2015–2016 · VR biofeedback · Metaverses

mYndful

mYndful is a set of virtual reality biofeedback modules developed between 2015 and 2016 within the wider Metaverses project at the University of Oregon. Each module takes a live physiological signal — heart rate, breathing, or their sonified derivatives — and uses it to drive the state of an immersive environment, so that the image the viewer inhabits is produced by the body that is looking at it.

The modules were shown as research demonstrations rather than as a product: at the AAAI Spring Symposium at Stanford University in 2016, and at Further Future 002 in the Mojave Desert the same year. The work is the direct precursor to the bioadaptive interface patents and the later Somatic AI practice — the same loop of sensing a physiological state and adapting the environment to it, staged first as art.

An early bioadaptive proposition for perception as a physiological feedback loop.

mYndful VR — Heart Orb / Ocean, 2015: a luminous sphere over an ocean horizon responding to cardiac rhythm — mYndful VR — Heart Orb / Ocean, 2015. A single luminous sphere breathes and pulses in real time with the viewer's cardiac rhythm; as the heart slows, the horizon opens into an expansive, sunlit calm; as it accelerates, the sky darkens, mineral forms rise from the water and the environment grows charged and turbulent.

mYndful VR — Body Scan, 2015: a supine figure within a mirrored horizon — mYndful VR — Body Scan, 2015. A guided somatic body-scan module: the viewer's own supine body appears within a mirrored horizon while a translucent figure hovers above, marking the migration of attention through the physical body. Breath and heartbeat modulate light, ripple and colour temperature.

mYndful VR — Nanoscape, 2015: nanoscale electron-microscopy data rendered as a walkable landscape — mYndful VR — Nanoscape, 2015. Nanoscale electron-microscopy data acquired at CAMCOR (University of Oregon) rendered at human scale as a walkable interior landscape, collapsing the distance between microscopic and cosmic registers.

mYndful VR — Sonification Mandala, 2015: a radial blue geometry entrained to the viewer's pulse — mYndful VR — Sonification Mandala, 2015. A predominantly auditory module in which a generative sonic field and its radial geometry are entrained to the viewer's pulse — biological signal rendered as spatialised sound and minimal visual pattern.

mYndful VR demonstration at the AAAI Spring Symposium, Stanford University, 2016 — mYndful VR demo, 2016 — AAAI Spring Symposium, Stanford (Best Presentation Award).

mYndful VR presented at Further Future 002 in the Mojave Desert, 2016 — mYndful VR, 2016 — Further Future 002, Mojave Desert.

mYndful — VR biofeedback (walkthrough). Documentation of the guided body scan, breath synchronization and heart-rate visualization modules, 2014–2016.

Date: 2015–2016
Medium: Virtual reality, heart-rate and breath biofeedback, sonification
Status: Exhibited and presented as research demonstration
Developed within: Metaverses, University of Oregon (2014–2016)
Presented: AAAI Spring Symposium 2016, Stanford University · Further Future 002, Mojave Desert, 2016
Credits: Hannes Bend, with collaborators at the Alemán Quantum and Nanoscale Physics Lab and the Institute of Neuroscience, University of Oregon

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mYndful

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