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

Nigredo

World Premiere: 21 February 2013, STEIM Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music, Amsterdam

Policies and practices of intolerance and social segregation are increasingly becoming the norm. These practices capitalize on fear: the instinctive human fear of the bodies of “others”, bodies that are different from one’s own. Nigredo is a statement: the fear of other bodies is unfounded, for one’s own body is the first and foremost thing one cannot fully know.

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 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 at the location nearest to the heart.

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: 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 three 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 patterns create a strong acoustic resonance inside the visitor’s rib cage and thus displace the position of one’s body organs.

The combination of intense whole-body vibration, spatialised auditive stimuli and flickering lights results in a state of perceptual deprivation, where physiological, physical and neural alterations make one’s own body feel as an external entity.

Reviews

“Nigredo combines some things only the best artworks can do: it uses newest science and technology to create an intimate response, it is still very emotional and physical, and it is definitely an unforgettable experience.”
Alain Bieber, Artistic Director, NRW-Forums Düsseldorf, DE

“A deep, dark look into one’s self.”
Kathrin Bucher, Chief Curator, Interim Director at Universalmuseum Joanneum, AT

Awards

2014, Cynetart Award, Trans-Media-Akademie Hellerau, DE
1st Prize For Computer Based Art

2013, TransitioMX Award for New Media Art, MX
2nd Prize

 

Exhibitions

  • Steirischer Herbst – Musikprotokoll
    Österreichischer Rundfunk Festival, Kunsthaus, Graz, AT, 2015
  • CYNETART Festival
    Hellerau, Dresden, DE, 2014
  • TransitioMX Biomediation | 5th Competition of Electronic Arts and Video
    Centro Nacional de las Artes, Mexico City, 2013
  • STEIM / TodaysArts Festival
    Premiere, Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music, Amsterdam, NL, 2013

Format

Stand-alone installation for one visitor at a time.
Duration: individual sessions of eight minutes
Media: Custom-built XTH Sense heartbeat sensor, breathing rate sensor, acoustic exciters, audio amplifiers, computer, LED lights, planed fir

Credits

Concept, artistic direction, staging, light design, booth concept and design: Marco Donnarumma
Music, interaction programming, physiological computing software and hardware: Marco Donnarumma
Booth engineering and planning: Andrea Donnarumma
Light hardware engineering, external eye: Marije Baalman
Technical support: Lucas Norer
Visitors’ assistant at the premiere: Ida Toft
Artwork’s description text: Marco Donnarumma
Photography: David Pinzer
Videography: Tanja Busking
Video trailer: Marco Donnarumma

An artwork and production by Marco Donnarumma. Curated by Jonathan Reus and co-produced by STEIM, Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music.