Pulse Room

Pulse Room is an interactive installation featuring one to three hundred clear incandescent light bulbs, 300 W each and hung from a cable at a height of three metres. The bulbs are uniformly distributed over the exhibition room, filling it completely. An interface placed on a side of the room has a sensor that detects the heart rate of participants. When someone holds the interface, a computer detects his or her pulse and immediately sets off the closest bulb to flash at the exact rhythm of his or her heart. The moment the interface is released all the lights turn off briefly and the flashing sequence advances by one position down the queue, to the next bulb in the grid. Each time someone touches the interface a heart pattern is recorded and this is sent to the first bulb in the grid, pushing ahead all the existing recordings. At any given time the installation shows the recordings from the most recent participants.

This work was inspired by Macario, directed by Roberto Gavaldón in 1960, a film where the protagonist suffers a hunger-induced hallucination in which every person is represented by a lit candle in a cave. Other references for this work include minimalist, machinic and serialist patterns in music (for example in scores by composers Conlon Nancarrow, Steve Reich and Glenn Branca) and the postulation of the theory of Cybernetics at the National Institute of Cardiology in Mexico City to explain the process of self-regulation of the heart.