Amygdala
Marco Donnarumma is awarded Artist of Science Year 2018 by German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and WiD. The artist, originally from Italy, is a Research Fellow at the Berlin University of the Arts (UDK) in cooperation with the Neurobotics Research Lab Berlin. He expresses his artistic view on the Working Life of the Future in his human limb-like Amygdala. The artificially intelligent arm provokes unease when watching it learn an ancient purification ritual on its own skin. A fear comes to the surface that is caused by machines evolving from tools to fellow beings. Donnarumma's captivating visions of the body have already toured more than 60 countries. His music performance Corpus Nil won second prize of Prix Ars Electronica Award of Distinction for Sound Art in 2017.
Amygdala is an artwork by Marco Donnarumma, in collaboration with the Neurorobotics Research Laboratory (DE) and Ana Rajcevic (DE).
A unique presence across contemporary performance and media art, Marco Donnarumma distinguishes himself by his use of emerging technology to deliver artworks that are at once intimate and powerful, oneiric and uncompromising, sensual and confrontational. Working since the early 2000s with biotechnology, biophysical sensing, as well as artificial intelligence (AI) and neurorobotics, Donnarumma expresses the chimerical nature of the body with a new and unsettling intensity. He is renown for his focus on sound, whose physicality and depth he exploits to create experiences of instability, awe, shock, and entrainment. His newest performance for human dancers and AI prostheses, Alia: Zu tài, will be co-produced in 2018 by CTM Festival (Berlin) and Chronus Art Center (Shanghai) during a year of exchange across Germany and China, thanks to the support of Goethe Institut. Donnarumma’s arresting visions of the body toured more than 60 countries worldwide with shows at Venice Biennale (Venice), ZKM Center for Art and Media (Karlsruhe), Hebbel Am Ufer (Berlin), Ars Electronica (Linz), ISEA International Symposium on Electronic Art (Albuquerque), FILE Electronic Language Festival (Sao Paulo), to name a few.
