When it comes to portraits of people, we’ve seen some pretty inventive ways to recreate someone’s facial features, from those photo mosaics that were pretty cool for a week about 10 years ago, to more unusual mediums like the magnetic reels of recycled cassette tapes. But how about portraits culled from people’s heart beats? Sounds gruesome, but it’s not.Chris Lee and Henry Chang have created Pulse Mirror, an interactive installation that takes the pulse rates of participants and and renders them into a mirror image. Users place their finger on a device that reads their heartbeat, which then translates to a mass of pulsating circles.. A webcam then records your image and changes this shimmering collage to mimic you, producing a collaborative rhythmic portrait.Who would’ve thought that you could take people’s pulses and turn them into a crowdsourced mosaic without it turning into a new installment of the Saw franchise? Instead, Chang and Lee have taken what amounts to a medical portrait, albeit one that registers as a sensation rather than visually, and adapted it into a visual representation.[Images courtesy of Henry Chang, via Creative Applications.]
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This Interactive Portrait Installation Makes Our Hearts Beat Faster
Chris Lee and Henry Chang read people’s pulses and turn them into a crowdsourced mosaic portrait.