Echoes of the Heart - Interactive Art Installation

SemicolonC × Chengdu MixC New Media Art Light Festival "Echoes of the Heart" is a large-scale interactive installation consisting of a central heart rate sensor, a large circular light strip on the ground, and an array of twenty circular fans arranged around the audience. On each individual screen, imagery generated through sine and cosine calculations evokes, to a certain extent, an ancient breakthrough in the understanding of the circle—the "method of circle division" (geyuan fa). The ever-shifting forms of the circle under generative algorithms, combined with the continuous rotation of the screens themselves and the large circular ring on the ground that envelops the screen array, reinforce the presence of the cyclical circle as an external structure—positioning the viewer as one point within the installation. As the audience stands at the center of the installation, together with "Echoes of the Heart," the primordial cosmological diagram of "round heaven and square earth" (tian yuan di fang) takes aesthetic effect in a sensorial way. Conceived through the interplay of people, city, and light, the installation uses a pulse sensor embedded in the interactive console to transmit real-time heart rate data into a generative visual system driven by code. The viewer's heartbeat pulses are overlaid with the installation's cyclical rhythms to produce a personalized artistic image of the heartbeat—allowing each participant to see the field of their own beating heart.