• Corpus ID: 236426786

Artful Media Cardiomorphologies: an Inner Journey through Art

@inproceedings{Khut2005ArtfulMC,
  title={Artful Media Cardiomorphologies: an Inner Journey through Art},
  author={George Poonkhin Khut},
  year={2005}
}

• G. Khut
• Published 2005
• Art

5 F or the past four years I've been exploring the possibility of interaction as a form of embodied inquiry through the development of my interactive art project Cardiomorphologies. This physiologically responsive art work responds to autonomically mediated changes in the patterns of breath and heart rates. 1 A large mandala-like video projection and real-time sonification respond to changes in breath and heart rhythms, collected from sensors attached to the participant's body. Participants are invited to explore how these patterns can be transformed through sustained mental/emotional focus and body awareness. Participants experience Cardiomorphologies in 20–30 minute sessions. Participants rest in a comfortable reclining chair and take hold of two cylindrical devices that measure their heart beats. The devices transmit data to the computer, and within 30 seconds participants begin to hear a deep throbbing triggered by their own heart beats, accompanied by the appearance of a pulsating circular form at the center of the video projection. A breath-sensing belt worn around the rib cage measures small changes in circumference associated with breathing. In addition to providing a direct representation of their breathing and heart beat activity, Car-diomorphologies also analyzes slow changes in heart-rate patterning that reveal gradual shifts in autonomic nervous system activity. Normal, healthy heart rates display wavelike patterns, speeding up a little as participants breathe in and slowing down as they breathe out. By experimenting with an alternating sequence of mental tasks, feelings, or situations, it's possible to observe subtle changes in the participant's state of mind, as revealed through changes in the color and sound of the art work. The use of physiological sensing and biofeed-back technologies is by no means new, with key works presented as early as 1965 with Alvin Lucier's Music for Solo Performer 2 and David Rosen-boom's On Being Invisible and Vancouver Piece. 3 More recent examples include Ulrike Gabriel's Breath and Terrain 4,5 and, most famously, Char Davies' breath-responsive augmented reality works Ephemere and Osmose. 6,7 These technologies , introduced during the early 1960s, provided a new way of experiencing the living body and heralded a broader movement toward a systems-oriented approach to the analysis of natural and social phenomena. While many artists have explored these technologies as unusual musical instruments for concert style presentations, my interest here is in direct audience participation. Physiologically responsive art works can provide a means for us to observe and enact subtle changes in the body's …