Niranthea (2023), Marco Donnarumma
EXHIBITION: Door Open Space
Thu May 30 – Sun June 2
The body is capable of experiencing sound not only through hearing, with different d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing people perceiving the world at different levels. Today, this is also being further augmented by artificial intelligence.
Niranthea is a hybrid short film combining documentary, audiovisual synaesthesia, and AI hearing algorithms to address notions of deafhood, prosthesis and cyborg. The film poetically reflects on unlearning normative conceptions of sound and body technology. It does so directly through the unscripted ideas, thoughts and experiences of a group of six d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing people. All dialogues were filmed after five months of joint research, during which the group held regular conversations and research sessions led by the artist – himself late-deafened.
This process of sharing, analysis and intimate reflection served to create a multiform identity and plurisensitive body of perception. Combining personal accounts and AI-based sound design, the film offers a journey through a multitude of enhanced perceptions of sound.
About the artist
Marco Donnarumma is an artist, stage director and theorist working on new media art and interactive computer music. He manipulates bodies and invents machines for performances and installations that defy genres and in which the body becomes a morphing language to speak critically about ritual, power and technology. His latest series ‘I Am Your Body’ explores the relation between sound, AI and the embodied knowledge enshrined in d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing bodies.
Photo by Dirk-Rose
