MICHAELA DAVIES
Step through the door and you’re in a small, bare, unprepossessing room. The walls are white and the floor is concrete. There are two windows and a door. On a fixed table in the corner is a complicated-looking headset with built-in headphones.
Called Edge Of The Present, it’s an installation that combines art, research and mental health therapy in astonishing ways, with no clear boundary between any of these elements.
The body is an electrical emitter, receiver and network station. Interconnected points vibrate with pulse messages; somewhere amongst the thought, signals and the noise of action there is some obscure deity called us.
Starting from a shared appreciation of the creative possibilities of Michaela Davies’ art-music explorations, Bad Seed James Sclavunos and the Australian avant-garde cellist explored how control might be exerted over musicians via EMS (electrical muscular stimulation). The resulting experimental productions marked the beginning of an exploration by the two artists into the role of the body in performance and whether physical agency and humanity are as closely tied together as most would expect.
Volume 23, Special Issue 2 (New Wor(l)ds for Old Sounds
August 2018 , pp. 167-180
The Anthropomorphic Analogy: Humanising musical machines in the early modern and contemporary eras
Rebecca Cypess and Steven Kemper
3.4. Biophysical music: Marco Donnarumma and Michaela Davies
Beyond augmenting the body with sensor-based interfaces, some artists have embraced cyborg identities through the amplification and control of their own biophysical signals. Rather than using prosthetic augmentations to the body, as in the cases described in the previous section, practitioners of biophysical music explore amplification and processing of biological signals to create musical sound. Marco Donnarumma describes biophysical music as ‘a kind of electronic music performance based on a combination of physiological technology and markedly physical, gestural performance…
Continue reading “Organised Sound”
The electric shock rips Michaela Davies’ left arm into the air, twisting her wrist and making her grimace. It hangs there a moment, up near her ear, before dropping like a dead weight on the double bass. She clenches her jaw and waits for the next jolt…
Emily Leon
Engineering and extending the human body beyond its normal limitations has been a source of fascination for millennia. More recent expressions of this include plastic surgery, medical (and other) prosthesis, biohacking, and – in cross-disciplinary artist Michaela Davies’ case – electric muscle stimulation. This technology allows electrical impulses to be sent to the muscles to generate specific involuntarily movement of the limbs.
Continue reading “Engineering the Future”
The Director of the Arts Administration program at Boston University and of the Museum of Contemporary Cuts, Lanfranco Aceti is proud to announce, Sound Politics,to be performed at the Boston Athenaeum, September 30, 2016, from 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm. Sound Politics is a curated project that includes two performances, Duty and Untitled for Cyborg String Quartet, by Australian artist Michaela Davies.
These pieces explore the application of electric muscle stimulation (EMS) to musical composition and performance. MIDI compositions created by the artist are used to trigger custom-built EMS devices that send electrical impulses to performers’ muscles. These impulses generate specific involuntary movements, causing the performers to ‘play’ their instruments.
The performances explore the complexities of contemporary living in an ‘electrified’ and ‘engineered’ age where the will of the people appears to be determined by involuntary reactions to electronically mediated stimuli.
Abstract: Game On is a participatory installation where people use joysticks to control the movement of two (human) boxers via a MIDI-controlled electric muscle stimulation device. This device sends electrical impulses to specific muscle points on the boxers via electrodes connected to their arms, causing each boxer to punch their opponent involuntarily. The work is a creative enquiry into the nature of agency within a system where cognition is distributed across people, objects and environment through technologies of connection. Game On explores what happens in a system where embodied experience and sense of agency is disrupted or extended, and the implications for locating a responsible agent within this system.
Dan Russell, violinist and member of the Australian Art Quartet, is having electrodes taped to his arms and shoulders. He is readying to receive electric shocks while playing Pachebel’s Canon in D.
“I’ve touched an electric fence before,” he says, wheeling his bow through the Baroque piece’s early notes…
Erik Satie’s tranquil Gymnopedie No. 1 is given a radical reinterpretation by a bloke with access to a whole bunch of elastic.
Pianist Tristan McKay gives it a really good go, but ultimately (spoiler alert) the rubber bands were victorious.
The video comes from a series called Obstructed Recitals, which features a whole host of musicians struggling against self-imposed obstructions.
PODCAST MESMERISM 1: Michaela Davies – Involuntary Strings
Recorded live for ABC Classic FM by engineer Steve Fieldhouse and producer/engineer Costa Zouliou on 20 February 2015.
Though motor actions have long been studied by neuroscientists and physiologists, only recently have researchers considered the role of actions in the development of the self. Our concept of self is influenced by our own actions, and those we observe performed by others.
Continue reading “Staging Hypotheses: Game On”
The biggest hit of the Cockatoo Island Underbelly Arts Festival, Game On by Michaela Davies will be exhibited at the Damien Minton Gallery in Redfern this November.
Continue reading “GAME ON at the Damien Minton Gallery”
“Sydney-born Davies has already amassed an impressive catalogue of mostly musical projects that figure her as a kind of posthuman Abramović; a bodies-not-buildings version of obstruction-upon-the-natural obsessors Christo and Jeanne Claude….”
“… the whole process became both more fascinating and disturbing when it was revealed that at least one of the performers had, prior to the piece, never touched a violin before…”
RealTime Australia
In Profile: Michaela Davies on agency, obstruction and electric muscle stimulation—Game On!
by Gail Priest
Genevieve French confronts art and violence
Entering a large warehouse, a group of hipsters huddle in a circle around a glass case. Inside, two boxers punch and kick each other in robotic movements until their opponent stumbles and falls to the cheers of the spectators. This is not Fight Club and there are no rules.
Continue reading “Underbelly Arts Festival: Game On”by Janine Marshman
“…Performers have no interaction with their instruments that isn’t dictated by the seismic data, turning the quartet into a horrifyingly beautiful ensemble comprised of human marionettes…”
www.australianmusiccentre.com.au/article/mona-foma-2012-hobart-embraces-australian-new-music
