HEART LOUNGE:
MAKING THE HUMAN HEART
A MEDIUM FOR
SOCIAL INTERACTION
..
ABSTRACT
This paper is concerned with the interrelationships between human, computational technologies and social engagement. In its first phase Pulsate, interactive wallpaper was exhibited at Kinetica Art Fair, March 2009, London where I received feedback from over 80 participants who signed the appropriate consent forms. In this second phase, Heart Lounge is made up of visual patterns and audio resonances from the real-time heart signals of participants. In my previous essay, I discussed biofeedback techniques and cognitive processes in viewing the pattern; these issues are extended and addressed as:
> poetics knowledge on reading bio data;
> symbiosis of mind/body and biotechnology as an emerging component in techno art
environments;
> bioinformatics and enhancement of bio sensing technologies;
> design of an intimate device as tool for bio-self awareness and social interaction.
My project has been modified to explore key aspects within these fields. Building on my previous research, I place the human living heart at the interface between mind/body and technology in order to refashion the design of human-computer interfaces in responsive environments. I investigate the enhancement of ready-made and DIY biosensors together with adaptive body imaging technology within a ‘Posthuman’ context (Hayles, 1999). I use simple algorithms to (de)code the pattern of heart signals. The result is a new form of representing bio signals and statistical data in an immersive computer-mediated installation, Heart Lounge. The purpose is to break down human body boundaries in a biotechnology environment, to allow individuals to communicate with their internal organs, the hearts.
Keywords
Biotechnology, heart signal, ‘mindbody’, audio-visual pattern, social interaction, telephone
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background
I see the human heart at the core of our physical, symbolic and emotive bodies. As a co-performative mechanism with the mind, our bodies make contact with other people, technologies and our surroundings. This view has been merged with my artistic practice by focusing on two key elements. One is the boundary of mind/body extended by biofeedback technology and computer interface. Another is the intimate experience when we observe our internal data and the ‘self’ we share with others in a public environment. In order to investigate these elements, I have constituted a methodology in which a biofeedback method is used as part of generating audio-visual display in a computer-mediated space the Heart Lounge. Inside the lounge, the participant’s heart is an instrument for creating wall pattern and musical notes generated by its signals. These have led me to question how biofeedback technologies can be used to promote wellbeing – based on a holistic view of body/mind practice – as opposed to the invasive use of drugs and chemical practices..
……….My installation gives the participant a self-reflective look at her/his own body using computer visualization and sound synthesis to interpret data recovered from natural signals (heart pulses). This ‘undressing’ of the body in public view gives rise to possible embodiment and re-awareness of the bio-body. I aim to investigate how this biological extension changes our views and perhaps gives new boundaries to our bodies at a time that biotechnologies are becoming more domesticated and modifiable..
……….Instead of visualising and amplifying heart data in ways used in scientific and medical practices, I want to represent bio data in a different way for new meanings and insights. I discuss this more fully in section 2. Taking the participants’ pulse rhythm as key material for creating a system in this investigation, I want to present a new environment where a poetics of knowledge can grow out of their imaginations and cognitive processes. Edwin Hutchins (2002) says cognition is not limited to the brain but that it is a systemic activity found throughout a human’s environments; using biotechnology within their cognitive systems, humans can create the ‘extended mind’. (Hayles, 2003, p.233) I discuss these ideas in section 3.
1.2 Feedback from the first phase
The Heart Lounge has been developed to have more immersive capacities from the 1st phase presented at Kinetica Art Fair, 2009. There, the participants were asked to wear a wireless chest-strap heartrate monitor to design pattern, unique to their hearts. The patterns were projected onto a wall in a bright and small opened area. It took each participant about 3-5 minutes, after which they completed a questionnaire and gave additional verbal feedback relating to the pattern design and how the project could be improved. I used “Survey Monkey”, an online survey tool to analyse the responses that have been used as co-ordinated reasons for the current development. The feedback shows many people would have spent more time experimenting with their body signals and concentrating on the pattern design if the heartrate monitor (chest-strap) could be simplified. Other elements like lighting and space dimensions were also key aspects that affected the participants’ perceptions and experiences. From the survey, many people associate the pattern with mood i.e. being calm or excited. Many also expressed a desire for sound effects to enhance the experience. To create an environment that can engage more with feelings, I put the wallpaper in an enclosed room with additional audio display generated by the participants’ pulse. Low lighting will not only make the projected patterns more vivid but will encourage each participant to share ‘intimate’ self-exploration in a social, public space..
……….At the art fair, I noticed that many participants interacted with onlookers and performed by jumping or dancing to increase their heart rate for the wallpaper to change. The event also reinforced my original concept for this project: although our physical body parts (i.e. faces and hands) that can be seen usually dominate our communication processes, why not make the symbolic and unseen part that influence so much of our well-being and social interaction ‘visible’? Today, surveillance technologies increasingly expose our private moments to the public; Google imaging and CCTV are current examples. Bio and body imaging technologies have made our intimate bodies become more publicly observed. A similar idea was noted by Victoria Vesna (Wilson, 2002), which will be discussed in section 2.1, ‘How we see inside our bodies through imaging technologies’.
1.3 Final development
In the Heart Lounge the participant can also have an introspective look at her/his biological body. Its four walls are projected with interactive wallpapers generated from the pattern of participants’ pulse rhythm. Four people can participate with the work at a time. Each has to hold a stetho-phone, with a handset that can sense pulse signals of the user and send it to a computer. This signal is used to generate two kinds of audio display. One is pulse rhythm amplified through a mini speaker in the earpiece; another is heart ambience via a loudspeaker. The same signal is also used to define fluidity of wall pattern that change in form, shape and colour and differ from the displays of the 1st phase installation, Pulsate. See examples from figure 1..
……….In the new enclosed space, four individual patterns will be enlarged to cover the whole of four walls for producing a decorative encompassing effect. Participants’ mind/bodies are immersed in the same space and their hearts become mediums for social interaction. The walls resonate with the audio waves, which will be interwoven, turning the space into an acoustic heart mix. Thus, the self-‘understanding’ puts the mind in touch with an internal aspect of the body in a ‘Posthuman’ (Hayles, 1999) experience of reclaiming awareness of the bio body..
……….A computational system reconnects an internal natural system with the mind itself; the heart becomes an interface of mind/body. It gives rise to an inside-out experience that extends the mind/body to an external world: a projection against a wall; amplified sound and other onlookers, a shared intimacy that comes directly from the heart. The heart also becomes an interface between body and technology blurring human-machine boundaries and having interaction, making embodiment a product of the complex interaction of the brain and viscera as well as interaction with the technological environment.
Figure 1-left: a pattern created by a participant’s heart, captured from 1st phase Installation, Pulsate at Kinetica Art Fair, 2009. Figure 1-right: an example of new pattern for the final phase developed from a digital version (by AIKON) of reference Haemoglobin 8.26 diagram shown in figure 4
2. POETICS OF KNOWLEDGE IN READING BIOFEEDBACK DATA
This section focuses on bodily experience in the artistic elements of my project. A framework for exploring issues of body and imaging technologies in a poetics environment has already been established. For example, Stephen Wilson (2002) notes that, based on current bodily technology, the advances in biological research, information technologies and medical science have made the human body an apparatus in cultural discourse and artistic experimentation. ‘The disciplining and shaping of bodily experiences are a major function of cultural institutions.’ (Wilson, 2002, p.150) These new technologies also enable one to re-examine the relationship between public and private space in new ways.
2.1 How we see inside our bodies through imaging technologies
Body imaging technologies grow out of our search for information about our (what used to be) invisible parts. Technology today affects how we see our bodies and how much we allow others to see of them. In their publication Bodies Incorporated: Theoretical Appropriation for Somatic Intervention, Victoria Vesna and Robert Nideffer (1996) use an approach that concentrates on the study of consciousness to study the imagination of body control in virtual space. They write that we normally do not observe our bodies as familiar objects but alien environments in which ‘…our body appears as something over which we do not have control.’ (Vesna and Nideffer, 1966) Bio- and body imaging technologies open the body up for observation and public access, and it stimulates the ‘the redefinition of the subject’.
……….Similarly, Wilson says we need to look at the implications of this picturing of our privacies, particular in the area of medicine. For example, recent non-invasive imaging technologies are capable to turn the observed body inside out. ‘It conjures up foreboding visions of an all-powerful observer who has instant visual access to the anatomy, biochemistry, and physiology of a patient.’ (Wilson, 2002, p.152) Non-invasive technology like computer tomography X-ray, magnetic resonance imaging and the same hi-tech sorts have uncovered our private parts, which used to be occluded and secluded from the public. However, this still needs to be determined depending on, ‘…the social or political dimensions and the ethical implications of this generalized somatic visualization of the invisible.’ (Ibid)
……….These views are central to the use of biofeedback method in my project, particularly the interpretation of a working system of someone’s heart presented in public view. Expensive and high tech medical devices are not involved here to make visible the pattern of hearts contracting and expanding. Such imageries from those laboratory devices are already widely used in many works, to draw viewers’ attention to the heart. Instead, I use an affordable reflexive optical sensor, equipped with computer generated visual machines allowing the participant to see images of heart patterns in a more meditative and an introspective manner in a live performance of her/his body part.
2.2 Advantage of visualizing bio data with computer
In drawing attention to the heart signals, my goal is to attach new meanings through its representation and highlight the advantages gained from using the computer as tool to support my artistic work. ‘What are the characteristics of Heart Lounge in the contexts of medical science and computational visual arts?’ In my work, I try to move away from pure scientific visualization because Science itself is a practice dealing solely with biophysical knowledge; this can decrease social interactions and everyday life involvement. Though working with numerical data, I avoid techie images, which are experienced in many computer art related scientific experiments. These works ‘…seem “too technical”, fascinating for its novelty but ephemeral in its appeal.’ (Wright, 1997, p.25) In science disciplines, Wright (1997) sees scientific images in visual arts made for both epistemological and promotional purposes. To this, he adds that many well-known works like Karl Sims’ (figure 2) and William Latham’s (figure 3) appear as pure outcomes of scientific modelling. As spectator of such works, the ‘very unusual stylisations and startlingly unfamiliar transformations, feelings like distance and alienation often arise owing to its very strangeness.’ (Wright, 1997, p.23)
Figure 2: Karl Sims, Visualising with Spheres. Image from www.karlsims.com/.../InteractiveEvolutionVisualComputer93.pdf
Figure 3: William Latham, A simple horn form. Image from www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/latham.html
Figure 4: Max Perutz, Haemoglobin 8.26 diagram, 1959 created by Max Perutz. Image from www.wellcomecollection.org/exhibitionsandevents/pastexhibitionsandevents/ fromatomstopatterns/gallery/WTD039444.htm
……….Through a language of algorithmic imagery, heart rates (beats per minute) are transformed to parameters to form the pattern and left with only mathematical ornaments in its ingredients. The project can perhaps simply gain a cultural status. The advantage of using the computer as the main tool in art practice is highlighted here through the visual pattern of heart signals. These images encourage the spectator to look at the heart differently. Machines reveal a world of images that cannot be seen or created without it. The use of iterative design in computer systems characterizes its visual results from its visual art contexts. It is based on crystallographic diagram by Max Perutz in 1959 (figure 4), the Haemoglobin that is the molecule responsible for transporting oxygen throughout the body. I employ pattern design as a metaphor of repeated behaviour of the heart, its results are projected on a wall, resembling decorative wallpapers that could be seen in domestic or work spaces. The wall patterns are changing all the time synching with the non steady beat of pulses; this varies the qualities of pattern ingredients – colours, lines, shapes and movement that are synchronizing with the changes of heart signals – the wall surface thus becomes softer with a fluid look and more depth in a poetics sense. Each wall pattern is therefore a personalized sign of being alive to its spectator. On the other hand, its meanings are left to the interpretation and visual cognitive processes of each spectator, and her/his preferred choices of pattern. These can be controlled by experimenting with their own bodies – a ‘tool’ for wall pattern ‘co-designed’ by the participants.
2.3 The effect of wall pattern design on the viewer’s experience
The choices we make about pattern are personal, but in this space, the wall pattern is not purely designed from the participant’s intuition or instinct. It is partly achieved from the conditions of her/his heart and of a software algorithm. Jack L. Nasar, Professor City & Regional Planning Section at Austin E. Knowlton School of Architecture (1999) suggests that designers use a scientific knowledge base to lead design as it ‘is not the only way “knowing”, but it is the only approach…’ (Nasar, 1999, p.ix) helping us to build and test theories. The interactions of the participants at the Kinetica Art Fair showed that Science disciplines like biofeedback methods help them to realise, guess and act upon the pattern they had created. The results are seen as progressive behaviour of the participant and new contents (patterns) appearing in the work. By pressing a screen-captured switch, they could record their preferable patterns in the computer hard disk which later were sent out to them. 99% of participants at the Fair claimed ‘ownership’ of the patterns – they said the unique patterns were ‘created’ by them and as such, belonged to them. In the questionnaire, more than 90% requested to have their pattern designs sent to their email addresses.
……….In her research, Rodemann (1999) claims that the patterns we choose are symbolic for us and they are imbued with cultural meanings that link to colour, style, texture and memory. She adds that we express and extend ourselves in the patterns we select. In her research, she made two-dimensional pattern design categories, each having subcategories ranking and grouped hierarchically by their simplicity/complexity and order/abstraction. These are distinguished in 12 categories, seen from figure 5. All categories were later tested with people of all ages ranging from 27 to 80 years. 66% of all age groups agree the Geometric pattern with ticking stripes suggests the perception of movement. (Rodemann, 1999, pp.7-14) Besides Arnheim’s visions of visual perception particular in geometric shapes (referred to in my previous essay), Rodemann’s survey is pertinent to my development of the software algorithm written to generate pattern from heart rates. In response to a question how the pattern relates to him, a participant at Kinetica Art Fair wrote: ‘I am alive!’ This underwrites my decision to use ‘movement’ or changing of the patterns to reflect the fluid nature of the heart system. Many responses referred to the participant’s feelings and emotions ranging from happy, calm to laidback.
Figure 5: Pattern categories used in Rodemann’s experiment
……….In a later survey, Rodemann tested an acoustic dot pattern on a wall surface in a music-rehearsal area. Performers described the wall surface as distracting and tiring. According to 86% of them, the design appeared to move. However, the walls had been set up with a ‘swimming effect’, which led to feelings of tiredness and irritation. Instead of moving away from a geometric shape, I take this evidence as a challenge to participant’s physical movement and self-control. Putting the participants as receptors of the wallpaper, I use its fluidity as perceptual stimuli playing against the participant nervous system. If they feel the change of graphical shapes and lines of the wallpaper exhausting, they must balance their heart working systems with viewing toleration. If a pleasing pattern appears, they must control their breathing and body movements in order to maintain or to get rid of it. The process of art viewing thus becomes an implication for wellbeing. Biofeedback is used here not as a method for passive users, but demands full engagement and dialogue – internally and externally. Directly, this project puts their bodies and minds in touch with their own hearts and others’ because (as mentioned before) it is a shared space. This reaffirms my intention to make this installation an experimental platform for everyone who is willing to put the heart up as a medium for social interaction and part of biotechnology that can change the space we co-live in.
……….Rodemann suggests that how we respond to architecture and used objects rely heavily on the scale of our bodies in relation to them. To this, I use a wall-size projection to create a ‘Gulliver’ effect. In the Heart Lounge, standing next to the wall-sized pattern, the participant’s perception is dislocated into the heart-made wallpaper. However, its wall-size is not as paramount as Mark Rothko’s large canvases; Louise Bourgeois’s gigantic spiders; Richard Serra’s huge bronze casts, but it is large enough to push the spectator into an ‘active position’, similar to how Boris Groy (2009) explains a totalitarian art space in which ‘…there is no way out of it. As a spectator you find yourselves having to defend yourself…’ (Groy and Chalie, 2009, p.34) against yourself and other onlookers in the installation space. In doing so, you become part of the artwork. Though the installation is constructed in an enclosed space, but open to the public; being part of the work is equivalent to being part of a public environment. Thus, the act of modifying the ‘picture’ of your own heart and being ‘inside’ yourself becomes a performative experience presented to the public.
3. RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN ‘MINDBODY’ AND BIO-TECHNOLGY ENVIRONMENT
3.1 The significance of the dynamic flux and the ‘extended mind’ in a ‘technologitised’ environment
The dynamic flux of ‘mindbody’, technology and environment informs our interactions with the world. Katherine Hayles (2002) adopts Mark Hansen’s term ‘mindbody’ to denote the emergent phenomena of body and embodiment that arise from the dynamic flux. In her essay Flesh and metal: Reconfiguring the ‘mindbody’ in Virtual Environments she focuses on this flux, rather than separating body from embodiment. This is because the two ‘are always dynamically interacting with one another.’ (Hayles, 2002, p.229) The flux serves as a source of everything that forms our perceptions about the world. This makes embodiment a product of the complex interaction between the brain and viscera, as well as the constant engagement with the environment, and subjected to the same cultural influences and observations that inform the body. (Ibid, p.230)
……….By denying embodiment a pre-existence status, it is possible to see that changes in the environment ‘are deeply interrelated to changes in embodiment.’ (Ibid) Interactions with a technological engineered environment modify our habits, postures, enactments and perceptions. As with habits, Hayles mentions proprioception where we feel that we not only possess our bodies but also occupy them. (Ibid) Following this view, the dynamic flux allows the embodied experience and body to emerge in my installation where the ‘mindbody’ boundaries of the participant fluidly intermingle with technology; the telephone handset embedded with a pulse oximeter becomes ‘an unconscious extension’ of the hand and then of the heart. The participants feed their pulses into the computer system via the telephone handset; not with the perception of using a biofeedback machine, but a communicative device, which they use to listen to their heart signals. Thus, the change of heart ambience and visual pattern in the installation can be seen as the result of changes in the embodied experience influenced by modifying their hearts’ working system. This was seen in the first phase of development tested at Kinetica Art Fair when the participants tried to accelerate their heart rates. In this final phase, using stetho-phone within their cognitive-communicative systems, the participants create an ‘extended mind’. Andy Clark and Edwin Hutchins (2002) state that cognition is not limited to the brain, but a systemic activity found throughout a human’s surroundings. (Ibid) I have applied this view to the two-way relationship between ‘mindbody’ and information technologies in the installation where a feedback loop of heart data exists between its ‘technologitised’ environment and the participants’ biological capacities.
3.2 Human-machine relation in the Heart Lounge
The interfacing between hardware and software in this installation has been developed to enhance the dynamic interactive process of ‘mindbody’ of the participant. During the development using chest-strap with sensor, I found that the interaction could be interrupted by the operation of technology. However, Hayles suggests that due to the speed of change in technological environments, gaps or disconnectness often appear between body, embodiment and the interactions with the flux. A virtual reality artwork like Simon Penny, Traces 1999 is an example that bridges these gaps. Penny gives the ‘mindbody’ time, thought and experience to register the environment that changes and shifts in flux. (Ibid) He emphasises the dynamic interaction from which both ‘mindbody’ and technology emerge together. In a similar vein, my installation attempts to make the participants realise the importance of the relational emergence between ‘mindbody’ and technology by using immediate changes of audio and visual patterns in the environment. This is to inform the participants of the changes in their ‘mindbody’ while occupying technology as if it has stemmed from their bodies. This process is used to extend the almost imperceptible heart’s beats and vibrations outside the confines of the individual body, using biotechnology: the stetho-phone.
Figure 6: Relational experience of participant using a stetho-phone in the installation space
……….The phone and the user are merged into a new component in dealing with the technologitised environment according to Don Ihde’s original structure ‘(Human-Technology)→World’ used to explain embodiment relations between human and machines ‘where technologies become almost transparent and are seen as quasi-me.’ (Ihde, p.215) I have modified the relations (figure 6) to describe the embodied relations of my installation. After a short adaptation period of using stetho-phone it has become an embodied part of the participant to interact with the machines’ environment, her/his own ‘mindbody’ and other visitors in the installation space: the Heart Lounge.
3.3 If Biology is a new medium, what is the message?
Today, Biotechnologies are becoming more domesticated; this presents different opportunities to technology-based artists to examine the human condition. As a techno art practitioner using body as a medium for expression, I see Biomedia becoming more commonplace in homes, work places, schools and art studios in that they are becoming more affordable and patented. In Our Biotech Future, Dyson (2007) predicts that Biotechnologies will be a major force in our lives. As far back as 1954, McLuhan foresaw that ‘technological art takes the whole earth and its population as its material…’ (Ibid) The heart in my project is addressed as the origin of circulating data throughout the computer system. Every time the heart pumps blood saturated with oxygen, it creates a pulse (a rhythmical throbbing of the arteries), which is detected by an oximeter (reflexive optical sensor) attached to a participant’s finger. The oximeter thus measures an oxygen saturation level and then reports it to the computer. The point, where the finger and the oximeter touch is the actual point, where the heart system is extended into the machine environment via the biosensor in the handset. The pulse is the only message the oximeter needs to measure and send to the computer. Computationally, it flows throughout the software algorithm and audio-visual devices set to respond to it. Making the heart a medium in this environment, the pulses can be thought of as dialogues among participants and between man and machine.
……….In What is Biomedia? Eugene Thacker (2003, p.48) alludes to McLuhan when he states that ‘it is not just that the medium is a message, but that biology is the new medium: the medium is the message, and that message is a molecule.’ He adds that Biomedia is the new configuration of biology and technology. If Biology is a new medium, the pulse data in my installation, is the message flowing through mind, body, technology and the environment. Signals of one’s heart are turned into a message for making dialogue with technologies, environment and the other three participants’ in the installation space. The heart thus becomes a medium for social interaction by extending our bodies with biotechnologies; her heart can talk to his, my heart to yours; our hearts connect us.
3.4 Cybernetic body in biofeedback installation
In his essay, Bio Art Stephen Wilson (2002) writes that the 21st century will be the ‘biology century’. The use of computing to acquire, analyse and retrieve Bioinformatics plays an important part in delimitating physical abilities of participants. I have integrated his view with the idea of Domingues and Gerhardt (2004) on the bio cybernetic body in a ‘technofeedback’ environment. They state that through the symbiosis of ‘mindbody’ and technology, human conditions are enhanced by the interface of technology and its complex system. This section examines the boundaries of the participant’s body to the artificial and natural systems of the installation environment.
……….Looking at its virtual dimension, the participant is immersed in the effect of biofeedback while interacting with biosensors, electronic circuit, microcontroller and audio-visual interfaces. Her/his body becomes a cybernetic body in the same sense as that of Andy Clark in which he sees all participants of virtual environments as cyborgs in the sense of being human-technology symbiots. The joining of technology and biology creates a ‘cognitive machinery’ that is ‘geared to transformation, technology-based expansion, …a self-perpetuating process of computational growth.’ (Hayles, 2002, p.232) By using moist technologies, a pulse oximeter wired to a microcontroller and bio processing software, I can connect physical and virtual dimensions together. At the interface between the two, the complex behaviours thus emerge and continually develop from a natural system of the participant’s body in feeding and sensing the loop of heart data. Theorist Lucia Santaella saying that human bodies, in its technical fusion and biomechanical extensions, are being transformed into hybrid bio cybernetic bodies, also affirms this idea. (Ibid)
……….To this, I have also taken idea of De Rosney (2005) in using new forms of interaction within artificial and natural systems that can create unusual dialogue within a poetic context and offer artists new aesthetics to explore. The coupling of body to technologies and the flow of bio and techno feedback make the participant’s body become a strand of computational heart signals. The heart does not only maintain the living organism but also drives the flow of electrical current among electronic devices, controls software to perform and influence the visual and ambience in the installation space. Thus, I see it as a cybernetic heart in a sense that it gives natural qualities to the software processing and organic functioning to the hardware in the installation. This principal is used to design an interface that is adaptive, mutable and responsive to assist the cognitive process of the participant to understand the world driven by her/his own heart. I utilize biological natural signals to interact with electric signals of its heart waves, creating a complex environment of enacted behaviours between artificial and natural agents. According to Domingues and Gerhardt, some interfaces of the body are more natural because biologically they have a greater adaptable capacity to translate body signals. These extend the senses ‘in a more intimate and delicate way than those commonly used for interactions,…’ (Domingues and Gerhardt, 2005) like conventional keyboard and mouse that separate them between the bodies and virtual worlds.
3.5 The effect of technology on our perception of biotech environment
In his essay McLuhan and the Body as Medium, Richard Cavell (2008) affirms that McLuhan’s vision of the media as an extension of our bodies was coupled with the notion of a techno environment. Extending ourselves into this kind of prosthetic environment, we feel it is foreign to us because it is outside us – even though it used to be us. In it we are incorporated with technology, which has ‘turned ourselves inside out – extended and amputated ourselves…’ (Cavell, 2008, p.38) To this view I include a question in the survey to analyse perceptual experience of participants in the bio-techno environment of my installation: ‘Does this bio-techno environment have abilities to manipulate us (the participants)?’ I see the installation as a responsive environment, where we submerge ourselves in and humanize its biotechnology. We then make the technology familiar to ourselves in order to co-live with it. In short, the technology does not put us in its environment nor manipulates us. Instead, we open ourselves up to its condition and allow it to mirror our behaviour through its behaviour and the result it gives back (output). To that, our perceptual experiences are formed with the result it presents as objects of perception. These objects are actually the result of our action in interacting with it in order to make our internal world to be seen through its response. These perceptual experiences have actually been created by us although they are constructed with functionalities of the technology. Thus, McLuhan’s vision remains relevant to the idea of extending the body with biotechnology in my installation. So that the more our experiences of this biotech world shift from the stable corporeal body to the interpenetrating fluidity of technological space, the less unfamiliar this space becomes. The technology used in this installation works to construct the participant’s perceptual experience of the body (heart) in a way that the changes of the environment mirror the internal changes. Visual and auditory patterns are the result of repetitive behaviour of the heart which is correspondingly translated and generated by the software and finally represented through a light projector and loudspeaker.
3.6 Designing an intimate device
Technology has become more and more part of our everyday existence and therefore plays a more intimate role in how we receive and experience information. As such, my use of the telephone also tries to incorporate a shared participation and use of everyday technology as advocated by the British Group, The Disembodied Art Gallery, 1992. They use telecommunication technology ‘in a manner, which has much in common with the ideas of cultural jamming.’ (Wilson, 2002, p.490) They see the phone as ‘physical; it creates and intimate space that unites people over distance, even across time.’ (Wilson, 2002, p.494)
……….With my stetho-phone I have given it an additional feature that enables you to connect with the inner ‘self’ or body organs; the oximeter used as a sensor to detect heart data. I take this capacity further by bringing it into play with the psychological functions of an intimate communication device, the telephone, embedded with a DIY biofeedback system that heightens the intimacy of the experience by being able to communicate with your heart.
……….The ringing sound and other participatory functions are applied in the interfacing of hardware and software seen in figure 7. With the advent of mobile phone technology, the public phone (as in phone booths) is becoming more outdated and obsolete. My phone harks back to a pre-mobile time when few people could resist the urge the pick up the phone ringing in a public space; and perhaps talk to a stranger. I have applied this function as aesthetics of the installation space; when visitors walk into the phone’s range, its ringing sound entices visitors to pick up the call.
……….The stetho-phone is a modified version of a ‘picturephone’ set Mod II launched by AT&T in 1969 (figure 8). It is made of a traditional 12-button touch-tone desk phone with the handset embedded with a DIY pulse oximeter sensor. A tiny LED on its base turns ON and OFF synchronously with her/his actual pulses. Using object-oriented softwares like “Arduino” and “Processing” and “Arduino Mega” microcontroller, I can manipulate its keypad to work like a computer keyboard; add an LCD to improve user experience; and implement a distance sensor to detect a passer-by. Once the user picks up the earpiece and type in their biological identities, the oximeter senses the pulse and its circuit triggers the software algorithm to generate visual and auditory forms of heart rhythm. A changing wall pattern is projected onto a wall and a pair of loudspeakers amplifies a changing ambience of heart signals according to the rate of her/his heartbeats per minute.
……….McLuhan (1964) claims that the word ‘telephone’ first appeared in 1840 before Alexander Graham Bell’s time, when used to describe an invention for sending musical notes through wooden rods. It only became a device used for verbal communication in the 1870s. Paying homage to its pre-history, I have modified the small speaker in the earpiece to amplify the rhythmic notes corresponding to the changing rate of the user’s heartbeats. In terms of a technical challenge in designing tools for interactive art, I have overcome the problem of merging ‘sensor’ and ‘actuator’ into one object.
……….Comparing telephone with auditory machines like radio, McLuhan says that a telephone does not exist like instruments that make background noise since its participatory form requires a partner, and that is why ‘we feel compelled to answer a ringing public phone.’ (McLuhan, 1977, p.267) Reversing his assertion that ‘one alone cannot make a phone call.’ (Ibid), my stetho-phone enables the user to communicate with her/himself as well. Its responsive capacities put the user in touch with her/his ‘inner’ bio-self and others within the installation space.
Figure 7: Connections between sensors, actuators and Arduino microcontroller with data types and directions. All devices are controlled by the functions written in “Arduino” and “Processing” applications.
Figure 8: A role model of stetho-phone, Mod II with a small monitor allowing the user to see the person on the other end of the line. Image from porticus.org
Figure 9: stetho-phone prototype (figure on the left). Compared to its role model in figure 8, stetho-phone does not have a small monitor, but a wall-sized screen, which displays a changing visual pattern of the heart (figure on the right)
3.7 Responsive environment: a platform for individual and social interactions
In the Heart Lounge, how the heart becomes a medium for social interaction essentially depends on the participant’s experience of responsive environments. In his research on responsive environment with auditory and visual displays, Kruger (1977) suggests that response is a new medium for real-time interaction between men and machines where it consists of sensing, display and control systems. The machines receive input from a participant and then present the output in ways the participant can recognize as corresponding to her/his behaviour.
……….In the installation, once she/he picks up the handset, the oximeter in it immediately senses the pulses through her/his finger. The pulses are then generated as audio ambience and graphical pattern displays. It is within this context that the heart acts as a processor controlling the responsive environment. However, the external can be seen as two environments even though they are in the same installation space. One is individual; another is communal. These depend on which context the individual responds to.
……….After the first moment of interaction, the computer displays the result; the participant chooses her/his next action and anticipates the next result. If the individual is only aware of her/his own heart ambience and the wall pattern right in front of her/himself, then her/his heart exists as a medium for biological and/or introspective interaction(s). This context is seen in the Bio-self Interaction chart in figure 10.
……….However, the displays created by the participant also become perceptual objects for other participants as four people are allowed in the installation at a time. It is impossible for each participant to avoid noticing others’ displays, as the space is only 5.5 by 7 sq. feet in dimension. Four tracks of heart ambience are interwoven making new acoustic heart mixes all the time, as do the changes of four wall patterns altering the whole architectural design environment. The communal engagement occurs at this moment; each individual heart becoming a medium for communication among all participants and other visitors present (see Social Interaction chart in figure 11). Thus, it can be said one action triggers both individual and communal environments defined by perceptual experiences of participants. Regarding cybernetics on its principles to the organisation of social systems, Norbert Wiener (1984) writes ‘it is certainly true that the social system is an organisation like the individual, that is bound together by a system of communication, and that it has a dynamic in which circular processors of a feedback nature play and important role‘. (Paine, 2006, p.26)
……….The responsive environment of my installation provides a basis for the consideration of the human condition, which can represent patterns of social interaction as well. In it, the human heart is used to create an intimate loop between individual and set of machines – a shared intimacy among individuals in the space. Interacting within the installation, every action made by the individual not only extends her/his body boundaries to reach the interpenetrating of the technology, but the interiors of others, as well.
Figure 10: Bio-self Interaction chart shows data flown in and out between two environments (body and technology)
Figure 11: Social interaction chart shows how four ambiences created by four heart are mix into one audio channel, therefore each heart becomes a medium for individual to interact with others in the installation space
4.CONCLUSION
Computational tools offer many ways to explore new interfaces. In my project, body data have been utilised with biotechnology for the extension of the body. Aiming to break down different kinds of boundaries: between biological and technological, between the environment inside and outside of the body, and crucially, between individuals in a shared public space, I have attempted to extend the level of immersion of the participants in the artwork itself. So that the boundary between technology and the participant-viewer appears non-existent. The heart is the medium for making art, the actual organ invisible to our eyes but perceivable through our interactions with biotechnology and the responsive qualities of the Heart Lounge.
……….The methodology I used here has come out of my previous work in developing interactive wallpaper. It mediates the participant’s body with technologies in order to open a channel for information-flow between two mechanisms: the internal (heart) and the external (technological network) where the public are invited to participate. The information is circulated in a loop between the two. Instead of requiring the participant to adopt ‘abstract and conventionalized signals’ such as mouse, button and command line interface to input data, I have created a system that comes closer to what Penny (2006) calls, the ‘native sensibilities’ of the human. Therefore, the technological network adopts the human body as part of its artificial environment, and the heart performs as the main processor organising the whole installation including perception of participants and onlookers present.
……….Through the way I have built software architecture, I have been able to establish connections between arts, medical science and design disciplinaries. This is intended to lead the audience to new insights and knowledge, as a consequence. These have been made in response to Wright’s view on computational technology. He writes if computers ‘…can create these connections among different disciplines and their means of perception then perhaps they will result in a new cultural practice, a poetics of knowledge.’ (Wright, 1997, p.31) Kruger (1997) refers to the new aesthetics of responsive environments as a result ‘of a personal need to understand and express the essence of the computer in humanistic terms.’ (Kruger, 1997, p.258) For this reason we must recognize and explore not only engineering aspects in designing intimate technology, but also the aesthetics in order ‘to understand and choose what we become as a result of what we have made.’ (Kruger, 1997, p.259)
……….The ever-increasing presence of technology in our homes and offices, the ‘intimacy’ of this in our lives, has lead me to explore this relationship on an even more intimate level in my project. Not only between man and machine, but to extend the intimate experience between man and man with the possibilities of enhancing this social interaction with audio and visual aspects originating from a very intimate space: the human heart..
5.BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Groy, Boris and Bishop, Chalie, Bring the Noise, TATE ETC., Issue 16/Summer 2009, UK, 2009.
Hansen, Mark B. N., The Automation of Sight and the Bodily Basis of Vision. In: New philosophy for a new media. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2004.
Hansen, Mark B. N., Bodies in Code, or How Primordial Tactility Introjects Technics Into Human Life. In: Bodies in Code: Interfaces with Digital Media. London: Routledge, 2006.
Hayles, N. Katherine, Toward Embodied Virtuality. In: How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics, London: The University of Chicago Press, 1999.
Hayles, N. Katherine, Flesh and Metal: Reconfiguring ‘mindbody’ in Virtual Environments. In: Thurtle, Phillip and Mitchell, Robert, ed., Data Made Flesh: Embodying Information, London: Routledge, 2002.
Idhe, Don, Chasing Technoscience: Matrix for Materiality (Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Technology) [online] Available from <http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Eb6yxy5DWuEC&pg=PA215&lpg=PA215&dq=Don+Ihde+(human-technology)%E2%86%92world&source=bl&ots=s83OGDR2HK&sig=dk84A0qTdMWSN5p6oZ7vHVMRQqg&hl=en&ei=TOBxSqaiB9qZjAfA08iaDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2> [Last Accessed 24 April 2009]
Krueger, Myron, Responsive Environment. In: Shanken, A. Edward, (ed.), Art and Electronic Media: Themes and Movements, London: Phaidon Press Limited, 1997.
Lenoir, Tim, Forward. In: Hansen, Mark B. N., New Philosophy for New Media. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2004.
McLuhan, Marshall (1964), The Telephone. In: Understanding Media: The Extension of Man, London: Routledge, 1997.
Nasar, Jack, Forward. In: Rodemann, A. Patricia. Patterns in Interior Environments: Perception, Psychology, and Practice, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1999.
Paine, Garth, Interactive Responsive Environment: A Broader Artistic Context. In: Ascott, Roy, ed., Engineering Nature: Art & Consciousness in the Post-Biological Era, Bristol: Intellect Books, 2006.
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Rothko, Mark (1951), Gestural Abstraction: Mark Rothko I paint very large pictures. In: Stiles, Kristine and Selz, Peter, ed., Theories and documents of contemporary art: a sourcebook of artists’. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
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Wright, Richard, Visual Technology and the Poetics of Knowledge. In: Mealing, Stuart, ed., Computers & Art, Wiltshire: Cromwell Press, 1997.
CRITICAL ESSAY
HEART LOUNGE:
MAKING THE HUMAN HEART
A MEDIUM FOR
SOCIAL INTERACTION
..
ABSTRACT
This paper is concerned with the interrelationships between human, computational technologies and social engagement. In its first phase Pulsate, interactive wallpaper was exhibited at Kinetica Art Fair, March 2009, London where I received feedback from over 80 participants who signed the appropriate consent forms. In this second phase, Heart Lounge is made up of visual patterns and audio resonances from the real-time heart signals of participants. In my previous essay, I discussed biofeedback techniques and cognitive processes in viewing the pattern; these issues are extended and addressed as:
> poetics knowledge on reading bio data;
> symbiosis of mind/body and biotechnology as an emerging component in techno art
environments;
> bioinformatics and enhancement of bio sensing technologies;
> design of an intimate device as tool for bio-self awareness and social interaction.
My project has been modified to explore key aspects within these fields. Building on my previous research, I place the human living heart at the interface between mind/body and technology in order to refashion the design of human-computer interfaces in responsive environments. I investigate the enhancement of ready-made and DIY biosensors together with adaptive body imaging technology within a ‘Posthuman’ context (Hayles, 1999). I use simple algorithms to (de)code the pattern of heart signals. The result is a new form of representing bio signals and statistical data in an immersive computer-mediated installation, Heart Lounge. The purpose is to break down human body boundaries in a biotechnology environment, to allow individuals to communicate with their internal organs, the hearts.
Keywords
Biotechnology, heart signal, ‘mindbody’, audio-visual pattern, social interaction, telephone
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background
I see the human heart at the core of our physical, symbolic and emotive bodies. As a co-performative mechanism with the mind, our bodies make contact with other people, technologies and our surroundings. This view has been merged with my artistic practice by focusing on two key elements. One is the boundary of mind/body extended by biofeedback technology and computer interface. Another is the intimate experience when we observe our internal data and the ‘self’ we share with others in a public environment. In order to investigate these elements, I have constituted a methodology in which a biofeedback method is used as part of generating audio-visual display in a computer-mediated space the Heart Lounge. Inside the lounge, the participant’s heart is an instrument for creating wall pattern and musical notes generated by its signals. These have led me to question how biofeedback technologies can be used to promote wellbeing – based on a holistic view of body/mind practice – as opposed to the invasive use of drugs and chemical practices..
……….My installation gives the participant a self-reflective look at her/his own body using computer visualization and sound synthesis to interpret data recovered from natural signals (heart pulses). This ‘undressing’ of the body in public view gives rise to possible embodiment and re-awareness of the bio-body. I aim to investigate how this biological extension changes our views and perhaps gives new boundaries to our bodies at a time that biotechnologies are becoming more domesticated and modifiable..
……….Instead of visualising and amplifying heart data in ways used in scientific and medical practices, I want to represent bio data in a different way for new meanings and insights. I discuss this more fully in section 2. Taking the participants’ pulse rhythm as key material for creating a system in this investigation, I want to present a new environment where a poetics of knowledge can grow out of their imaginations and cognitive processes. Edwin Hutchins (2002) says cognition is not limited to the brain but that it is a systemic activity found throughout a human’s environments; using biotechnology within their cognitive systems, humans can create the ‘extended mind’. (Hayles, 2003, p.233) I discuss these ideas in section 3.
1.2 Feedback from the first phase
The Heart Lounge has been developed to have more immersive capacities from the 1st phase presented at Kinetica Art Fair, 2009. There, the participants were asked to wear a wireless chest-strap heartrate monitor to design pattern, unique to their hearts. The patterns were projected onto a wall in a bright and small opened area. It took each participant about 3-5 minutes, after which they completed a questionnaire and gave additional verbal feedback relating to the pattern design and how the project could be improved. I used “Survey Monkey”, an online survey tool to analyse the responses that have been used as co-ordinated reasons for the current development. The feedback shows many people would have spent more time experimenting with their body signals and concentrating on the pattern design if the heartrate monitor (chest-strap) could be simplified. Other elements like lighting and space dimensions were also key aspects that affected the participants’ perceptions and experiences. From the survey, many people associate the pattern with mood i.e. being calm or excited. Many also expressed a desire for sound effects to enhance the experience. To create an environment that can engage more with feelings, I put the wallpaper in an enclosed room with additional audio display generated by the participants’ pulse. Low lighting will not only make the projected patterns more vivid but will encourage each participant to share ‘intimate’ self-exploration in a social, public space..
……….At the art fair, I noticed that many participants interacted with onlookers and performed by jumping or dancing to increase their heart rate for the wallpaper to change. The event also reinforced my original concept for this project: although our physical body parts (i.e. faces and hands) that can be seen usually dominate our communication processes, why not make the symbolic and unseen part that influence so much of our well-being and social interaction ‘visible’? Today, surveillance technologies increasingly expose our private moments to the public; Google imaging and CCTV are current examples. Bio and body imaging technologies have made our intimate bodies become more publicly observed. A similar idea was noted by Victoria Vesna (Wilson, 2002), which will be discussed in section 2.1, ‘How we see inside our bodies through imaging technologies’.
1.3 Final development
In the Heart Lounge the participant can also have an introspective look at her/his biological body. Its four walls are projected with interactive wallpapers generated from the pattern of participants’ pulse rhythm. Four people can participate with the work at a time. Each has to hold a stetho-phone, with a handset that can sense pulse signals of the user and send it to a computer. This signal is used to generate two kinds of audio display. One is pulse rhythm amplified through a mini speaker in the earpiece; another is heart ambience via a loudspeaker. The same signal is also used to define fluidity of wall pattern that change in form, shape and colour and differ from the displays of the 1st phase installation, Pulsate. See examples from figure 1..
……….In the new enclosed space, four individual patterns will be enlarged to cover the whole of four walls for producing a decorative encompassing effect. Participants’ mind/bodies are immersed in the same space and their hearts become mediums for social interaction. The walls resonate with the audio waves, which will be interwoven, turning the space into an acoustic heart mix. Thus, the self-‘understanding’ puts the mind in touch with an internal aspect of the body in a ‘Posthuman’ (Hayles, 1999) experience of reclaiming awareness of the bio body..
……….A computational system reconnects an internal natural system with the mind itself; the heart becomes an interface of mind/body. It gives rise to an inside-out experience that extends the mind/body to an external world: a projection against a wall; amplified sound and other onlookers, a shared intimacy that comes directly from the heart. The heart also becomes an interface between body and technology blurring human-machine boundaries and having interaction, making embodiment a product of the complex interaction of the brain and viscera as well as interaction with the technological environment.
Figure 1-left: a pattern created by a participant’s heart, captured from 1st phase Installation, Pulsate at Kinetica Art Fair, 2009. Figure 1-right: an example of new pattern for the final phase developed from a digital version (by AIKON) of reference Haemoglobin 8.26 diagram shown in figure 4
2. POETICS OF KNOWLEDGE IN READING BIOFEEDBACK DATA
This section focuses on bodily experience in the artistic elements of my project. A framework for exploring issues of body and imaging technologies in a poetics environment has already been established. For example, Stephen Wilson (2002) notes that, based on current bodily technology, the advances in biological research, information technologies and medical science have made the human body an apparatus in cultural discourse and artistic experimentation. ‘The disciplining and shaping of bodily experiences are a major function of cultural institutions.’ (Wilson, 2002, p.150) These new technologies also enable one to re-examine the relationship between public and private space in new ways.
2.1 How we see inside our bodies through imaging technologies
Body imaging technologies grow out of our search for information about our (what used to be) invisible parts. Technology today affects how we see our bodies and how much we allow others to see of them. In their publication Bodies Incorporated: Theoretical Appropriation for Somatic Intervention, Victoria Vesna and Robert Nideffer (1996) use an approach that concentrates on the study of consciousness to study the imagination of body control in virtual space. They write that we normally do not observe our bodies as familiar objects but alien environments in which ‘…our body appears as something over which we do not have control.’ (Vesna and Nideffer, 1966) Bio- and body imaging technologies open the body up for observation and public access, and it stimulates the ‘the redefinition of the subject’.
……….Similarly, Wilson says we need to look at the implications of this picturing of our privacies, particular in the area of medicine. For example, recent non-invasive imaging technologies are capable to turn the observed body inside out. ‘It conjures up foreboding visions of an all-powerful observer who has instant visual access to the anatomy, biochemistry, and physiology of a patient.’ (Wilson, 2002, p.152) Non-invasive technology like computer tomography X-ray, magnetic resonance imaging and the same hi-tech sorts have uncovered our private parts, which used to be occluded and secluded from the public. However, this still needs to be determined depending on, ‘…the social or political dimensions and the ethical implications of this generalized somatic visualization of the invisible.’ (Ibid)
……….These views are central to the use of biofeedback method in my project, particularly the interpretation of a working system of someone’s heart presented in public view. Expensive and high tech medical devices are not involved here to make visible the pattern of hearts contracting and expanding. Such imageries from those laboratory devices are already widely used in many works, to draw viewers’ attention to the heart. Instead, I use an affordable reflexive optical sensor, equipped with computer generated visual machines allowing the participant to see images of heart patterns in a more meditative and an introspective manner in a live performance of her/his body part.
2.2 Advantage of visualizing bio data with computer
In drawing attention to the heart signals, my goal is to attach new meanings through its representation and highlight the advantages gained from using the computer as tool to support my artistic work. ‘What are the characteristics of Heart Lounge in the contexts of medical science and computational visual arts?’ In my work, I try to move away from pure scientific visualization because Science itself is a practice dealing solely with biophysical knowledge; this can decrease social interactions and everyday life involvement. Though working with numerical data, I avoid techie images, which are experienced in many computer art related scientific experiments. These works ‘…seem “too technical”, fascinating for its novelty but ephemeral in its appeal.’ (Wright, 1997, p.25) In science disciplines, Wright (1997) sees scientific images in visual arts made for both epistemological and promotional purposes. To this, he adds that many well-known works like Karl Sims’ (figure 2) and William Latham’s (figure 3) appear as pure outcomes of scientific modelling. As spectator of such works, the ‘very unusual stylisations and startlingly unfamiliar transformations, feelings like distance and alienation often arise owing to its very strangeness.’ (Wright, 1997, p.23)
Figure 2: Karl Sims, Visualising with Spheres. Image from www.karlsims.com/.../InteractiveEvolutionVisualComputer93.pdf
Figure 3: William Latham, A simple horn form. Image from www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/latham.html
Figure 4: Max Perutz, Haemoglobin 8.26 diagram, 1959 created by Max Perutz. Image from www.wellcomecollection.org/exhibitionsandevents/pastexhibitionsandevents/ fromatomstopatterns/gallery/WTD039444.htm
……….Through a language of algorithmic imagery, heart rates (beats per minute) are transformed to parameters to form the pattern and left with only mathematical ornaments in its ingredients. The project can perhaps simply gain a cultural status. The advantage of using the computer as the main tool in art practice is highlighted here through the visual pattern of heart signals. These images encourage the spectator to look at the heart differently. Machines reveal a world of images that cannot be seen or created without it. The use of iterative design in computer systems characterizes its visual results from its visual art contexts. It is based on crystallographic diagram by Max Perutz in 1959 (figure 4), the Haemoglobin that is the molecule responsible for transporting oxygen throughout the body. I employ pattern design as a metaphor of repeated behaviour of the heart, its results are projected on a wall, resembling decorative wallpapers that could be seen in domestic or work spaces. The wall patterns are changing all the time synching with the non steady beat of pulses; this varies the qualities of pattern ingredients – colours, lines, shapes and movement that are synchronizing with the changes of heart signals – the wall surface thus becomes softer with a fluid look and more depth in a poetics sense. Each wall pattern is therefore a personalized sign of being alive to its spectator. On the other hand, its meanings are left to the interpretation and visual cognitive processes of each spectator, and her/his preferred choices of pattern. These can be controlled by experimenting with their own bodies – a ‘tool’ for wall pattern ‘co-designed’ by the participants.
2.3 The effect of wall pattern design on the viewer’s experience
The choices we make about pattern are personal, but in this space, the wall pattern is not purely designed from the participant’s intuition or instinct. It is partly achieved from the conditions of her/his heart and of a software algorithm. Jack L. Nasar, Professor City & Regional Planning Section at Austin E. Knowlton School of Architecture (1999) suggests that designers use a scientific knowledge base to lead design as it ‘is not the only way “knowing”, but it is the only approach…’ (Nasar, 1999, p.ix) helping us to build and test theories. The interactions of the participants at the Kinetica Art Fair showed that Science disciplines like biofeedback methods help them to realise, guess and act upon the pattern they had created. The results are seen as progressive behaviour of the participant and new contents (patterns) appearing in the work. By pressing a screen-captured switch, they could record their preferable patterns in the computer hard disk which later were sent out to them. 99% of participants at the Fair claimed ‘ownership’ of the patterns – they said the unique patterns were ‘created’ by them and as such, belonged to them. In the questionnaire, more than 90% requested to have their pattern designs sent to their email addresses.
……….In her research, Rodemann (1999) claims that the patterns we choose are symbolic for us and they are imbued with cultural meanings that link to colour, style, texture and memory. She adds that we express and extend ourselves in the patterns we select. In her research, she made two-dimensional pattern design categories, each having subcategories ranking and grouped hierarchically by their simplicity/complexity and order/abstraction. These are distinguished in 12 categories, seen from figure 5. All categories were later tested with people of all ages ranging from 27 to 80 years. 66% of all age groups agree the Geometric pattern with ticking stripes suggests the perception of movement. (Rodemann, 1999, pp.7-14) Besides Arnheim’s visions of visual perception particular in geometric shapes (referred to in my previous essay), Rodemann’s survey is pertinent to my development of the software algorithm written to generate pattern from heart rates. In response to a question how the pattern relates to him, a participant at Kinetica Art Fair wrote: ‘I am alive!’ This underwrites my decision to use ‘movement’ or changing of the patterns to reflect the fluid nature of the heart system. Many responses referred to the participant’s feelings and emotions ranging from happy, calm to laidback.
Figure 5: Pattern categories used in Rodemann’s experiment
……….In a later survey, Rodemann tested an acoustic dot pattern on a wall surface in a music-rehearsal area. Performers described the wall surface as distracting and tiring. According to 86% of them, the design appeared to move. However, the walls had been set up with a ‘swimming effect’, which led to feelings of tiredness and irritation. Instead of moving away from a geometric shape, I take this evidence as a challenge to participant’s physical movement and self-control. Putting the participants as receptors of the wallpaper, I use its fluidity as perceptual stimuli playing against the participant nervous system. If they feel the change of graphical shapes and lines of the wallpaper exhausting, they must balance their heart working systems with viewing toleration. If a pleasing pattern appears, they must control their breathing and body movements in order to maintain or to get rid of it. The process of art viewing thus becomes an implication for wellbeing. Biofeedback is used here not as a method for passive users, but demands full engagement and dialogue – internally and externally. Directly, this project puts their bodies and minds in touch with their own hearts and others’ because (as mentioned before) it is a shared space. This reaffirms my intention to make this installation an experimental platform for everyone who is willing to put the heart up as a medium for social interaction and part of biotechnology that can change the space we co-live in.
……….Rodemann suggests that how we respond to architecture and used objects rely heavily on the scale of our bodies in relation to them. To this, I use a wall-size projection to create a ‘Gulliver’ effect. In the Heart Lounge, standing next to the wall-sized pattern, the participant’s perception is dislocated into the heart-made wallpaper. However, its wall-size is not as paramount as Mark Rothko’s large canvases; Louise Bourgeois’s gigantic spiders; Richard Serra’s huge bronze casts, but it is large enough to push the spectator into an ‘active position’, similar to how Boris Groy (2009) explains a totalitarian art space in which ‘…there is no way out of it. As a spectator you find yourselves having to defend yourself…’ (Groy and Chalie, 2009, p.34) against yourself and other onlookers in the installation space. In doing so, you become part of the artwork. Though the installation is constructed in an enclosed space, but open to the public; being part of the work is equivalent to being part of a public environment. Thus, the act of modifying the ‘picture’ of your own heart and being ‘inside’ yourself becomes a performative experience presented to the public.
3. RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN ‘MINDBODY’ AND BIO-TECHNOLGY ENVIRONMENT
3.1 The significance of the dynamic flux and the ‘extended mind’ in a ‘technologitised’ environment
The dynamic flux of ‘mindbody’, technology and environment informs our interactions with the world. Katherine Hayles (2002) adopts Mark Hansen’s term ‘mindbody’ to denote the emergent phenomena of body and embodiment that arise from the dynamic flux. In her essay Flesh and metal: Reconfiguring the ‘mindbody’ in Virtual Environments she focuses on this flux, rather than separating body from embodiment. This is because the two ‘are always dynamically interacting with one another.’ (Hayles, 2002, p.229) The flux serves as a source of everything that forms our perceptions about the world. This makes embodiment a product of the complex interaction between the brain and viscera, as well as the constant engagement with the environment, and subjected to the same cultural influences and observations that inform the body. (Ibid, p.230)
……….By denying embodiment a pre-existence status, it is possible to see that changes in the environment ‘are deeply interrelated to changes in embodiment.’ (Ibid) Interactions with a technological engineered environment modify our habits, postures, enactments and perceptions. As with habits, Hayles mentions proprioception where we feel that we not only possess our bodies but also occupy them. (Ibid) Following this view, the dynamic flux allows the embodied experience and body to emerge in my installation where the ‘mindbody’ boundaries of the participant fluidly intermingle with technology; the telephone handset embedded with a pulse oximeter becomes ‘an unconscious extension’ of the hand and then of the heart. The participants feed their pulses into the computer system via the telephone handset; not with the perception of using a biofeedback machine, but a communicative device, which they use to listen to their heart signals. Thus, the change of heart ambience and visual pattern in the installation can be seen as the result of changes in the embodied experience influenced by modifying their hearts’ working system. This was seen in the first phase of development tested at Kinetica Art Fair when the participants tried to accelerate their heart rates. In this final phase, using stetho-phone within their cognitive-communicative systems, the participants create an ‘extended mind’. Andy Clark and Edwin Hutchins (2002) state that cognition is not limited to the brain, but a systemic activity found throughout a human’s surroundings. (Ibid) I have applied this view to the two-way relationship between ‘mindbody’ and information technologies in the installation where a feedback loop of heart data exists between its ‘technologitised’ environment and the participants’ biological capacities.
3.2 Human-machine relation in the Heart Lounge
The interfacing between hardware and software in this installation has been developed to enhance the dynamic interactive process of ‘mindbody’ of the participant. During the development using chest-strap with sensor, I found that the interaction could be interrupted by the operation of technology. However, Hayles suggests that due to the speed of change in technological environments, gaps or disconnectness often appear between body, embodiment and the interactions with the flux. A virtual reality artwork like Simon Penny, Traces 1999 is an example that bridges these gaps. Penny gives the ‘mindbody’ time, thought and experience to register the environment that changes and shifts in flux. (Ibid) He emphasises the dynamic interaction from which both ‘mindbody’ and technology emerge together. In a similar vein, my installation attempts to make the participants realise the importance of the relational emergence between ‘mindbody’ and technology by using immediate changes of audio and visual patterns in the environment. This is to inform the participants of the changes in their ‘mindbody’ while occupying technology as if it has stemmed from their bodies. This process is used to extend the almost imperceptible heart’s beats and vibrations outside the confines of the individual body, using biotechnology: the stetho-phone.
Figure 6: Relational experience of participant using a stetho-phone in the installation space
……….The phone and the user are merged into a new component in dealing with the technologitised environment according to Don Ihde’s original structure ‘(Human-Technology)→World’ used to explain embodiment relations between human and machines ‘where technologies become almost transparent and are seen as quasi-me.’ (Ihde, p.215) I have modified the relations (figure 6) to describe the embodied relations of my installation. After a short adaptation period of using stetho-phone it has become an embodied part of the participant to interact with the machines’ environment, her/his own ‘mindbody’ and other visitors in the installation space: the Heart Lounge.
3.3 If Biology is a new medium, what is the message?
Today, Biotechnologies are becoming more domesticated; this presents different opportunities to technology-based artists to examine the human condition. As a techno art practitioner using body as a medium for expression, I see Biomedia becoming more commonplace in homes, work places, schools and art studios in that they are becoming more affordable and patented. In Our Biotech Future, Dyson (2007) predicts that Biotechnologies will be a major force in our lives. As far back as 1954, McLuhan foresaw that ‘technological art takes the whole earth and its population as its material…’ (Ibid) The heart in my project is addressed as the origin of circulating data throughout the computer system. Every time the heart pumps blood saturated with oxygen, it creates a pulse (a rhythmical throbbing of the arteries), which is detected by an oximeter (reflexive optical sensor) attached to a participant’s finger. The oximeter thus measures an oxygen saturation level and then reports it to the computer. The point, where the finger and the oximeter touch is the actual point, where the heart system is extended into the machine environment via the biosensor in the handset. The pulse is the only message the oximeter needs to measure and send to the computer. Computationally, it flows throughout the software algorithm and audio-visual devices set to respond to it. Making the heart a medium in this environment, the pulses can be thought of as dialogues among participants and between man and machine.
……….In What is Biomedia? Eugene Thacker (2003, p.48) alludes to McLuhan when he states that ‘it is not just that the medium is a message, but that biology is the new medium: the medium is the message, and that message is a molecule.’ He adds that Biomedia is the new configuration of biology and technology. If Biology is a new medium, the pulse data in my installation, is the message flowing through mind, body, technology and the environment. Signals of one’s heart are turned into a message for making dialogue with technologies, environment and the other three participants’ in the installation space. The heart thus becomes a medium for social interaction by extending our bodies with biotechnologies; her heart can talk to his, my heart to yours; our hearts connect us.
3.4 Cybernetic body in biofeedback installation
In his essay, Bio Art Stephen Wilson (2002) writes that the 21st century will be the ‘biology century’. The use of computing to acquire, analyse and retrieve Bioinformatics plays an important part in delimitating physical abilities of participants. I have integrated his view with the idea of Domingues and Gerhardt (2004) on the bio cybernetic body in a ‘technofeedback’ environment. They state that through the symbiosis of ‘mindbody’ and technology, human conditions are enhanced by the interface of technology and its complex system. This section examines the boundaries of the participant’s body to the artificial and natural systems of the installation environment.
……….Looking at its virtual dimension, the participant is immersed in the effect of biofeedback while interacting with biosensors, electronic circuit, microcontroller and audio-visual interfaces. Her/his body becomes a cybernetic body in the same sense as that of Andy Clark in which he sees all participants of virtual environments as cyborgs in the sense of being human-technology symbiots. The joining of technology and biology creates a ‘cognitive machinery’ that is ‘geared to transformation, technology-based expansion, …a self-perpetuating process of computational growth.’ (Hayles, 2002, p.232) By using moist technologies, a pulse oximeter wired to a microcontroller and bio processing software, I can connect physical and virtual dimensions together. At the interface between the two, the complex behaviours thus emerge and continually develop from a natural system of the participant’s body in feeding and sensing the loop of heart data. Theorist Lucia Santaella saying that human bodies, in its technical fusion and biomechanical extensions, are being transformed into hybrid bio cybernetic bodies, also affirms this idea. (Ibid)
……….To this, I have also taken idea of De Rosney (2005) in using new forms of interaction within artificial and natural systems that can create unusual dialogue within a poetic context and offer artists new aesthetics to explore. The coupling of body to technologies and the flow of bio and techno feedback make the participant’s body become a strand of computational heart signals. The heart does not only maintain the living organism but also drives the flow of electrical current among electronic devices, controls software to perform and influence the visual and ambience in the installation space. Thus, I see it as a cybernetic heart in a sense that it gives natural qualities to the software processing and organic functioning to the hardware in the installation. This principal is used to design an interface that is adaptive, mutable and responsive to assist the cognitive process of the participant to understand the world driven by her/his own heart. I utilize biological natural signals to interact with electric signals of its heart waves, creating a complex environment of enacted behaviours between artificial and natural agents. According to Domingues and Gerhardt, some interfaces of the body are more natural because biologically they have a greater adaptable capacity to translate body signals. These extend the senses ‘in a more intimate and delicate way than those commonly used for interactions,…’ (Domingues and Gerhardt, 2005) like conventional keyboard and mouse that separate them between the bodies and virtual worlds.
3.5 The effect of technology on our perception of biotech environment
In his essay McLuhan and the Body as Medium, Richard Cavell (2008) affirms that McLuhan’s vision of the media as an extension of our bodies was coupled with the notion of a techno environment. Extending ourselves into this kind of prosthetic environment, we feel it is foreign to us because it is outside us – even though it used to be us. In it we are incorporated with technology, which has ‘turned ourselves inside out – extended and amputated ourselves…’ (Cavell, 2008, p.38) To this view I include a question in the survey to analyse perceptual experience of participants in the bio-techno environment of my installation: ‘Does this bio-techno environment have abilities to manipulate us (the participants)?’ I see the installation as a responsive environment, where we submerge ourselves in and humanize its biotechnology. We then make the technology familiar to ourselves in order to co-live with it. In short, the technology does not put us in its environment nor manipulates us. Instead, we open ourselves up to its condition and allow it to mirror our behaviour through its behaviour and the result it gives back (output). To that, our perceptual experiences are formed with the result it presents as objects of perception. These objects are actually the result of our action in interacting with it in order to make our internal world to be seen through its response. These perceptual experiences have actually been created by us although they are constructed with functionalities of the technology. Thus, McLuhan’s vision remains relevant to the idea of extending the body with biotechnology in my installation. So that the more our experiences of this biotech world shift from the stable corporeal body to the interpenetrating fluidity of technological space, the less unfamiliar this space becomes. The technology used in this installation works to construct the participant’s perceptual experience of the body (heart) in a way that the changes of the environment mirror the internal changes. Visual and auditory patterns are the result of repetitive behaviour of the heart which is correspondingly translated and generated by the software and finally represented through a light projector and loudspeaker.
3.6 Designing an intimate device
Technology has become more and more part of our everyday existence and therefore plays a more intimate role in how we receive and experience information. As such, my use of the telephone also tries to incorporate a shared participation and use of everyday technology as advocated by the British Group, The Disembodied Art Gallery, 1992. They use telecommunication technology ‘in a manner, which has much in common with the ideas of cultural jamming.’ (Wilson, 2002, p.490) They see the phone as ‘physical; it creates and intimate space that unites people over distance, even across time.’ (Wilson, 2002, p.494)
……….With my stetho-phone I have given it an additional feature that enables you to connect with the inner ‘self’ or body organs; the oximeter used as a sensor to detect heart data. I take this capacity further by bringing it into play with the psychological functions of an intimate communication device, the telephone, embedded with a DIY biofeedback system that heightens the intimacy of the experience by being able to communicate with your heart.
……….The ringing sound and other participatory functions are applied in the interfacing of hardware and software seen in figure 7. With the advent of mobile phone technology, the public phone (as in phone booths) is becoming more outdated and obsolete. My phone harks back to a pre-mobile time when few people could resist the urge the pick up the phone ringing in a public space; and perhaps talk to a stranger. I have applied this function as aesthetics of the installation space; when visitors walk into the phone’s range, its ringing sound entices visitors to pick up the call.
……….The stetho-phone is a modified version of a ‘picturephone’ set Mod II launched by AT&T in 1969 (figure 8). It is made of a traditional 12-button touch-tone desk phone with the handset embedded with a DIY pulse oximeter sensor. A tiny LED on its base turns ON and OFF synchronously with her/his actual pulses. Using object-oriented softwares like “Arduino” and “Processing” and “Arduino Mega” microcontroller, I can manipulate its keypad to work like a computer keyboard; add an LCD to improve user experience; and implement a distance sensor to detect a passer-by. Once the user picks up the earpiece and type in their biological identities, the oximeter senses the pulse and its circuit triggers the software algorithm to generate visual and auditory forms of heart rhythm. A changing wall pattern is projected onto a wall and a pair of loudspeakers amplifies a changing ambience of heart signals according to the rate of her/his heartbeats per minute.
……….McLuhan (1964) claims that the word ‘telephone’ first appeared in 1840 before Alexander Graham Bell’s time, when used to describe an invention for sending musical notes through wooden rods. It only became a device used for verbal communication in the 1870s. Paying homage to its pre-history, I have modified the small speaker in the earpiece to amplify the rhythmic notes corresponding to the changing rate of the user’s heartbeats. In terms of a technical challenge in designing tools for interactive art, I have overcome the problem of merging ‘sensor’ and ‘actuator’ into one object.
……….Comparing telephone with auditory machines like radio, McLuhan says that a telephone does not exist like instruments that make background noise since its participatory form requires a partner, and that is why ‘we feel compelled to answer a ringing public phone.’ (McLuhan, 1977, p.267) Reversing his assertion that ‘one alone cannot make a phone call.’ (Ibid), my stetho-phone enables the user to communicate with her/himself as well. Its responsive capacities put the user in touch with her/his ‘inner’ bio-self and others within the installation space.
Figure 7: Connections between sensors, actuators and Arduino microcontroller with data types and directions. All devices are controlled by the functions written in “Arduino” and “Processing” applications.
Figure 8: A role model of stetho-phone, Mod II with a small monitor allowing the user to see the person on the other end of the line. Image from porticus.org
Figure 9: stetho-phone prototype (figure on the left). Compared to its role model in figure 8, stetho-phone does not have a small monitor, but a wall-sized screen, which displays a changing visual pattern of the heart (figure on the right)
3.7 Responsive environment: a platform for individual and social interactions
In the Heart Lounge, how the heart becomes a medium for social interaction essentially depends on the participant’s experience of responsive environments. In his research on responsive environment with auditory and visual displays, Kruger (1977) suggests that response is a new medium for real-time interaction between men and machines where it consists of sensing, display and control systems. The machines receive input from a participant and then present the output in ways the participant can recognize as corresponding to her/his behaviour.
……….In the installation, once she/he picks up the handset, the oximeter in it immediately senses the pulses through her/his finger. The pulses are then generated as audio ambience and graphical pattern displays. It is within this context that the heart acts as a processor controlling the responsive environment. However, the external can be seen as two environments even though they are in the same installation space. One is individual; another is communal. These depend on which context the individual responds to.
……….After the first moment of interaction, the computer displays the result; the participant chooses her/his next action and anticipates the next result. If the individual is only aware of her/his own heart ambience and the wall pattern right in front of her/himself, then her/his heart exists as a medium for biological and/or introspective interaction(s). This context is seen in the Bio-self Interaction chart in figure 10.
……….However, the displays created by the participant also become perceptual objects for other participants as four people are allowed in the installation at a time. It is impossible for each participant to avoid noticing others’ displays, as the space is only 5.5 by 7 sq. feet in dimension. Four tracks of heart ambience are interwoven making new acoustic heart mixes all the time, as do the changes of four wall patterns altering the whole architectural design environment. The communal engagement occurs at this moment; each individual heart becoming a medium for communication among all participants and other visitors present (see Social Interaction chart in figure 11). Thus, it can be said one action triggers both individual and communal environments defined by perceptual experiences of participants. Regarding cybernetics on its principles to the organisation of social systems, Norbert Wiener (1984) writes ‘it is certainly true that the social system is an organisation like the individual, that is bound together by a system of communication, and that it has a dynamic in which circular processors of a feedback nature play and important role‘. (Paine, 2006, p.26)
……….The responsive environment of my installation provides a basis for the consideration of the human condition, which can represent patterns of social interaction as well. In it, the human heart is used to create an intimate loop between individual and set of machines – a shared intimacy among individuals in the space. Interacting within the installation, every action made by the individual not only extends her/his body boundaries to reach the interpenetrating of the technology, but the interiors of others, as well.
Figure 10: Bio-self Interaction chart shows data flown in and out between two environments (body and technology)
Figure 11: Social interaction chart shows how four ambiences created by four heart are mix into one audio channel, therefore each heart becomes a medium for individual to interact with others in the installation space
4.CONCLUSION
Computational tools offer many ways to explore new interfaces. In my project, body data have been utilised with biotechnology for the extension of the body. Aiming to break down different kinds of boundaries: between biological and technological, between the environment inside and outside of the body, and crucially, between individuals in a shared public space, I have attempted to extend the level of immersion of the participants in the artwork itself. So that the boundary between technology and the participant-viewer appears non-existent. The heart is the medium for making art, the actual organ invisible to our eyes but perceivable through our interactions with biotechnology and the responsive qualities of the Heart Lounge.
……….The methodology I used here has come out of my previous work in developing interactive wallpaper. It mediates the participant’s body with technologies in order to open a channel for information-flow between two mechanisms: the internal (heart) and the external (technological network) where the public are invited to participate. The information is circulated in a loop between the two. Instead of requiring the participant to adopt ‘abstract and conventionalized signals’ such as mouse, button and command line interface to input data, I have created a system that comes closer to what Penny (2006) calls, the ‘native sensibilities’ of the human. Therefore, the technological network adopts the human body as part of its artificial environment, and the heart performs as the main processor organising the whole installation including perception of participants and onlookers present.
……….Through the way I have built software architecture, I have been able to establish connections between arts, medical science and design disciplinaries. This is intended to lead the audience to new insights and knowledge, as a consequence. These have been made in response to Wright’s view on computational technology. He writes if computers ‘…can create these connections among different disciplines and their means of perception then perhaps they will result in a new cultural practice, a poetics of knowledge.’ (Wright, 1997, p.31) Kruger (1997) refers to the new aesthetics of responsive environments as a result ‘of a personal need to understand and express the essence of the computer in humanistic terms.’ (Kruger, 1997, p.258) For this reason we must recognize and explore not only engineering aspects in designing intimate technology, but also the aesthetics in order ‘to understand and choose what we become as a result of what we have made.’ (Kruger, 1997, p.259)
……….The ever-increasing presence of technology in our homes and offices, the ‘intimacy’ of this in our lives, has lead me to explore this relationship on an even more intimate level in my project. Not only between man and machine, but to extend the intimate experience between man and man with the possibilities of enhancing this social interaction with audio and visual aspects originating from a very intimate space: the human heart..
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