Curriculum Vitae

+ CONTACT Address Markgrafendamm 34 10245 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 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 , Chronus Art Centre (CN), CTM Festival (DE), Baltan Laboratories (NL).

2012-2016 RESEARCHER Conducting research on , 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 (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 and 1st Press Award, Bains Numerique, CDA (FR)

2017 Award of Distinction (2nd Prize) Prix Ars Electronica for Sound Art & Digital (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 : 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 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: Large-scale, spatial sound, biophysical media, sensory alteration, participative Status: Available for booking

0-Infinity is a visceral and communal ritual of sensory affection. It is installed in large-scale environments and is experienced at night. The work is an unstable and reactive architecture of infrasound vibrations, audible sounds and high-powered lights. The architecture grows, morphs and falls apart through time, space and frequency in response to biophysical signals and movement data from the visitors’ bodies. In other words, it is brought to life by, and through, the visitors’ bodies.

7 Using the XTH Sense, Donnarumma’s bio-wearable musical instrument, the inaudible sonic vibrations from the visitors’ hearts, blood flow and muscles are amplified and turned into sonic material that tangibly shakes the installation floors and walls. A Ubisense location tracking system is used to make the architecture aware of the visitors’ positions and paths in space and morph according to the spatial relation between participants. The intimacy, or lack thereof, of the visitor’s encounters in space drives intense sonic and physical resonances between each other’s body and the space surrounding them.

The responsive sound composition combines with a custom array of ten high-powered floodlights to induce visitors into a challenging multisensory climax. Complete darkness and inaudible infrasounds slowly evolve, through a range of frequency bands and color gradients, into a monumental body of drone sounds and white light. Human body parts and machine parts are configured into a total space of networked bodies.

8 Nigredo

Online webpage: http://marcodonnarumma.com/works/nigredo/ Video: https://vimeo.com/69743476

Year of creation: 2013 Technique: custom-built XTH Sense heartbeat sensor, breathing rate sensor, acoustic exciters, audio amplifiers, computer, LED lights, planed fir, black molton Duration: 8’00” Dimensions: 1.20m x 1.20m x 2.40m Awards: Cynetart Award (DE), TransitioMX Prize (MX)

Keywords: Installation, bioacoustics, whole-body vibration, surround sound, perceptual deprivation

Nigredo is a private experience of altered self-perception and biophysical media. The work is presented in the form of a time-based installation for one visitor at a time. Accompanied by an assistant, a visitor enters a very small and completely blackened booth. Here the visitor is invited to sit on a chair facing a one-way mirror. The chair is embedded with three high-power infrasound devices that make direct contact with the visitor’s skull and vertebral column. The assistant requests the visitor to take off shoes and shirt, then blocks the skull of the visitor to the chair using an elastic headband and helps the visitor wearing a XTH Sense biosensor on the heart.

9 10 The XTH Sense captures the sound of the visitor’s heartbeat, blood flow and muscle contractions. That sound is digitally processed and fed back to the visitor’s body in the form of new audio, visual and physical stimuli. Namely, sounds are diffused by a hidden surround system and two subwoofers, flickering lights are generated by LED strips located behind the visitor’s body, while intense mechanical vibrations are induced to the whole body using the high-power infrasound devices.

By making direct contact with the skull and the vertebral column, the infrasound devices feed back to the visitor’s body her own visceral sounds in the form of mechanical vibration patterns. The different patterns are designed so to travel through the body in opposite directions and thus create standing waves inside the visitor’s rib cage. A standing wave is a stationary wave that is produced by the encounter of two waves traveling in opposite directions and so induces resonance into a medium, in this case, a human body.

Because the standing wave is a strong stationary acoustic vibration, it resonates internally the bones and the tissues, and thus displaces the relative position of one’s body organs. The combination of intense whole-body vibration, spatialised auditive stimuli and flickering lights interferes with the neurophysiological processes that govern the voluntary and autonomic nervous systems. This alters the rhythm of the cardiovascular and respiratory system, the perception of one’s own articulations in space and the behaviour of the optical nerves. The perception of one’s own image in the mirror mutates and with it also the perception of one’s own body changes.

By repurposing biofeedback methods, whole-body vibration and wearable bioacoustic technology, the visitor is first induced in a state of perceptual deprivation, and then subjected to diverse stimulations designed and temporally composed so to provoke physiological, physical and neural alterations. The work aims to unlock latent qualities of the human body through its coupling with the technological system.

Shows and Exhibitions (selected between 2017-2011)

2017 Conference on Movement Computing, Corpus Nil, London, UK Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften, Artist Talk, TU Berlin, DE Perform Tech, Corpus Nil, Fabryka Sztuky, Lodz, PL Hack the Brain, Ominous, Science Gallery , ROI Digital Art Festival, Corpus Nil, Athens, GR Configurations - Salon fuer Aesthetische Experimente, Amygdala, HKW, Berlin, DE Body - Group Exhibition, Corpus Nil (Restrain), MUOArt Gallery, Beijing, CN Dark Bodies Dark Identities, Hypo Chrysos, Spektrum, Berlin, DE

2016 Voltaje – Salón Arte y Technologia, Corpus Nil+ Ominous, Feria del Millón, Bogotá, CO

11 iii No Patent Pending, Corpus Nil, The Hague, NL Retune Festival, Corpus Nil, Berlin, DE Michelberger Music, improv w/ Vincent Moon, Berlin, Funkhaus Studios, DE Vassar College, Corpus Nil, Hudson Valley, NY, US reSense Festival, Corpus Nil, Spektrum, Berlin, DE The Games Europe Plays BODY<>TECH, XTH Sense, Stephen Lawrence Gallery, London, UK The Games Europe Plays BODY<>TECH, Corpus Nil, London, UK THSF Hacker Space Factory, Corpus Nil, Toulouse, FR US Tour: Creative Tech Week Hyphen Hub, Corpus Nil, , US US Tour: Creative Tech Week Opening, Ominous, National Arts Club, New York City, US US Tour: Defibrillator Performance Art Gallery, Corpus Nil, Chicago, US US Tour: Vassar College, Corpus Nil, Hudson Valley, NY, US Oddstream Festival, Septic, Nijemegen, NL ZKM:GLOBALE, Corpus Nil, ZKM, Karlsruhe, DE tranmediale Vorspiel, Ominous+ Music for Flesh II, SomoS, Berlin, DE

2015 Spektrum, Ominous + Music for Flesh II, Berlin, DE NEMO Biennale | IRCAM Live, Ominous + Music for Flesh II, Gaite Lyrique, , FR Being Human Festival, XTH Sense, London, UK Maintenant Festival, Ominous + Music for Flesh II, Rennes, FR Musikprotokoll, Nigredo, Kunsthaus, Graz, AT TodaysArt/4DSound Circadian, 0-Infinity, The Hague, NL NIME Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression, Corpus Nil, Baton Rouge, LA, US Embodied Sound, Ominous, London, UK CHI Collaborating with Machines, Xth Sense showcase, Seoul, KR Apiary Sessions >< SONICA Festival, Ominous + Music for Flesh II, London, UK MusicMakers Hacklab Mexico, Ominous + Music for Flesh II, Mexico City, MX CTM Festival, Ominous + Music for Flesh II, Berlin, DE

2014 BBC Music, Xth Sense biophysical technology showcase, London, UK 9th Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology, Ominous + Music for Flesh II, Berlin, DE Cynetart Festival, Nigredo, Dresden, DE Combat Recordings 10th Anniversary, with Fausten (AdNoiseam), London, UK EARzoom Sonic Art Festival, Ominous + Music for Flesh II, Ljubljana, SI Hyphen Hub Salon, Ominous + Music for Flesh II, New York City, US Spectrum NYC, Ominous + Music for Flesh II, New York City, US Beyond Biennale + Discovery Festival Ominous + Music for Flesh II, Amsterdam, NL Project for Non-existent Villages, Ominous + Music for Flesh II + improv w/ Derek Holzer, Tartu, EE Digithon: Access Space Fund Raising, Ominous, World Wide Web FACT, Syndrome 1.3 Control, Ominous, FACT, Liverpool, UK Sónar+D, Music Hack Day, Ominous, UPF MTG, Barcelona, ES Artes Performaticas y Tecnologia, Ominous + Music for Flesh II, ZonAutonoma, Puebla, MX

12 2° Encuentro Internacional de Arte Sonoro, Ominous + Music for Flesh II, Academia San Carlos, Mexico City, MX STEIM Concert of Bodies, Ominous + Music for Flesh II + improv with Marije Baalman, Erfan Abdi, Amsterdam, NL Experimental Intermedia, Ominous + Music for Flesh II + improv with Jaime Oliver, New York City, NY, US transmediale / Art Hack Day, Septic with Baptiste Caramiaux, Berlin, DE ICT & ART Connect, Ominous + Music for Flesh II, Watermans Arts Centre, London, UK

2013 What is Sound Design, Ominous + Music for Flesh II, Edinburgh, UK CYNETART Festival / Metabody, Hypo Chrysos, Dresden, DE Watermans Digital Weekender, Trio DMT w/ Atau Tanaka and Christos Michalakos, London, UK Chronus Art Center, Ominous, Shanghai, CN RPM Sound Art China, Ominous, Shanghai, CN TransitioMX Biomediations, Ominous + Music for Flesh II, Mexico City, MX DA Fest, Ominous + Music for Flesh II, Sofia, BG Kontejner, Ominous + Music for Flesh II, Zagreb, HR EAVI Nite, Trio DMT w/ Atau Tanaka and Christos Michalakos, London, UK New York Electronic Arts Festival, Ominous + Music for Flesh II, New York, US STEIM Summer Party, Ominous + Music for Flesh II, Amsterdam, NL NIME Conference, Ominous, Dejeon, KR Linux Audio Conference, Ominous, Graz, AT POLAND Tour: Łódź Contemporary Art Center, Hypo Chrysos, Łódź POLAND Tour: Falanster, Ominous + Music for Flesh II, Wroclaw POLAND Tour: Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Ominous + Music for Flesh II, Warsaw POLAND Tour: Art&Science Meeting, Łaźnia Center for Contemporary Art, Ominous + Music for Flesh II, Gdansk STEIM | Sonic Acts, Nigredo, STEIM, Amsterdam, NL TEI Conference, Hypo Chrysos, Club Razzmatazz, Barcelona, ES Noise=Noise, improv duo with Diemo Schwarz (IRCAM), nnnnn, London, UK

2012 Festival Multiplicidade / Panorama, Liminal Corpus with Anna Weisling, Miguel Ortiz, Rio de Janeiro, BR Festival Multiplicidade / Panorama, Hypo Chrysos, Rio de Janeiro, BR ISCM World New Music Days | ECPNM Competition Finals, Ominous, de Singel, Antwerp, BE SARC Lunchtime Concert, Music for Flesh II, Sonic Arts Research Center, Belfast, UK Robots and Avatars/KIBLA Festival, Music for Flesh II, Maribor, SL Data is Beautiful, Trio DMT with Atau Tanaka and Christos Michalakos, Szimpla, Budapest, HU ISEA International Symposium on Electronic Arts, Music for Flesh II, Albuquerque, New Mexico, US Robots and Avatars UK Selection, Music for Flesh II, Europe House, London, UK Live Interfaces: Performance, Art, Music, Music for Flesh II, ICSRiM, University of Leeds, UK

13 Turing Festival/Music Hack Day Scotland, Music for Flesh II, Summerhall, Edinburgh, UK FILE Hypersonica, Music for Flesh II, SESC-SP, Sao Paulo, BR Body/Controlled: BioInterfacing, Music for Flesh II, LEAP, Berlin, DE Moving Forest aka The Castle, Durational performance with Francesca de Rimini, Linda Dement, CCAD, London, UK Linux Audio Conference CCRMA, Invisible Suns, Stanford CCRMA, US US Tour: NIME Conference Music for Flesh II, Michigan University, Ann Arbor, MI US Tour: Share.dj Music for Flesh II, Harvestworks, New York City, NY US Tour: Harvestworks, Music for Flesh II, Harvestworks, New York City, NY US Tour: American University, Music for Flesh II, Washington, DC US Tour: They, who sound, Music for Flesh II, Avantgarden, Houston, TX Liveness: Prosthesis, gesture, Metaphor, Music for Flesh II, Centro Nacional de las Artes, Mexico DF, MX INTER/actions, Music for Flesh II, Bangor University, UK Dialogues/Edinburgh Science Festival, Music for Flesh II, Inspace, Edinburgh, UK BEAM Night, Music for Flesh II, Cafe OTO, London, UK Sonorities, Improv concert for Xth Sense, Biomuse, CrackleBoxes, Violin and Videos, With Marco Donnarumma, Atau Tanaka, Miguel Ortiz Perez, Gascia Ouzounian, Eric Lyon, Anna Weisling, SARC, Belfast, UK Sonorities, Music for Flesh II, SARC, Belfast, UK Guthman New Musical Instrument Competition, Music for Flesh II, Georgia Tech Music Technology, US NetaudioLX, Music for Flesh II, Cinema S. Jorge, Lisbon, PT Mai Nessuno Mai!, Music for Flesh II, Spazio Natta, Como, IT

2011 Trendelenburg AV Festival, Hypo Chrysos, Antiguo Instituto, Gijon, ES Madatac Festival, Hypo Chrysos, CaixaForum, Madrid, ES Dimensions in Sound, Music for Flesh II, CultureLab, Newcastle, UK Piksel Festival, Music for Flesh II, Studio USF, Bergen, NO 7° Simposio UNAM, Music for Flesh II, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, MX Noise=Noise, Music for Flesh II, nnnnn, London, UK 4th Pure Data Convention, Music for Flesh II, SEAM Studio, Weimar, DE Kernel Festival, Music for Flesh II, Desio, IT Beam Festival, Music for Flesh II, Uxbridge University, London, UK WRO Biennale, I C::ntr::l Nature, Grotowosky Institute, Wroclaw, PL Linux Audio Conference, Music for Flesh II, NUI Maynooth, IRL eXperimontag, Music for Flesh II, Madame Claude, Berlin, DE Screenplay, I C::ntr::l Nature, CHB, Berlin, DE Non-Bio Boom, Music for Flesh II, Inspace, Edinburgh, UK Grind Sight Open Eye, Music for Flesh II, Café Diablo, Edinburgh, UK Pure Data mini-conference, Music for Flesh II, Trinity College, Dublin, IRL Pillow Talk #3, I C::ntr::l Nature, KCUA, Kyoto City University of Arts, JP The Biological Canvas, Music for Flesh II, VASA On-line Gallery

14 Special Accolades and Prizes

2017 Award of Distinction (Second Prize) – Prix Ars Electronica, Ars Electronica, AT Nomination, STARTS Prize - Ars Electronica, AT

2014 First Prize – Cynetart Award for Computer Based Art, Trans-media Akademie Hellerau, DE

2013 Second Prize – TransitioMX Award for , Centro Nacional de las Artes, MX

2012 First Prize – Margaret Guthman Musical Instrument, Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology, Atlanta, US Creativity + Technology = Enterprise Fellowship, Harvestworks and The Rockefeller Foundation, New York City, NY European Research Council Scholarship, London, UK Andrew Grant Bequest Fund, Edinburgh College of Art, Edinburgh, UK Alt-w Travel Grant, New Media Scotland, Edinburgh, UK

2011 Creative Scotland International Funding, Edinburgh, UK

2010 Finalist – Screengrab New Media Art Award, James Cook University, Townsville City, AU

2009 Finalist – Venice Meeting Award, Venice, IT

2006 First Prize – BLM International Prize, Venice, IT

2005 First Prize – Live!iXem Award for Live Media and Electronic Arts, Mestre, IT

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