It is almost amazing how technology can change things that surround us and can meaning, shape and form to things that were previously considered abstract. Questions that once were in the world of philosophy are now crossing the border and entering the world of science. To give emotions a shape and form in the real and physical world is almost impossible. Hell, it is tough to give words to emotions at times, let alone a shape and a form. But it is making the impossible possible that constitutes modern scientific magic. So some fine minds have given a heart that is shaped by emotions on a blog!
Pulse is a live visualization project by Berlin-based artist Markus Kison. It’s based around a shape-shifting, heart-like object that reacts to the emotions expressed by the authors of private weblogs on blogger.com. A program aggregates words in blogs’ text and scans for synonyms that correlate with the emotional concepts in Robert Plutchik’s three-dimensional circumplex model describing the psycho-evolutionary theory of emotion. This means quite simply that with the emotion of your blog, the heart too keeps changing shape. If that is not awesome and cool, then I don’t know what is.
The more ones emotions are represented, the more corresponding portion of the organism is mechanically activated. Blurring the lines between art and technology, Pulse uses data to create the very organic visualization. I wonder if our own blogs and articles here would ever get something like that. That would be really someday though if it does happen. Maybe this will finally show the often bitter web community that hate and disrespect are not the best of emotions!
