Technology standardizes behavior by prescribing the way in which we perceive the world. “Throughout history, sound technologies have been designed exclusively based on the experiences of hearing people, not d/Deaf people,” says Marco Donnarumma, who himself became d/Deaf later in life. “Centuries of focus on cochlear hearing technologies have made all other ways of perceiving sound unimportant, reinforcing the norm that d/Deafness is the direct opposite of sound. But what is d/Deafness if not another form of perception?” 

In his multifaced series I Am Your Body, Donnarumma invites d/Deaf and hard of hearing people — as well as those who are hearing — to join together with him and leave behind the borders of normative hearing, exchanging them for a fascinating world full of new sensory experiences in which modified cochlear implants and AI-hearing algorithms do not attempt to repair a loss but rather become novel organs for sharing.