The Heartbeat Clock

2025
wood, metal, acrylic, electronics

The Heartbeat Clock is an interactive artwork which ticks in accordance with participant’s heartbeats. The work consists of a large hanging dual-faced clock. On one side is a "regular" clock that ticks once per second when unattended. At the bottom of the round is a camera-based video amplification sensor which, when a hand is placed beneath, detects heartbeats. When a pulse is sensed, the “regular” clock stops and the other clock begins, ticking each time the participant’s heart beats.

I’m interested in the politics of time keeping, specifically, the persons and systems that stand to benefit from a regularized, measurable sense of time. The Heartbeat Clock functions as an alternative time piece, one implicit in both quantitative and qualitative—Chronos and Kairos—senses of time, adapting to the person or absence of persons in its presence.