Alia: Zu tài

Far from being passive commodities, ‘intelligent’ software, body sensors and robotic devices drastically affect human bodies and lives. Which kinds of relationships do AI and robotics produce? How do those technologies influence the way we understand and discriminate human bodies? Who is ‘normal’ and why?

Alia: Zǔ tài (2018) is a piece combining dance theater and biophysical music with state-of-the-art AI robotics. Three humans and two robotic spines inhabit an aseptic space, whose uncanny whiteness is interrupted by neatly ordered computer screens, cables and circuit boards.

The spines have no bodies; they are displaced prosthesis revealing their uselessness, as well as an unexpected liveness. Each is embedded with a particular neural network and learning algorithms, which let it sense and respond to the touch of its human partner.

As in a lucid dream, a woman nurses one of the spines, a primitive form of sensuality hidden behind an apparently everyday routine. The spine responds to her, caressing her with sinuous movements, wagging its limbs, moving as an eerie, alive piece of metal.

Alia: Zǔ tài (2018)
Alia: Zǔ tài (2018)
Alia: Zǔ tài (2018)
Alia: Zǔ tài (2018)

The sweet quietness is only a prelude. As the other performers – human and robotic – enter the stage, hidden hostilities start to surface. Biosensors on the performers’ bodies amplify their muscular activity into a sound storm, a fleshly sound attack manifesting to the audience the straining tension of their desires.

Already wavering relationships are crashed under a choreography of cruelty. The desire of possessing those robotic limbs, the violent wish to own those robotic bodies overturns any rational response, to the point where the technology seems to own the human, uncaringly.

Taking its title from the Latin “alia” – the other – and the Chinese “zǔ tài” – configuration, Alia: Zǔ tài unleashes the violence and frailty of both the human being and the technologies it creates. It’s a portray of mongrel bodies and their relationships, where both utopia and dystopias are shattered. Should those mongrels find a landing spot after the madness of this power play? And where to land?

Reviews

“Alia: Zǔ tài shows how new technologies and devices can appear innocuous and fearsome at the same time, while leaving us with the question: Will we have to cut the cord at some point? If so, how do we know when — and will we be able to?”
Daniela Silvestrin, Researcher and curator

 

Shows

  • Performance in the Post-human Era
    Ming Contemporary Art Museum, Shanghai, CN, 2019
  • Asian Premiere, Theatre in the 21st Century
    Goethe-Institut Beijing, CN, 2019
  • World Premiere, Technosphärenklänge
    Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, DE, 2018
  • Pre-premiere, Resonans Festival
    KU.BE, Copenhagen, DK, 2018

Credits

Marco Donnarumma – Concept, artistic direction, music, AI robotics
Nunu Kong – Choreography, research
Marco Donnarumma, Nunu Kong – Dramaturgy, performance
Lingling Chen – Performance
Andrea Familari – Stage production
Eduardo Abdala – Light design
Ana Rajcevic – Robotics visual design
Christian Schmidts – 3D modeling and printing
Neurorobotics Research Laboratory, Beuth Hochschule – Scientific partner
Dario J Laganà | norte.it, Underskin Photography – Photography

An international co-production by Chronus Art Center (CN) and CTM Festival (DE). Funded by Goethe Institut’s International Ko-produktion Fund. Co-funded by Berlin University of the Arts, Graduiertenschule, Einstein Stiftung and Berlin Center for Advanced Studies in Arts and Sciences. With in kind support by Baltan Laboratories and Resonans Festival.