PROGRAM The Heart Library Project - George Khut
The Heart Library Project: St. Vincent’s, Sydney, Australia
July 7th – 19th, 2009
Level 4, Xavier Building, St. Vincent’s Public Hospital,
Darlinghurst, New South Wales, Australia,
Tuesday to Sunday, 10am – 5pm
Thursdays, 10am – 7pm
In July 2009, hospital visitors and staff at St Vincent’s Public Hospital, Darlinghurst, had the opportunity to participate in The Heart Library Project – an inspiring new art project by George Khut. A heart-sensing interactive artwork with video interviews, the work celebrates the living, breathing human body of each participant. The presentation of this biofeedback interactive art project at St. Vincent’s represents an exciting development in the arts-in-health work in Australia.
Inspired by the vitality, strength, healing capacity and creativity of the body Khut asks his audience to become part of the artwork. The exhibition invites participation from across the hospital community, irrespective of a person’s status as client, friend, family member, or hospital staff, and will also be accessible to the general public. The exhibition invites people to explore how their emotions, nervous state and breathing can be used to influence the sound and colour of the biofeedback artwork. The interactive video projection translates subtle changes in heart rhythm into a mesmerizing sound and light experience.
The Level 4 exhibition space was also transformed into an informal research studio, where visitors can explore, contribute to, and reflect on, the diversity and richness of our lived experience of the body. Participants are invited to record their experience, in the form of a hand-drawn map and video interview. Lines, textures, colours and words applied by visitors to a generic outline of a human body are used to describe aspects of their experience. They can then offer a video-recorded interpretation of their map, explaining how it describes their experience of themselves inside the biofeedback booth.