Two Heartbeats Become One In This Interactive Installation

If 80% of communication is nonverbal, does that include pulse rates? Brooklyn-based sound designer and interactive visual artist Phan V’s Connected Heartbeats suggests that it could. From afar, the display just looks like two people sitting on meditation pillows mesmerized by a projection of rolling minimal glowing bars—almost as if Ryoji Ikeda made his own version of Guitar Hero.

Upon closer inspection, that’s not far from the truth. The sitters have stethoscopes embedded with microphones attached to their necks, which are connected to an audio interface collecting sound waves. This information is then translated through Max and TouchDesigner to form the aforementioned visuals. The abstract bars cascading down the screen turn out to be in fact beats—heart beats.

Phan created the project under the belief humans are so connected that the rhythms of our hearts would synchronize during shared experiences. If you watch the bars of light for a period of time, you’ll notice that not only do they start to conform to each other and move in sync, they’ll also cycle through periods where they alternate, seemingly in dialogue. This was unexpected to Phan, who assumed if the heartbeats didn’t match, they would just thump autonomously.

The tendency for our pulses to syncopate and synchronize is an interesting discovery that would not have happened had Phan not disappeared to a Vipassana meditation retreat. Five days deep, he noticed how much easier it was for him to sit during group meditation versus solo. This observation led him to wonder about the physical effects people have on each other in a shared experience.

Upon further research, he came across a National Geographic experiment where neuroscientist Dr. Ivana Konvalinka observes the heart rates of firewalkers and their spectators. The findings showed that when friends and family spectated, their beats followed similar patterns. However, strangers did not share that connection.

The first version of Phan's Connected Heartbeats, which only had one stethoscope, got him an invitation to Prospectives ’12 the University of Nevada Reno’s International Festival of Digital Arts. There, the visitors repeatedly expressed their desire to have another station so that they could simultaneously share the experience with their friends. It was as if the notion of connecting our hearts with ones close to us is ingrained in our psyches.

Phan presented the expanded version of his project at the ITP Spring Show where the harmonization of heartbeats only occurred about half the time, despite most of the participants knowing each other. He points to the stethoscope as the culprit. Users inexperienced with taking their pulse would press the device too tight against their skin, causing noise and misreadings. On the neck, the stethoscope needs to be placed gently, which means the user needs to be relaxed.

In the future, he’d like to multiply Connected Heartbeats by visualizing thirty people’s heartbeats—in a quiet place, of course. They would all meditate and the results would be filmed as they sat surrounded by the cardio-synching projections.

Until then, Phan is in talks with Dorfman Projects in New York City to have his work displayed there. He’s also teaming up with Hearts Like Ours, a fundraiser to connect individuals from all walks of life to end the trafficking of girls and young women in New York City. Acknowledging that we are all human, attendees will have the chance to use Phan’s original single heart beat visualizer and have the visualization emailed to them.