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, where Hannes Bend was artist-in-residence at the Alemán Quantum and Nanoscale Physics Lab and the Institute of Neuroscience. 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 grew out of laboratory work: an IRB-approved EEG study in Edward Vogel's lab that recorded the brain activity of 44 participants as they viewed and rated more than 30,000 images, followed by fMRI and EEG sessions comparing meditation techniques with psychologist Michael Posner. Four environments came out of that research — Heart Orb / Ocean, Body Scan, Nanoscape, built from electron-microscopy images made at the university's CAMCOR facility, and Sonification Mandala — developed with collaborators at the University of Oregon and the University of Michigan.

The modules were shown as research demonstrations rather than as a product. The accompanying paper, Mindful Technologies: Research and Developments in Science and Art, won the Best Presentation Award at the AAAI Spring Symposium at Stanford University in 2016, where attendees tried the VR live; the same year, mYndful was demonstrated to the public during Jamaica Flux in Queens, New York, and at Further Future 002 in the Mojave Desert. The work is the direct precursor to Biofields, SEAing Breath, 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.

The full story — from the University of Oregon laboratories to the VR modules and what followed — is told in the essay True Art Is Always Pioneering.

Research poster 'Mindful Technologies: Research and Developments in Science and Art' by Hannes Bend and co-authors, presented at the AAAI 2016 Spring Symposium, Stanford University, showing the mYndful VR biofeedback modules and the FORMLITH project — Research poster, 2016 — presented at the AAAI Spring Symposium, Stanford University. AAAI Spring Symposium 2016 — Best Presentation, Stanford.

Bend et al., “Mindful Technologies: Research and Developments in Science and Art,” AAAI Spring Symposium Series, 2016 — paper record and sources.

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.

Immersive Mindful Technologies, 2015–2016 — mYndful VR biofeedback modules poster — Immersive Mindful Technologies, 2015–2016 — mYndful VR modules poster.

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 — Best Presentation · 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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