Curriculum Vitae
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Curriculum Vitae + CONTACT Address Markgrafendamm 34 10245 Berlin Germany Telephone +4915221080444 Email [email protected] Web http://marcodonnarumma.com Nationality Italian Date of birth December 30, 1984 + EXPERIENCES 2004-present PERFORMANCE ARTIST Multi award-winning art professional with fifteen years of experience. Touring regularly since 2004 with performances combining art, science and technology. 2016-2018 RESEARCH FELLOW and ARTISTIC DIRECTOR Leading interdisciplinary team of artists and scientists in the context of “Configurations”, a €47.000, 2-year artistic research project conceived by Donnarumma, co-funded by the Goethe-Institut, Berlin U. of the Arts, Chronus Art Centre (CN), CTM Festival (DE), Baltan Laboratories (NL). 2012-2016 RESEARCHER Conducting research on music, performance and human-computer interaction within a team funded by the European Research Council: delivering experimental findings, publishing in top-tier academic journals and disseminating the research through performances and conference presentations. 2012-2014 FELLOW Creating and directing a $10.000, two-year art and science project grant awarded by Rockefeller Foundation and Harvestworks (US) in the program Creativity + Technology = Enterprise. 2010-present VISITING INSTRUCTOR Teaching higher-level education courses on music, technology, performance and creative coding. Previous positions include Brunel University, CultureLab, Newcastle and University of London (UK), Universidad Autonoma de Mexico (MX). + EDUCATION 2012 - 2016 PhD ARTS & COMPUTATIONAL TECHNOLOGY - Practice-based Goldsmiths College, University of London, Department of Computing 8 Lewisham Way, London SE14 6NW, United Kingdom 2010-2012 MASTER OF SCIENCE BY RESEARCH SOUND DESIGN - Distinction University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh College of Arts Old College, South Bridge, Edinburgh EH8 9YL, United Kingdom 2004 - 2007 BA NEW TECHNOLOGIES FOR ARTS & PERFORMANCE - Distinction Venice Academy of Fine Arts, Dorsoduro, 423, 30123 Venezia, Italy Specialties Sound Art, Body Art, Music Technology, Human-Computer Interaction, Physiological Computing, Philosophy of Embodiment, Body Theory 1 + LANGUAGES Mother tongue Italian Foreign langages English (1st foreign language, excellent command both written and spoken) Spanish (2nd foreign language, very good command both written and spoken) German (3rd foreign language, good spoken command) + GRANTS & FUNDINGS 2018 Goethe Institut's International Co-Production Fund (DE/CN) 2016 Research Fellowship by Berlin University of the Arts (DE) 2012 Creativity + Technology = Enterprise Fellowship awarded by Rockefeller Foundation and Harvestworks (US) European Research Council (ERC) Grant for Doctoral Studies (UK) Andrew Bequest Fund (Edinburgh Uni.) Best Performance in MSc (UK) 2011-2012 Alt+W Grant Award, New Media Scotland (UK) + AWARDS (selected) 2018 1st Prize Digital Award, Romaeuropa Festival (IT) 2018 1st Prize for Performing Arts and 1st Press Award, Bains Numerique, CDA (FR) 2017 Award of Distinction (2nd Prize) Prix Ars Electronica for Sound Art & Digital Musics (AT) 2014 1st Prize CYNETART Award for Computer Based Art (DE) + COMMISSIONS (selected) 2015 4DSOUND – TodaysArt Festival (NL) 2014 transmediale Festival (DE) 2013 STEIM – Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music (NL) + PUBLICATIONS (selected) 2017 Beyond the Cyborg: Performance, Attunement and Prosthetics International Journal of Performance Art and Digital Media, 13:2, Routledge 2016 Understanding Gesture Expressivity through Muscle Sensing Transaction on Human-Computer Interaction, 21:6, ACM 2015 Biophysical Music – Sound and Video Anthology Computer Music Journal, 39:4, MIT Press 2015 Nigredo: Configuring Human and Technological Bodies Book chapter in: Experiencing the Unconventional – Science in Art Eds. Schubert- Minski, T. and Adamatzky, A. London: World Scientific 2015 Fluid Flesh and Rhythmic Skin: On the Unfinished Bodies of Stelarc Book Chapter in: Meat, Metal and Code: Contestable Chimeras – Stelarc Ed. Kluszczyski, R.W. Gdansk: Laznia Centre for Contemporary Art 2 Work Samples Amygdala Online webpage: http://marcodonnarumma.com/works/amygdala/ Video: https://vimeo.com/263755082 Year of creation: 2016-18 Technique: Organic artificial skin, artist’s hair, wax, FPGA computer board, custom AI software (adaptive neural networks), servo motors, aluminium chassis, repurposed industrial-grade server cabinet. Duration: endless Dimensions: 120cm x 200cm x 80cm Amygdala is an artificially intelligent (AI) robot in the form of an uncanny human-like limb hung inside an industrial-grade computer server cabinet. Disturbing and yet sensual, abject and sinuous, Amygdala uses a knife to manipulate and sculpt a large piece of skin. Its labour is repetitive, careful and neverending. The robot’s only aim is, in fact, to learn a ritual of purification known as “skin-cutting”. This animistic ritual is found across tribes in Papua New Guinea, Africa and Eastern Asia and consists of cutting one’s skin in specific patterns. Through the experience of both pain and body-altering wounds resulting from the ritual, one achieves “purification”. 3 Rituals of purification and AI technology share a key role in the politics surrounding the human body. Rituals of purification are among the most ancient means of social categorization. In both animistic tribes and religious societies, participation to particular rituals, often via payment of goods or money, grants access to social positions. In a similar and dangerous way, participation to AI algorithm analysis, via private and browsing data, grants and regulates access to medical assistance, social welfare and criminal systems. Amygdala thus reanimates a key symbol of human history through the glare of today’s technocratic society. Amygdala is driven by adaptive neural networks. Essentially, these are iterative mathematical equations, computed by the robot in real time. The specific kinds of neural networks behind Amygdala imitate the sensorimotor system of animals. This means that the robot’s movement are not pre-programmed, but emerge spontaneously from the activity of the neural networks. Because the neural networks receive sensory information from the robot’s body in real time, the robot can adapt to any physical change or constraint in its environment. As a result, Amygdala is capable of a markedly organic, interactive and changing behaviour recalling animal’s movements. This artwork is the first planned output of Donnarumma’s 2-year Research Fellowship at Berlin University of the Arts (UdK), where he is leading a team of artist, designers and academics to create artworks addressing body politics and technology. This artwork is being conceived and realised in close collaboration with Prof. Manfred Hild and his Neurorobotics Research Laboratory (NRL) at Beuth Technical University in Berlin, the award winning design studio Ana Rajcevic and Prof. Alberto de Campo, who teaches Generative Art at the Medienhaus, UdK. 4 Corpus Nil Online webpage: http://marcodonnarumma.com/works/corpus-nil/ Video: https://vimeo.com/152710490 Year of creation: 2015-2016 Technique: biosensors, LED, computer-processed sound, multi-channel diffusion, black paint Duration: 20’00” Dimensions: 4m x 14m x 6m Keywords: Sound art, body art, physiological computing, trance, ritual Status: Touring Corpus Nil is a ritual of birth for a modified body. It is performed by a human performer and an autonomous sound and light machine in a black box theatre. A cluster of skin and muscle lay on stage, it is an unborn body. As the performance starts, the body begins to reconfigure its parts: through a choreography pushing the limits of muscular tension, limbs torsion, skin friction and equilibrium, the body evolves into a new unfamiliar being. As it moves, the body produces neuronal voltage and bioacoustics sounds which are captured through biophysical sensors. A machine uses the voltages and the sounds of the body as the raw material to autonomously generate a monolithic sound and light object. The corporeal sounds and voltages are, at once, played back in their raw form and re-synthesised into new digital sounds. The machine is autonomous in that it chooses how to respond to the body on stage by analysing its physiological processes. The body movements influence the choices of the machine, but cannot control what the machine will do. 5 The corporeal sound frequencies are spatialised across multiple loudspeakers and subwoofers surrounding the audience, while bioelectrical flashes of light rhythmically illuminate the body on stage. The combination of corporeal sound, light and bodily torsions produces a multisensory, pulsating rhythm that overwhelms the audience. As in a trance-like experience, the pulsating rhythm induces visual and auditory effects: while the physical form of the body on stage seems to gradually mutate, its corporeal sound is felt as it was beating within the spectator’s bodies. The body parts – arms, legs, muscles, veins – are metaphorically taken apart and physically reorganised with the machine’s parts – the sensors, the light and the algorithms. Together, they form a novel kind of body, unknown and partial, disturbing and graceful. 6 0-Infinity Online webpage: http://marcodonnarumma.com/works/0-infinity/ Year of creation: 2015 Technique: custom-built XTH Sense biophysical sensor, location tracking system, subwoofers, high-density loudspeaker array, sodium floodlight array, computer Duration: 30’00” Dimensions: min. 50m x 50m x 20m Commissioned by: 4DSOUND (NL/HU) Keywords: