Sunday, May 22, 2016

Heart Beacon

The next installment of our ongoing public art project is Heart Beacon, by Joe O'Connell and Blessing Hancock, located at the Emergency Services building next to Ed Benedict Park. The artists' description of the piece:

Heart Beacon is an interactive enclosure of light, color and sound that senses and artistically displays the heartbeats of visitors who lay their hands on the piece. This highly interactive sculpture takes the literal and metaphoric ‘pulse’ of the Portland community. The sculpture takes inspiration from the life-saving mission of the Emergency Coordination Center.

The heartbeat widgetry just made a weird banging noise when I tried it, and I didn't notice any sort of light show. But I didn't know what the device was for at the time, and I didn't see any instructions, so it's entirely possible I was doing it all wrong. Either that or I was doing it right but the machine got confused by my heartbeat and was trying to warn passersby that an alien walks among them. At least the heartbeat thing shows I'm probably not a vampire, so there's that, I guess.

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