Aramique, interactive director at Tool, debuts a new work called Heart Bot, creating pictures of your heartbeat (via Aramique)
Aramique, an artist and interactive director at Tool, has debuted a new work created with his group of friends called Heart Bot. Heart Bot is an interactive Art installation that generates a collective drawing in realtime using heartbeat input via a pulse monitor inside of a podium, seen in the picture above.
Aramique, along with Jeff Crouse, Matt Mets, Ranjit Bhatnagor, Adam Thabo, and Nikolay Saveliev, worked together to create the Heart Bot, which was featured for one day only at The New Museum in New York City. The piece of art is now at Intel in San Francisco and may debut again for the Computer Electronics Show. The work will finally be donated to the Feeding America organization, who may loan it to galleries in the near future.
Overall, Crouse told the online magazine Motherboard that "The process takes about thirty seconds per person, and after dozens of people have used it, the result is a collective representation of the emotional state of all of the contributors." And that pretty much sums up what makes this installation piece so cool. It is interactive, collaborative, and personal as it uses heart rates to create a collective, visual representation of a group of people. And, of course, our heart rates can capture how we feel and are necessary for functioning. lving.
Heart Bot's design is quite simple. A pulse sensor is located inside the podium. Spectators can take turns putting their finger on the podium and pressing a button which starts the robotic drawing arm. The pulse information is processed via software which also sends the robotic arm commands on how and where to move.
On the wall, two stepper motors are mounted with a long belt between them. The belt allows the drawing arm to move anywhere on the wall as the motors give and take tension from the belt. The drawing implement? Sharpie markers.
The drawing corresponds to the heartbeat data collected by each person as the robotic arm draws from the middle of the concentric design, outwards. This artistic interpretation allows the end result to look more pleasing than a random bunch of squiggles. The clock-like design also highlights the idea of pulse and heartrate, as well as the temporal conception of the piece (capturing a collective heartbeat in time).
Overall, this is a pretty clever and simple piece that is like the ultimate Google Docs collaboration.
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