Pulse
Pulse is an interactive light installation that uses the formal language of everyday systems to explore the convergence of modernist architecture, the Digital Revolution, and the evolution of Soul into Disco. The structure is built through layered material systems, each following its own internal logic within an overall excess of repetition and multiplicity. Its grids reference modernist architecture and its utopian ideals of modularity.
The installation also externalizes and mechanizes one of the bodyโs most basic internal processes: the pulse. An optical finger sensor measures the viewerโs heartbeat and activates the structure in response, creating a direct exchange between body and machine. This movement from analog to digital reflects a broader inversion in the relationship between humans and technology. Machines were once modeled on the human body, but increasingly the machine itself has become an ideal against which human life is measured.
The structure also references the illuminated dance floors of the Disco era. The transition from Soul to Disco introduced increasingly synthesized and repetitive rhythms whose mathematical precision was both seductive and energetic. As people began moving to synthetic beats, mechanical rhythm extended beyond the dance floor and into everyday life. What once felt technological and artificial has become so embedded in contemporary experience that it now feels natural.
Installation at the ZERO1 Garage, San Jose, California. 2014
