Ex Silens: from the series ‘I Am Your Body’
6th December 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM GMT
Image Credit: Underskin Photography
What is deafness if not another mode of perception? What is a cyborg if not an exploded mirror of today’s corporeal experience? What is the fear of the other if not a prelude to isolation? The instability and interdependence of human bodies are the core of their existence.
Ex Silens is an experience into a radically alternative sensorium through the entanglement of multiple bodies, multiple agencies. One body is made of diverging limbs and flesh, another of resonating bones and cables. Together with the bodies of the audience members, they sound and vibrate, entering thus in material, sonic and conceptual feedback with one another; they become one, but not for long.
An exacting and sinuous ritual of sensory reorganization, Ex Silens delves into the corporeal knowledge hiding at the edges of experience. It is a dreamlike encounter, yet raw and real. It is a reminiscence, a reverie surging through real-life accounts of modes of perception that are systematically rejected by the imperative of the normal.
Here, cochlear implants, AI hearing algorithms and amplifiers are extracted from their capitalist chain of production and subverted to create sonic prostheses with their own agencies. Radically intimate, the prostheses are organs of sharing: they amplify sounds from the performer’s muscle, heartbeat and blood flow, diffuse vibrations through the bodies of audience and performer and in doing so they resonate sensible forms of being.
Technology is, by its nature, normative, but it doesn’t have to be. In Ex Silens, hearing algorithms, AI and cochlear prostheses are not what they are supposed to be. They are morphed into new means of sensing; they do not try to repair a loss with a gain, but rather magnify a kaleidoscopic sound world that’s always been there.
The interactive music of Ex Silens was composed by Donnarumma in ways that offer a complete experience to the d/Deaf public as well as the non-d/Deaf. Audience members who are d/Deaf, hard of hearing, or hearing can all experience the performance each according to their sensory configurations. There is no “normal” way of listening to it.
Ex Silens is part of the series I Am Your Body (2022-present), a project investigating deafness, sound and (artificial) intelligence through participatory research driven by d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing people.
Biographies
Marco Donnarumma is an artist creating technological bodies to navigate the boundaries of experience. His hybrid identity as a performer, sound artist, stage director, inventor, and theorist allows him to blend contemporary performance, new media art, and interactive computer music into performances, installations, and films that “defy categorization” (Jury Prix Ars Electronica).The body is, for Donnarumma, a morphing language to speak of ritual, power, and technology. While rooted in performance art, he takes the discipline into strange encounters with sound, machines, and light to create a sensual, uncompromising aesthetic. His inventions, such as AI-driven robotic prosthesis and biophysical musical instruments, explore visceral forms of interaction and create music from the sounds of a performer’s body. The resulting merging of bodies, sounds, machines and algorithms is considered a pioneering approach to the performing arts (Der Standard). Born hearing and then become late-deafened, Donnarumma creates work that, through resonating aesthetic experiences, challenges how powers of society regulate the human body. His ongoing series, I Am Your Body (2021-present) – co-produced by PACT Zollverein – explores the relationship between sound, AI, and the embodied knowledge of d/Deaf bodies through participatory research, film and performance.
Drew Hemment is Professor of Data Arts and Society and Director of Festival Futures at Edinburgh Futures Institute and Edinburgh College of Art within University of Edinburgh. He is a Turing Fellow and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He leads The New Real (www.newreal.cc) and Experiential AI in partnership with the Alan Turing Institute and Edinburgh’s Festivals. Over thirty years, Drew has played a leading role in the emergence of a digital culture in Europe. He has worked with cities and nations representing culture and research at the highest level, and worked for the Singapore Government on Smart Nation and Singapore’s 50th anniversary. He has a repeat track record of internationally leading and shaping research domains, including Open Data and Human-Centred Smart Cities. In 1995, Drew founded FutureEverything, named by The Guardian one of the top ten ideas festivals in the world. In 2016, he founded the GROW Observatory, the world’s first continental scale citizens’ observatory. He is presently working to develop a transformative research agenda for the coming decade on AI and the Arts, and to build a national capability for the UK in this highly significant area. Drew is a frequent public speaker and regularly appears in the media, including as expert witness on BBC’s Moral Maze, and film critic for Afternoon Show on BBC Radio Scotland. He is a member of the Editorial Board for Leonardo and Alan Turing Institute Steering Group for Arts, Humanities and Heritage. His work has been recognised by 14 international awards including Soil Award 2019 (Winner), STARTS Prize 2018 (Honorary Mention), Lever Prize 2010 (Winner), and Prix Ars Electronica 2008 (Honorary Mention).
