pace faker

interaction design

Ever held a beating heart in your palms? Probably not, unless you’re a specialist for organ transplants.

So close, yet intangible, our heart works all day, all night, literally all our life long. In a stoic rhythm, it pumps roughly 10.000 l of blood through our body—every day.

The interactive installation pace faker virtually breaches the impermeable shell that constitutes our body and immerses us in a playfully tangible experience of our innermost.

When touching the plinth, the visitor’s heartbeat is meassured by an optical sensor and transmitted wirelessly to a microcontroller inside the silicone-cast heart. There, four servo motors start rythmically moving flaps, which results in an awkwardly realistic movement.