Where I'm coming from

This is a brief artist statement for my most recent project.

Follow Your Heart! is an externalization of a participant's heart signal as a spot of light pulsing across a dark floor. The instructive title of the installation compels the participant to follow this other self around the room like an inverted shadow and the emergent feedback loop of rising heart rate sets a natural narrative arc for the experience.

The installation is an attempt to summon up acute self-awareness, even to the point where a participant might have competitive, playful, or frustrated feelings at their external heart. The holy grail of emotion that I hope this physically exerting experience could evoke is the intimate feeling of happy surrender, as toward a loved one or an idea of God. To that end, the heart of light would return to orbit the exhausted participant and lead them back out of the dark.


My full artist statement exists in the form of the original Proposal entry for April 10, 2007 of my DXARTS 202 project development blog:

http://kjellhansenin202.blogspot.com/2007/04/proposal.html

Follow Your Heart! couldn't debut as scheduled at the end of May because of a problem implementing the wireless transmission of the heart signal to the control computer. Because I want the independent research and work I do this year to advantageously tie into the sound and video sequences I'm in, further effort toward Follow Your Heart! is therefore on hiatus. I will elaborate more on this decision and the continuity across my transition to new work in my next post.