Keywords: prosthetics, artificial intelligence, ritual, wound, sculpture

Amygdala

World Premiere: 30 March 2018, Baltan Laboratories, Eindhoven

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 is a kind of religious ritual consisting in cutting one’s skin in specific patterns. Skin-cutting rituals are found across indigenous religions in Papua New Guinea, Africa and Eastern Asia, while Christian and Muslim religions include similar, blood-letting rituals too, albeit in different forms and conceptualisations. Through the experience of both pain and body-altering wounds resulting from the ritual, one achieves “purification”.

Rituals of purification and AI technology share a key role in the politics surrounding the human body. Purification rituals are among the most ancient means of social categorization. In any kind of religion, in fact, participation to particular rituals, often via payment of goods or money, grants access to social positions.

In a similar, but perverse and dangerous way, today’s 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 biomimetic 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. The prosthesis’ ever-changing dynamics of cutting are legible in the remains of the skin garments that it manipulates during each exhibition. All the garments are collected in a series of sculptures entitled Calyx.

Amygdala is part of the 7 Configurations cycle (2014-2019), a series on the conflicts surrounding the human body in the era of artificial intelligence (AI). A previous iteration of this artwork, Amygdala MK1, can be viewed here.

Reviews

Cianciotta, A.
Amygdala, AI-led body politics
Neural Magazine

Bucknell, A.
Do Androids Dream of Contemporary Art?
Elephant Art Magazine

Donnarumma, M.
Amygdala
What if it won’t stop here?, eds. Daniel Pies and Jan Verwoert. Berlin: Archive Books, 2018

Awards

2021, Magic Machine Award, RosyDX, C. Rockefeller Center, Netzwerk Medien Kunst and Technische Sammlungen Dresden (DE)
First Prize in Art Category
2018, German Federal Ministry for Education and Research and WiD (DE)
Artist of the Science Year

 

Exhibitions

  • Dissect
    Curated by Matters of Activity. Tieranatomische Theater, Berlin, DE, 2022
  • Magic Machines
    Curated by Andreas Ullrich and Alain Bieber. Technischen Sammlungen, Dresden, DE, 2022
  • KIBLIX International Festival for Art, Technology and Science
    Curated by Ziva Kleindienst and Tadej Vindiš. KIBLA, Maribor, SI, 2021
  • Cuando las Mariposas del Alma Baten sus Alas
    Curated by Karin Ohlenschläger. LABoral, Gijon, ES, 2020-21
  • Art + Science Meetings | Beyond Borders
    Curated by Ryszard Kluszczyński. Centre for Contemporary Art, Gdansk, PL, 2019
  • Field Experiments: Exhibition Laboratory for Science, Art, and Society
    Curated by Stefanie Greimel and Johanna Wallenborn, Berlin, DE, 2018
  • Robot Love
    Curated by Ine Gevers, Eindhoven, NL, 2018
  • Ars Electronica Festival
    Curated by Christl Baur, Gerfried Stocker, Linz, AT, 2018
  • SHARE Festival
    Curated by Jasmina Tešanović, Bruce Sterling, Turin, IT, 2018
  • Ars Electronica Future Innovators Summit
    Curated by Ars Electronica, Tokyo, JP, 2018
  • The Restlessness of Hybridity, Solo exhibition, Baltan Laboratories
    Curated by Olga Mink, Eindhoven, NL, 2018
  • Enjoy Complexity, Schauspiel Dortmund
    Curated by Alexander Kerlin, Dortmund, DE, 2018
  • Retune Digital Arts Lab
    Curated by Jasmin Grimm and Julian Adenauer, Bitkom Conference, Berlin, DE, 2017
  • Close, Never Closer
    Curated by Jan Verwoert, Berlin University of the Arts, Berlin, DE, 2017
  • Salon fuer Aesthetische Experimente #2
    Preview, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, DE, 2017

Technique

Organic skin, artist’s hair, wax, FPGA computer board, custom AI software (adaptive neural networks, reinforcement learning algorithms), servo motors, aluminum chassis, re-purposed industrial-grade server cabinet.

 

Credits

An artwork by Marco Donnarumma in collaboration with Neurorobotics Research Laboratory and Ana Rajcevic.

Marco Donnarumma – Concept, research, artistic direction and programming
Prof. Alberto de Campo – Additional programming and research
Neurorobotics Research Laboratory, Beuth Hochschule – Scientific partner
Ana Rajcevic – Robotics visual design
Christian Schmidts – 3D modeling and printing
Rosalie Laurin – Exhibit design research
Margherita Pevere, William Veder, Marco Donnarumma – Photography
Retune Festival – Co-production
Berlin University of the Arts, Graduiertenschule – Funding
Einstein Stiftung – Funding
Berlin Center for Advanced Studies in Arts and Sciences – In kind support
Baltan Laboratories – In kind support / Dissemination