"Heart on my Sleeve" is a materialization of the connection between emotions and the heart. Perhaps it will lend a bit of insight to the question of weather the heart and the emotions are actually linked.

When people are excited, or have strong emotions, their hearts beat faster. But hearts also beat faster when you drink coffee, smoke a cigarette, do exercise, or do something for the first time (this one is on the border of emotion and physical action).

By externalizing the fast heartbeat as an aural landscape we can put it into the feedback loop of human interaction and see what kind of new technology-assisted relationships develop.

Walk Through:

You walk into the exhibition space, there are people moving about, some one gets close to you and a heart on their shoulder blushes in red electronic light.

There is also a low base pounding/humming/feeling growing around that seems to be connected to the heart on their sleeve. You feel like you are somehow the source of all these changes of light and sound. You through them through the sleeve on their arm. But suddenly you see their eyes lock on a target, someone came into the room, they run off as the sounds swirl brighter and more rhythmic.

Suddenly this person, though out of sight is not out of mind. In fact you are immersed in their heartbeats, surrounded by their life-force, their hopes, their fears. Or maybe it's just their heartbeat. In any case their personal inner experience has become your environment and that of everyone around you.

You go to the center of the room where you can take a sleeve and put it on. Now you control the sound in the room. This is very different than you imagined. You cannot control your heartbeats so you cannot directly control the room either. You think perhaps your heart is reacting to hearing itself, you become nervous, the room beats faster, you need to get out and catch your breath!