U FEEL / U SEE / U HEAR
Technology has forever altered the way we communicate, the way we interpret the world around us. But just as exciting as the interface that connects all of us, is the power of technology to help us understand human emotion in a more tangible way. For instance, computer technology and biometrics have reached the point where we can monitor physical cues like a person’s palm sweat, heart rate, voice dynamics, breathing and movements to interpret their emotional state. And by tracking emotions and making them visible like this, we have the potential to better understand what shapes us as human beings.
U FEEL
During this approach, the audience could listen to the storyteller while they could watch their own heartbeat pulsating under their hand. Just to see if their emotions were in sync, to see how connected they were to the subject. At the end of each story, the viewer received a printout where they could view their own heartbeat and the heartbeat of he storyteller. And though this was far from a precise measure of emotion, offbeat and visceral ideas like this excite me. I strive to make emotions transparent. I strive to make them visible.
U SEE
Scrolling across the bottom of the screen, the viewer could see the heartbeats of the film’s actual storytellers, as they watched themselves on film for the first time. (During their first viewing I filmed them and recorded their heartbeats).
U HEAR
And then I had a test audience watch the film, also recording their heartbeat data.
At the beginning, all the heartbeats were out of sync. But as the film unfolded, the viewers’ heart rates started to synchronize with each other, and with those of the film’s subjects. We then merged all the recorded heartbeats into a single sound wave. One heartbeat, converted into a sound wave, sounds dreadful. But oddly enough, when we combined them all, the result was very reminiscent of whale song; certainly musical.
