Uploaded February 2019 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Marco Donnarumma was an Artist in Residence in partnership with Heidi Boisvert at Harvestworks in 2013. This performance of his solo work called Ominous took place on June 30, 2013 in the Harvestworks New York Electronic Art Festival. It is a sculpture of incarnated sound. The piece embodies before the audience the metaphor of an invisible and unknown object enclosed in the composer's hands. This is made of malleable sonic matter. Similarly to a mime, he models the object in the empty space by means of whole-body gestures. The bio-acoustic sound produced by the contractions of his muscle tissues is amplified, digitally processed, and played back through loudspeakers. The natural sound of his flesh tissues and its virtual counterpart blend together into an unstable sonic object. This oscillates between a state of high density and one of violent release. As the listeners imagine the object's shape by following his gestures, the sonic stimuli induce a perceptual coupling. The listeners 'see through sound' the sculpture which their sight cannot perceive.
New media and sonic artist, performer and teacher, Marco Donnarumma was born in Italy and is based in London. Weaving a thread around biomedia research, musical and theatrical performance, participatory practices and subversive coding, Marco looks at the collision of critical creativity with humanized technologies. His biophysical system Xth Sense won the first prize in the Margaret Guthman Musical Instrument Competition and was named the 2012 "world's most innovative new musical instrument" by the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology, US. Recently, he curated the publication Biotechnological Performance Practice (eContact!, 14.2). His projects have been reviewed on BBC, Reuters, Wired, Create Digital Music, We Make Money Not Art, Rhizome, Weave, El Pais, Digicult, and appeared in the book "New Art/Science Affinities" (CMU and Studio for Creative Enquiry, US). He was artist in residence at STEIM (NL), Inspace (UK), and the National School of Theatre and Contemporary Dance (DK). His work has been funded by the European Commission, British Council, Creative Scotland, New Media Scotland, and the Danish Arts Council.
Currently, Marco is a PhD student for the Embodied Audio Visual Interaction (EAVI) Research Group at Goldsmiths, University of London, supervised by Professor Atau Tanaka, and fully funded by the European Research Council (ERC).
About Harvestworks
Harvestworks' mission is to present experimental sound and visual artworks created in collaboration with our Technology, Engineering, Art and Music (TEAM) Lab. The Harvestworks T.E.A.M Lab supports the creation of art works achieved through the use of new and evolving technologies and provides an environment for experimentation with project consultants, technicians, instructors and innovative practitioners in all branches of the electronic arts. Our programs are made possible with funds from New York State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the NYC Dept. of Cultural Affairs, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, mediaThe foundation, Lily Auchincloss Foundation, Materials for the Arts, Jerome Foundation, Jerome Foundation 50th Anniversary Grant, the Edwards Foundation Arts Fund, the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Tokio Marine Nichido, Bloomberg Philanthropies, New Music USA's Cary New Music Performance Fund, and the Friends of Harvestworks.
Marco Donnarumma was an Artist in Residence in partnership with Heidi Boisvert at Harvestworks in 2013. This performance of his solo work called Ominous took place on June 30, 2013 in the Harvestworks New York Electronic Art Festival. It is a sculpture of incarnated sound. The piece embodies before the audience the metaphor of an invisible and unknown object enclosed in the composer's hands. This is made of malleable sonic matter. Similarly to a mime, he models the object in the empty space by means of whole-body gestures. The bio-acoustic sound produced by the contractions of his muscle tissues is amplified, digitally processed, and played back through loudspeakers. The natural sound of his flesh tissues and its virtual counterpart blend together into an unstable sonic object. This oscillates between a state of high density and one of violent release. As the listeners imagine the object's shape by following his gestures, the sonic stimuli induce a perceptual coupling. The listeners 'see through sound' the sculpture which their sight cannot perceive.
New media and sonic artist, performer and teacher, Marco Donnarumma was born in Italy and is based in London. Weaving a thread around biomedia research, musical and theatrical performance, participatory practices and subversive coding, Marco looks at the collision of critical creativity with humanized technologies. His biophysical system Xth Sense won the first prize in the Margaret Guthman Musical Instrument Competition and was named the 2012 "world's most innovative new musical instrument" by the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology, US. Recently, he curated the publication Biotechnological Performance Practice (eContact!, 14.2). His projects have been reviewed on BBC, Reuters, Wired, Create Digital Music, We Make Money Not Art, Rhizome, Weave, El Pais, Digicult, and appeared in the book "New Art/Science Affinities" (CMU and Studio for Creative Enquiry, US). He was artist in residence at STEIM (NL), Inspace (UK), and the National School of Theatre and Contemporary Dance (DK). His work has been funded by the European Commission, British Council, Creative Scotland, New Media Scotland, and the Danish Arts Council.
Currently, Marco is a PhD student for the Embodied Audio Visual Interaction (EAVI) Research Group at Goldsmiths, University of London, supervised by Professor Atau Tanaka, and fully funded by the European Research Council (ERC).
About Harvestworks
Harvestworks' mission is to present experimental sound and visual artworks created in collaboration with our Technology, Engineering, Art and Music (TEAM) Lab. The Harvestworks T.E.A.M Lab supports the creation of art works achieved through the use of new and evolving technologies and provides an environment for experimentation with project consultants, technicians, instructors and innovative practitioners in all branches of the electronic arts. Our programs are made possible with funds from New York State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the NYC Dept. of Cultural Affairs, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, mediaThe foundation, Lily Auchincloss Foundation, Materials for the Arts, Jerome Foundation, Jerome Foundation 50th Anniversary Grant, the Edwards Foundation Arts Fund, the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Tokio Marine Nichido, Bloomberg Philanthropies, New Music USA's Cary New Music Performance Fund, and the Friends of Harvestworks.
