Amygdala, AI-led body politics

amygdala-ai-led-body-politics

What kind of body politics can be meaningfully developed while we live in a world where the representation of our bodies is always going to be radically manipulated on our screens by artificial intelligence algorithms developed by the software industry? It’s not easy to answer such a question, but artist Marco Donnarumma (in collaboration with Neurobotics Research Laboratory and Ana Rajcevic Studio) has developed his own ”body politics” over the years through artworks and performances using updated technologies. His “Amygdala” is an artwork using a robot guided by an AI which is shaped in an uncanny form: an anthropomorphic limb placed inside a computer server cabinet uses a knife to cut and sculpt a large piece of skin, as a never-ending task. The artist refers back to skin-cutting purification rituals and how they became a type of social currency once allowed, in the same way AI is going to include and exclude people depending on its own programming. The AI used here “imitates the sensorimotor system of animals”, and this quality makes the artificial/natural dualism here even more uncanny.

 

Marco Donnarumma – Amygdala