Ominous 

incarnated sound sculpture for Xth Sense

by Marco Donnarumma (IT/UK)

13/09/2013 Friday, 20:00 – 20:30, Studio 54, NAA  

Ominous is a sculpture of incarnated sound. The piece was commissioned for the finals of the 5th Live Electronic Music Competition (European Conference of Promoters of New Music). Ominous is the latest of a series of performance aimed at bridging new musical interfaces, biotechnology, and corporeal performance.

 

The piece embodies, before the audience, the metaphor of an invisible and unknown object enclosed in the performer's hands. This is made of malleable sonic matter. Similarly to a mime, the performer models the object in the empty space by means of whole-body gestures. By using the biophysical instrument Xth Sense (created by the author), the acoustic sound produced by the contractions of his muscle tissues is amplified, digitally processed, and played back through nine loudspeakers. The natural sound of the performer's muscles 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 my gesture, the sonic stimuli induce a perceptual coupling. The listeners see through sound the sculpture which their sight cannot perceive.