van't Klooster, A., 2012.

Music as a mediator of emotion

This paper describes the development of the Emotion Light, an interactive biofeedback artwork where the user listens to electronic music that is composed to calm the user down. The viewer can see a visual reflection of their bodily response by holding a sculptural light that tracks the user's galvanic skin response and heart rate and translates these into changing light patterns that emerge from the sculpture. After an introduction into the principle of biofeedback, the hardware and software developed for this project are described and the work is briefly evaluated through a review of informal interviews held with users of the Emotion Light.