, Laboratorio Arte Alameda, La Gaîté Lyrique, Némo International Biennal of Digital Arts, transmediale Festival for Art and Digital Culture, CTM Festival for Adventurous Music and Art.

Awards and distinctions

Selected awards include: