Sound of Body
A wearable installation that turns heart rate and blood pressure into music and projected visuals, generated live from each participant's own body.
Project Concept
Music can move heart rate, breath, and mood, yet the body’s own signals are rarely used as material for music itself. Rather than displaying biometric data as charts, I translated heart rate and blood pressure into musical and visual behaviors that participants could hear and see in real time.
Mapping Body Signals
I mapped each signal to a musical role instead of an abstract graph. Heart rate sets pitch, diastolic pressure sets tempo and time signature, and systolic pressure shapes percussion. Early tests showed that a fixed backing track never felt personal, so I built the system as a live loop tuned against real bodily change.
Designing the Sound Library
I recorded body sounds, breath, heartbeat, skin friction, joint movement, then edited and layered them back into the composition. Each carries its own feeling. Intestinal sound is among the first things anyone hears in the womb and lands as safety, while a knuckle crack lands closer to discomfort. Composing with these keeps the output legibly from a body instead of a synth preset.
Building the Real-Time System
An STM32-based wearable streams biometric readings into Python over serial, which parses the data and drives both the audio and the real-time visualization in TouchDesigner. Pitch shifts color, tempo changes motion, and percussion drives the pulse of the projected form.
The Participant Experience
Sound of Body runs as a small personal experience rather than a stage piece. One participant wears the sensor band, the room stays dark, and the projection starts answering their pulse within seconds of putting it on. Because every note and every color starts from live readings, no session repeats, and what a participant hears exists only while their body is producing it.
Outcome
Sound of Body won at the A' Design Award & Competition in the installation design category. Beyond the award, the result is a system where the music listens to the listener. The video below carries a full session, with the generated music and the projected form answering a live heartbeat.