Sometimes great art makes your heart beat faster, but rarely does your heart-beat make art. Vancouver-based artist Danielle Gotell is using heart-rate monitors as an artistic medium, creating an experimental artwork that translates passersby's heart-rates into an electronic light show.
Gotell is collaborating with Limbic Media in Victoria, Canada on the technology necessary to make our internal vital signs into a work of art. The performance invites people walking by to grab onto a hand-held heart-rate monitor that is hooked up to electric lights, flashing to the beat of their hearts. Through peepholes in the wall, participants can see the inner workings of their bodies, projected as a real-time electro masterpiece, a heart-rate rave.
The work combines four heartbeats into one video installation, combining strangers' intimate information to create one pulsing artwork. The resulting broadcast is kept private, only viewable by the participants. In an interview with the Times Colonist, Gotell commented: ""I wanted to represent something that's unconscious, something that's happening inside your body just regularly that you're not fully conscious of."
The installation "Impulse" will run from Friday, July 13 to August 1, from approximately 9 a.m. to midnight each day at G++ Interactive Media Gallery.