BrightHearts

BrightHearts – heart rate controlled app, showing red-orange background at the start of the interaction, and blue halo contracting into the center, triggered by slow exhalation.
The BrightHearts app is an interactive artwork that responds to changes in heart rate. The goal of the interaction is to shift the background color from orange, through to yellow, then green and eventually blue – and 'play' a series of bell sounds that descend in pitch, using a combination of gentle relaxation and slow breathing to voluntarily lower their average heart rate. As a user's average heart rate gets slower, the circles contract – drawing in new layers of circular imagery from beyond the edge of the screen – toward the centre. My aim with these biofeedback artworks is to provide people with an aesthetic experience of their psychophysiology – embodied in real-time – within the dynamics of the work.