Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s Pulse series at the Hirshorn is not something to miss this year in Washington, DC. The first room of the exhibit welcomes the viewer with an artist statement from Hemmer describing his personal story behind creating the Pulse series. It is quite a heartwarming story about Hemmer and his wife, beginning with the first time Hemmer ever heard a heartbeat during his wife’s first pregnancy in 2003. The artist writes about his first encounter with hearing the human pulse through the ultrasound machine. This encounter is what sparked Hemmer’s interest in the human pulse and inspired him to delve deeper into the medical meaning behind our pulse as well as its symbolic importance. The exhibit is fully interactive, leading the participant on an immersive adventure through a visual and audible experience of the human pulse.
The first room leading from the introductions contains large projected images of fingerprints. At first, this seemed to be a repeating loop of imagery. As I walked further into the space, I realized that these fingerprints actually belonged to people currently experiencing the exhibit. At the far end of the room, there was a machine where you insert your finger and it reads your pulse. Your pulse and fingerprint are then projected onto the large wall for you and everyone else in the exhibit to see and hear. Having something so deeply associated with personal identity as the fingerprint projected onto a giant wall, however, may make some people feel uncomfortable.
The next room also contained these pulse readers as well as machines that read your pulse from your palms. This middle room is perhaps the most calming because the pulse is transcribed into water, creating ripples and pounding sounds as a small mechanical arm is continuously plopped onto the surface of the water, in sync with your heartbeat. The ripples are projected onto the adjacent wall for everyone to see. The visual of water and the soft pounding sound onto its surface is serene, which makes this room the most relaxing of the three in the exhibit.
The third and final room of the exhibit is quite overwhelming. The ceiling is lined with continuously flashing light bulbs, which is admittedly really cool, but the ambient roar of pulse sounds is too loud and, after a while, becomes too much to handle. The way this room works is through the pulse reader at the far end of the room, by the exit, which reads your pulse and syncs the flashing bulbs to your own heart rhythm. The ambient noise syncs to your rhythm as well, immersing everyone in the loud sounds of your heartbeat. For how overwhelming it begins to get with the flashing lights and constant loud noise, remaining in this room for too long may be dangerous to those sensitive to loud sounds, or for those with epilepsy.
Overall, this exhibit is very interesting. Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s execution of the Pulse series is very creative and having everything interactive pushed its meaning even further. Being immersed into environments where the human pulse is visually and audibly displayed so profoundly delivers the participants into a new understanding of the human heartbeat. In a way, this exhibit brings people together on a more intimate level and it is a beautiful reminder of our humanity.