The HEART-DONOR

Year
2007

Author
Beloff, Berger and Mitrunen

The social aspect of a city and a network are present in the Heart-Donor artwork from 2007, which was a collaboration between Beloff, Berger & Mitrunen*. The Heart-Donor was exploring our shifting understanding of social presence in virtual and physical realms. Again, this kind of idea of fluctuating and simultaneous presence in the physical and virtual (especially in social media) which are existence for us today, however at the time these kinds of possibilities were just gradually starting to occur in the online horizon.

In 2007 Skype was one of the primary social spaces for connecting with friends online, at a time when relatively few other social media platforms existed. The Heart-Donor work enabled the user to record and collect the heartbeats of 30 friends into the custom-built garment: a vest with embedded electronics and small lights integrated into its front (white buttons seen in the images). Once a friend’s heartbeat had been physically recorded and stored, it was represented by a pulsating light (in the recorded heart beat rythm) on one of the vest’s buttons. The vest itself imitated the design of a life vest, pointing towards the increasing importance of networking between friends and newly established social presence online.

When the heartbeat was physically recorded and stored, it showed a friend’s heart as a beating light on one of the buttonson the garment that imitated the design of a life vest. When the individual heart/light was beating with red light – it showed that the person was online in skype, and when the heart-beat was green it indicated that the person is off-line.

Observations of people interacting with the Heart-Donor revealed a strong interest in the possibility of recording and storing their own heartbeats into the garment. The recording process involved a custom-made glove, through which two people pressed their hands firmly together for approximately 30 seconds. The glove incorporated textile-based electrodes created using a conductive polymer liquid that could be applied directly to fabric. These electrodes were then sewn into the palm of the glove, enabling the recording of heartbeats through physical contact.

Beyond its function as a wearable interface for social connection, the Heart-Donor project also offered a way to observe the balance between online social interaction and engagement with the physical world within a group of people. In 2007, the proportion of green lights—representing friends who were offline—was typically greater than that of red lights, those connected to Skype. Given the profound changes in social media and digital communication since then, one might expect this balance to have shifted, with a greater proportion of people now spending their social time and life online.

The Heart-Donor was exhibited in several international exhibitions, including official Venice Biennale Extras in 2007; exhibition curated by Lorella Scacco.

Many of the wearable works by the author were created with users in mind. The works aimed at offering new types of experiences in which social-engagements were happening simultaneously online via network and offline in our physical realm. It became quickly quite clear that at the time, these kinds of works also challenged the exhibition traditions as the works were based on social-engagement and active participation by the visitors. In these kinds of works the physical artefacts are functioning as enablers for wider concepts and thinking. Following John Dewey, he has pointed out that the actual work of art is active and experienced. It is what the product does with and in an experience (Dewey 1934, 35).

The Heart-Donor is one of the works in a series researching and further, establishing, the figure of the Hybronaut. More can be read about the Hybronaut for example in: Beloff, L. (2014) From Elephans Photographicus to the Hybronaut: An Artistic Approach to Human Enhancement. In Elo M. & Luoto M. (Eds) Senses of Embodiment: Art, Technics, Media. Peter Lang, Bern.

*Elina Mitrunen was at the time, a student at the University of Art and Design Helsinki