Pulse Translator

Aggregation of biological data extracted from our bodies is a fact. Our biometric identities are being turned into a resource. Our living bodies are now data generators, their organic processes quantified and inserted into global data flows. Our data is then used in ways that we often find mysterious. Global corporations know us better than our partners, families and friends; better than we know ourselves. Some try to use various measures to individually guard themselves against the data-hoarding states and companies. But is it our only choice? Or can our interference with those digital data collection systems create a new space for social change?

Pulse Translator has two sensors that register changes in the infrared light at our fingertips that occur due to blood flow. First it reconstructs this pulsating light as digital values and then attaches a random sound sample to each value. It records the rhythm of our pulse and loops it with the rhythms of others, each time producing a unique composition.

Pulse Translator is a tool that transforms our biometric data in a process of translation that disassembles our pulse, loops our heartbeats together and mixes our individual biometric data into a fleeting techno beat. It presents a new model of digital sociality not based on data extraction and monetization but on playful transformation of the biological into the optical, the digital and the sonic.