Observe the Heart · 观心

If you ask a Zen master how to meditate, he might answer you, "Observe the heart." But the heart is so abstract to imagine, not even to mention observation. Observe the Heart is an artistic attempt to represent the meditator's mental state, generating visuals and sounds based on realtime brainwave input. The generative visuals are projected back onto the meditator, transforming the introspective meditation into an observable performance, in a sense.

There is more to tell about the concept. While third-party audiences can watch and hear one's meditation, the meditator themselves couldn't experience the generative contents in real time (given that they close their eyes during the meditation, and may even wear earplugs to block the sound). It is then questionable who is this meditation for. Moreover, the meditator will nonetheless be curious about how their meditation looks and sounds like, and this mental activity will be captured by the brainwave sensor and be reflected by the generative output. Therefore, it could make it even harder for the meditator to really "observe the heart".

The experience is designed to be installed in a dark room. The meditator sits in the center of the ground, with a projector projecting the generative visuals onto them. The audiences watch the meditation from above in order to get a better view. In this demonstrative production, a NeuroSky MindWave Mobile EEG headset is used to sense the meditator's brainwave. An openFrameworks application analyses the brainwave signal, and drives a GLSL fragment shader to render the generative visuals, and a Max patch to generate the sound. The generative approaches could be enriched for better output in future productions.

Observe the Heart is currently in prototyping phase.