Create a Public Engagement activity to explain the technology used in Raphael Lozano-Hemmer's Pulse Exhibition at the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC. Activity occured every Saturday at the museum from 10am-1pm in December 2018. Geared toward families with young children, but open to any museum-goer.
Building on the idea of generative bio-art of Raphael Lozano-Hemmer's Pulse exhibit, I developed a few applications using similar ideas. With the finger pulse sensor used in the Pulse Tank installation, two visitors at a time take their individual beats per minute, which are then used used as variables, processed by a Lissajous algorithm, which produces a pattern based on the inputs. The application draws the pattern in realtime, currently in two formats, as lightening bugs and as dotted lines. In this way, visitors are able to create an abstract two-person portrait.
After the drawing has built up, the result is exported and printed in two copies as a take away for
each participant. Children like to color them in. With added Hirshhorn branding, this acts as a takeaway
from the exhibit to be reminded of the time they spent at the museum.
Compiled version of heart-art to give a side-by-side comparison of the diversity of shapes when various
pulses are combined through the algorithm.
Raphael Lozano-Hemmer Code - https://github.com/antimodular/PulseTank_osc
Daniel Shiffman's Coding Train Lissajous Tutorial - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--6eyLO78CY
Pulse Sensor Library for Processing - https://github.com/WorldFamousElectronics/PulseSensor_Amped_Processing_Visualizer
Pulse Sensor Library for Arduino - https://pulsesensor.com/pages/getting-advanced