Marco Donnarumma

℧R reflects on violence as a foundation of current algorithmic societies: a violence of instructions, of systems, of infrastructures created with the specific purpose of abusing all living beings. Such systems work through loops, organized repetitions of machines and of humans. Humans make instructions, machines repeat instructions, living things suffer instructions, on and on and on.

A thin body walks in the dark while a dim light flickers quietly. A path covered in soil is between them. Gazeless, the figure walks and prays, walks and prays, walks and, entranced, pries into the darkness. Its red cloth sanctifies it. Its missing face alienates it. The walk is a loop, a prayer, an aggression, an annihilation and a transformation.

An AI computer vision system watches over the body, attempting to distinguish the body from the ‘noise’ surrounding it. The AI wants to represents what it sees, but the system works against itself in a paradoxical loop; the more the algorithm learns to see, the brighter the light becomes. In the eyes of the algorithm, the body is eaten by the storm of light.

The flesh of the nameless’ limbs is amplified, microphones onto the muscular tissue magnify the inner sonic tumult of the body. The inner tension resounds in the rising brightness. Movement is sound, repeat; sound is vibration, repeat; vibration is pressure, repeat; pressure is released. A grinding howling grows ominously, repetition turns into dysfunction, brightness turns into blindness. Is the unnamed going to reach the light and burn, just as moths do?

℧R is a solo performance for a body, AI algorithms, lights and the vibrational force of sound. Embodied in Donnarumma’s musical instrument XTH Sense, an interactive, machine learning algorithm transforms the inner sound of muscles, blood, and bones into a real-time choreography of movement, sounds and light. The piece combines multi-sensorial stimulation with human-computer interaction and somatic practices to test the seeming impossibilities of bodily articulation and repetition.