AI represents one of the most critical challenges of our world: Although it is extremely present in our everyday lives, it remains under the control of the few insiders, who use it for extractive and productive purposes. Can artistic practice and cultural activism create alternative narratives? To show how to use AI to make our future more humane?
From Bolo to Metabolo
Bolo’s artistic project evolves thanks to the collaboration with creative technologist Michele Cremaschi and the research pool of the Human Technology Lab of the Free University of Bozen/Bolzano.
From Bolo to Metabolo: inspired by the ecofeminist positions of Hannah Landecker (‘Multiple Metabolisms. From capitalism to daily digestion’), by Nnedi Okorafor Laguna’s science fiction and Afrofuturist novel (Zona42, 2017), and using machine learning models fed by data from underwater webcams, Valerie Tameu with Metabolo brings planetary metabolism to the stage with a non-anthropocentric perspective.
What Metabolo is
Metabolo creates an ecosystem of mutual influence between the human body, artificial machines, and marine ecosystem, in a multi-species coexistence relationship. It is a dance and human-machine interaction performance with which the artist questions the possibility of using technology to promote other forms of intelligence and culture, not just Western or anthropocentric ones.
Inside one of our planet’s marine ecosystems, the one located below the Frying Pan Tower, 34 miles off Cape Fear, North Carolina, an underwater webcam placed by volunteers for research purposes broadcasts live on YouTube the life of living beings inhabiting the ecosystem. An AI connected to this robotic eye streams the textures and movements of the marine ecosystem in real-time, by machine learning, to the artist on stage in Europe, affecting the soundtrack on which she dances.
The human-machine interaction fuels a techno-spiritual ritual in which the performing body, tracked by a second artificial intelligence software, recalls the MamiWata. It is an aquatic deity worshipped in several West African and equatorial countries, half human and half fish, a creature simultaneously hybrid and alien.
Who Valerie Tameu is
Valerie Tameu is an author and performer. A graduate in dance studies from the Faculty of Cinema, Performing Arts, Music and Media in Turin, she trained with various teachers from the Italian and international scene and attended Modem courses at the choreographic centre Scenario Pubblico. She has collaborated with Tecnologia Filosofica, Balletto Teatro di Torino, Laurent Pellisier, Paolo Armao, Masbedo, Alessio Maria Romano, Daniele Ninarello, Bob Kil. Her research concerns the relationship between performance and identity and the difference between memories and history, while her artistic practice creatively con-fuses bodies, ideas, theories and hallucinations.
Events
Bolo Exhibition
October 8, 2022
Combo, Turin
Valerie Tameu presents the immersive experience of Bolo, the result of the masterclass on Body, Art, and Artificial Intelligence held by Roberto Fassone, Andrea Zaninello, and Federico Bomba
Metabolo 1° artist residency
April 2023
Sineglossa Creative Ground, Ancona
Metabolo 2° artist residency
May 2023
Lavanderia a Vapore, Turin
Metabolo Exhibition
September 2023, 6 – 10 2023
Ars Electronica Festival 2023, Postcity, Linz, Austria
Valerie Tameu presents Metabolo installation and performance
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Metabolo site-specific
3 November 2023
Lavanderia a Vapore, Collegno, Turin, Italy
Valerie Tameu presents a Metabolo site-specific workshop
Credits
METABOLO is an artistic project by Valerie Tameu, curated by Sineglossa and produced within FOOD DATA DIGESTION, a research and production process that combines art and artificial intelligence, curated by Sineglossa in collaboration with Play With Food and Free University of Bolzano, with the contribution of Compagnia di San Paolo Foundation through the call “Art Waves. For creativity, from idea to scene.”
METABOLO collaborators:
Partners for artistic residencies Lavanderia a Vapore
creative development Michele Cremaschi
costume assistant Augusta Tibaldeschi
music assistant Michele Mandrelli
Marine biology consultant Agnese Riccardi
dramaturg Federica Patti