Today is the soft launch for our latest collaboration with George Khut, Bright Hearts.
Bright Hearts is a research project being led by George, focussed on human body bio feedback in the hospital environment, specifically children’s hospitals;
The project’s aim is to design and evaluate the efficacy of a heart-rate controlled interactive artwork to assist in the management and reduction of stress and anxiety experienced by children undergoing painful, recurrent clinical procedures. Currently in its design-research phase, the project will piloted in early 2012, followed by a clinical trial in the second half of 2012.
George has spent many years developing bio feedback as an art practice, introducing Cardiomorphologies in 2004. We teamed up recently to create a modern version of the artwork, which will work on both the Mac and iOS devices. We’re really excited to see it come to fruition, after some months of testing and experimenting with code. Building on the amazing work generated in the open source OpenFrameworks community, we were able to create in record time a fully fledged visualisation app for use in George’s research.
The original cardiomorphologies installation, from 2004.
The artwork is composed of a few small components — a heart rate sensor, a MaxMSP patch used to process the sensor data into information, and the iOS apps which create beautiful visualisations of the heart rate data. I developed the iOS app for George, and Frank designed + built the small sensor case for the installation. It’s beautiful, make sure you check it out if you can.
Images from the iOS Bright Hearts app, launching today.
Bright Hearts is launching at the DAB LAB Gallery at UTS tonight, 6pm. It runs from the 2nd to 26th November.
Level 4 Courtyard, UTS, Faculty of Design, Architecture & Building, 702-730 Harris St, Ultimo.
See Bright Hearts for more.