Daito Manabe has a history of conducting quirky, painful experiments in which he administers shocks to the human body – usually his own – powerful enough to cause involuntary muscle contractions. He uses electricity, music, computers and video to expand on what were literally the earliest scientific experiments ever to be recorded photographically – the electrical shocks to the face of Parisians administered in the 19th century by Guillaume Duchenne.
More videos on his work are embedded below, but first, his latest project: Manabe has integrated with a touch-sensitive control system his earlier experiments in syncing the movements of his own face to music by administering shocks powerful enough to induce involuntary muscle contractions.
To sort out what’s going on here, it helps to understand the origins of Manabe’s work: in a 2009 interview, he told me that he’d originally begun his investigations of myoelectric shocks in an effort to copy expressions from one person’s face to another. This work was itself inspired by pioneering work in electrophysiology conducted by G.B. Duchenne. (Duchenne, in turn, was inspired by Galvani, who conducted the famous experiment in which he shocked the severed legs of a frog, watched them contract, and changed the world of neuophysiology forever by showing that nerve impulses were in essence electrical.)
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