The Two Thousand + symposium is an annual research event in the area of music performance and new technologies, which has been running since 2006 at the School of Music and Sonic Arts, Queen’s University Belfast.

The Sonorities Festival is the longest-running new music festival in Ireland and is one of the cornerstone Festivals in Europe presenting innovative new music. It is run by the School of Creative Arts and the Sonic Arts Research Centre at Queen’s University Belfast.

“Music for Flesh II” and the Xth Sense technology have been selected to battle during the finals of this prestigious contest.
The Guthman Competition is an annual event to find the world’s best new ideas in musicality, design and engineering. Wired magazine has called the competition an “X-Prize for music,” and contestants have likened it to a TED Conference for new musical instrument designers.

The NetaudioLx aims to promote and disseminate free culture around music, digital arts and technology.

The NetaudioLx aims to promote and disseminate free culture around music, digital arts and technology.

Trendelenburg is a lively platform dedicated to the public dissemination of cultural projects focused on the more experimental advanced art and postdigital culture, and mainly focused on audiovisual projects whose maximum value is obtained in their live performance.

Hypo Chrysos (Marco Donnarumma, 2011) is a work that exasperates the viscerality of the body system, so to critically explore the territory in between biosciences, technology and performance art.

The piece is freely inspired by the sixth Bolgia of Dante’s Inferno, located in one of the lowest of the circles of hell. Here the poet encounters the hypocrites walking along wearing gilded cloacks filled with lead; for Dante this was the punishment for the falsity hidden behind their behaviour, a malicious use of reason which is unique to human beings.
Pulling with my arms large ropes tied to blocks of concrete, I struggle to walk along the stage. The friction of my muscle tissues produces low frequency soundwaves that are amplified through the Xth Sense biosensors, encoded in an audiovisual scape and diffused through loudspeakers and video projectors; the raging clusters of sound and light generated by the resistance of my body give rise to an hypnotic, synaesthetic and unstable force field of tension.

Hypo Chrysos will be premiered on 16th December at MATADAC Festival, in Madrid, Spain. MADATAC (Muestra de Artes Digitales Audiovisuales y Tecnologías Contemporáneas) is an innovative platform for the audiovisual culture and new experimental media.
The following performance is scheduled in Gijon, Asturias, Spain.
See the calendar page for further information.

This is the second work, in a series of biomedia performances composed around the Xth Sense: a biophysical, wearable, free and open technology developed by the author. See below for detailed information, or view the first piece of the series Music for Flesh II

Technical information

No commercial devices nor software were deployed in this work. The piece is based on the Xth Sense (XS) wearable technology. It consists of wearable biosensors and a digital framework for real-time processing of acoustic biosignals, both developed by the author. Muscle fibres and blood vessels produce subcutaneous mechanical oscillations (i.e. acoustic sounds). These are captured by the XS sensors and fed to a computer in real time. The machine deploys mathematical, evolutionary, and learning models so to become aware and interact with the muscular sound of the performer’s body (kinesis). During this two-way interaction the performer produces the sound material by contracting his limbs and the computer diffuse the processed sounds of the performer’s body through a variable array of loudspeakers. On the screen a living physical model of particles and organic matter is shaped and excited by the kinetic energy released and captured from the performer’s body. All sound and video manipulations, spatialization, rhythm and structure of the piece are defined in real time by the only physical behaviour of the artist on stage.

Additional Information

The use of open source technologies is an integral aspect of the research. The biosensing wearable device was designed and implemented by Marco Donnarumma, with the support of Andrea Donnarumma and Marianna Cozzolino. The Pure Data-based framework for real time analysis and processing of biological sounds was designed and coded by the author on a Linux machine, with inspiring advice by Martin Parker, Sean Williams, Owen Green, Jaime Oliver, and Andy Farnell.

Credits

Heading images: stills from real time video.

Project Keywords

bio, biosensing technologies, body, MMG; resistance, friction, tension, augmented body, gesture, kinetic energy, performance art, theatrical performance; real time, audio processing, gesture tracking, pure data.

MADATAC (Muestra de Artes Digitales Audiovisuales y Tecnologías Contemporáneas) is an innovative platform for the audiovisual culture and new experimental media.

MADATAC (Muestra de Artes Digitales Audiovisuales y Tecnologías Contemporáneas) is an innovative platform for the audiovisual culture and new experimental media.

Culture Lab was founded in May 2006 to provide a central hub for a range of creative activities within the University and the wider region. Culture Lab is both a physical building and a group of collaborators in the field of creative practice. It is home to a core group of permanent staff, led by Culture Lab’s Director Professor Atau Tanaka.

The 9th annual Piksel Festival for Electronic Art and Technological Freedom. The festival subtitle re:public connects to various strategies for rethinking and redefining public space, both as a concrete physical space, and in a larger social and political context.

Mediaxion is a series of events offering a platform for the diffusion of all artistic practices whose main creation means is the live action and its interaction with the new technologies.

The Seoul International Computer Music Festival, one of the biggest electro-acoustic music festivals in Asia, is in its 18th year. The festival will be held from October 18th till 23rd at Jayu Theater in Seoul Arts Center.

Concerts for sensors, flesh, audiovisual and noise.

Music for Flesh II (Marco Donnarumma, 2011) is a seamless mediation between human biosonic potential and algorithmic composition.
The work defines a temporary cognitive time-zone in which the physical space of the performance is augmented, stretched, enlightened, obscured, dominated by a real time reconstruction of the human body primal expressiveness.
Body is no longer silent, and the embodied interaction which was so far kept mute, now acquires a new textural layer, a tangible and profound level of interpretation and representation which can be at the same time intimately experienced by the performer, and audibly and visually externalized in order to embrace the audience.

By enabling a computer to sense and interact with the muscular sonic potential of human tissues, the work approaches the biological body as a means for computational artistry.
I stand in a dark room, hit with two spotlights. When the visitors enter the room the performance begins. During my performance muscle movements and blood flow produce subcutaneous mechanical oscillations, which are nothing but low frequency sound waves. Two microphone sensors capture the sonic matter created by my limbs and send it to a computer. This develops an understanding of my kinetic behaviour by *listening* to the friction of my flesh.
Specific gesture, force levels and patterns are identified in real time by the computer; then, according to this information, it manipulates algorithmically the sound of my flesh and diffuses it through an octophonic system.
The computer learns about and interact with the performance: for instance, strong and wide movements repeated for longer than 30 seconds prompt the computer to increase the sound loudness and density of the processed output; a repeated excitement of the left bicep causes a rich vibrato; an abrupt contraction of the right forearm moves the sound across the right side of the sonic field.

The neural and biological signals that drive the performer’s actions become analogous expressive matter, for they emerge as a tangible haunting soundscape. The border between physical and virtual body is blurred and dissolved; by harvesting pure kinetic energy from corporeal sounds, incarnated gesture and concrete vibrations, the piece actualizes before the audience eyes a visceral and cognitively challenging territory.

Below you can view a live recording of the performance at The University of Edinburgh, UK, March 2011.

Music for Flesh II – solo piece for Xth Sense biosensing wearable device from Marco Donnarumma on Vimeo.

Technical information

No commercial devices nor software were deployed in this work. The piece is based on the Xth Sense (XS) wearable technology. It consists of portable biosensors and a digital framework for real-time processing of acoustic biosignals, both developed by the author. Muscle fibres and blood vessels produce subcutaneous mechanical oscillations (i.e. acoustic sounds). These are captured by the XS sensors and fed to a computer in real time. The machine deploys mathematical, evolutionary, and learning models so to become aware and interact with the muscular sound of the performer’s body (kinesis). During this two-way interaction the performer produces the sound material by contracting his limbs and the computer diffuse the processed sounds of the performer’s body through an octophonic audio system. All sound manipulations, spatialization, rhythm and structure of the piece are defined in real time by the only physical behaviour of the artist on stage.

Support and awards

The work was developed at the SLE, Sound Lab Edinburgh – the audio research group at The University of Edinburgh, and was kindly supported by the Edinburgh Hacklab and Dorkbot ALBA. The project was finalized during an Artistic Development Residency at Inspace, Edinburgh. Inspace kindly sponsored the work by providing technical and logistical support, and organizing a public vernissage for the official launch of the project within the artistic research program “Non-Bio Boom”.

The work was awarded a Bursary for “outstanding work” by the BEAM festival, a PRE travel grant, which facilitated a related presentation at ICMC, International Computer Music Conference 2011 and the International grant by Creative Scotland, for a presentation at the KEAMS/SICMF 2011 in Seoul, South Korea.

Additional Information

The use of open source technologies is an integral aspect of the research. The biosensing wearable device was designed and implemented by Marco Donnarumma, with the support of Andrea Donnarumma and Marianna Cozzolino. The Pure Data-based framework for real time analysis and processing of biological sounds was designed and coded by the author on a Linux machine, with inspiring advice by Martin Parker, Sean Williams, Owen Green Jaime Oliver, and Andy Farnell.

Credits

Sound engineering Kevin Hay and Brendan Doyle; light design and recording Brendan Doyle, The University of Edinburgh, 2011.
Pictures courtesy of Mark Daniels and Dimitris Patrikios.

Project Keywords

bio, biosensing technologies, body, MMG; augmented body, gesture, gestural control of music, kinetic energy, theatrical performance; intimacy, sonic vocabulary; real time, audio processing, gesture tracking, pure data.

Selected performances

• NetaudioLX Festival, Cinema S. Jorge, Lisbon, Portugal, January 2012
• Dimensions in Sound, CultureLab Newcastle, UK, November 2011
• Piksel Festival, Studio USF, Bergen, Norway, November 2011
• 7° Simposio UNAM, ENAP/UNAM, Mexico City, November 2011
• Noise=Noise, nnnnn, London, August 2011
• 4th Pure Data Convention, Bauhaus Universitat, Weimar, Germany, August 2011
• Kernel Festival, Desio, Italy, July 2011
• BEAM Festival, Uxbridge University, London, June 2011
• Linux Audio Conference, Aula Maxima, NUI Maynooth, May 2011
• eXperimontag, Madame Claude, Berlin, April 2011
• Non-Bio Boom | Xth Sense, Inspace (School of Informatics and New Media Scotland), Edinburgh, UK, March 2011
• Grind Sight Open Eye, The Spectacular Café Diablo, Edinburgh, UK, March 2011
• Pure Data Mini Conference, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, March 2011
• The University of Edinburgh, Alison House, Edinburgh, UK, March 2011

Selected presentations

• 4th Pure Data Convention, Bauhaus Universitat, Weimar, Germany, August 2011
• ICMC International Computer Music Conference, Huddersfield, UK, August 2011
• Linux Audio Conference, NUI Maynooth, May 2011
• NK Berlin, Artist Talk, NK, Berlin, April 2011
• ImagineCreate Festival, Ulster University, Derry, Northern Ireland, March 2011

Upcoming performances are scheduled at Georgia Tech in Atlanta (US), Belfast (IRL) and Mexico City.
See the calendar page for further information.