An interactive installation featuring a gigantic, realistic heart, synchronized with the heartbeat of the viewer. A real-time sensory experience based on the most literal symbol of our own life.

A Living Heart consists of a video projection, which comes to life by synchronizing with the user’s heart rate. Controlled by a heartbeat sensor placed in front of the projection, the installation displays at rest a dysfunctional image, filled with bugs and glitches. A lifeless representation, accompanied by crackling sounds and digital noises.

When the user takes control of the two metal handles, the sensor analyzes its pulsations and heart rate. The heart then comes back to life, shows its real colors. The installation resonates with the viewer. The visual and sound glitches disappear, opening the way to powerful heartbeats, allowing the viewer to feel his own heart through visual, physical and auditory sensations.

An emotional and organic relationship is then established between the artwork and the viewer, who by contemplating the avatar of his beating heart, becomes aware of his own existence, of his own humanity.

A Living Heart is a reflection on what makes us living beings, and our relationship to the body, to the flesh, distorted through our digital identities. How can the realistic vision of a beating heart produce discomfort and disgust for some people when it is only a reflection of our physical reality?