Pulse Pool

by Adam Brown and Andrew Fagg
http://transition.turbulence.org/Works/PulsePool/

Place a finger to your neck or wrist. Find your pulse. How does it alter your awareness of your body? Imagine if you could simultaneously see and experience another person's pulse the way you feel your own. Pulse Pool is a collaborative multimedia installation created by a group of students from the Symbiotic Computer Laboratory at the University of Oklahoma. The interconnected components of the Pulse Pool project explore how access to otherwise unavailable corporal information affects human interaction.

Small wearable computers measure visitors' heart rates and locations relative to a centrally-located pool. Droplets of water are released into the pool, synchronized with the individual beats. Where the drops fall into the pool is determined by the visitors' locations. An Internet connection and custom software allows real-time and archived transmission of this information to the global networked community. A downloadable applet allows any remote visitor to visualize the heart beats and locations of the local visitors. Spatially distributed pools share information through an array of small lights mounted at the bottom of the pool.

Adam Brown and Andrew Fagg Bios
Adam Brown is an Intermedia artist with a concentration in electronic media. Emphasizing the similarities among seemingly disparate disciplines, his creative activity seeks to discover new forms and ideas resulting from interactions among science, technology, and art. More specifically, he is interested in the interface between the body, mind and the circuit. The result of this practice blends digital media with physical materials that strive to make contributions to both art and science that he calls Symbiotic Media. Brown earned his B.A., M.A. and M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. Since 2000, he has been a professor at the University of Oklahoma where he teaches courses in electronic media, computer science, interactivity, video and theory.

Andrew H. Fagg is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Oklahoma. He holds a BS in Applied Mathematics/Computer Science from Carnegie-Mellon University, and a MS and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Southern California. His research focuses on the computational issues surrounding the symbiotic relationships between humans and machines. In particular, he is interested in primate and robot learning of motor skills and task-oriented representations, wearable/ubiquitous computing systems that can act as proactive, adaptive assistants in all aspects of our lives, and brain-machine interfaces.