HeartBeat Bloom: Exploring shared bioresponsive experience

Every project here begins with a question rather than a solution; design is treated as a form of inquiry, where prototypes exist not only to create experiences but to learn through making, observing, and reflecting.
HeartBeat Bloom began with one simple question: Can a biofeedback-based immersive environment actively support emotional regulation, coherence, and states of calm?
Rather than trying to answer this question through theory alone, we chose to explore it through design. We were interested in what might emerge when established approaches such as cardiac biofeedback, contemplative practice, and immersive media were brought together differently. The work of researchers such as Johannes Blum on immersive HRV biofeedback and Jon Kabat-Zinn on mindfulness suggested that each of these approaches can shape attention and embodied awareness. Rather than treating cardiac biofeedback as a personal training tool or immersive media as a purely aesthetic experience, HeartBeat Bloom explores what happens when one person's physiological activity becomes the living material of a shared contemplative environment.
As the project evolved, we realized these questions were part of a much broader conversation. Across architecture, interactive art, and human-computer interaction, designers and researchers are increasingly exploring what are often described as bioresponsive environments, spaces capable of sensing, interpreting, and responding to human physiology. Interactive artworks such as Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's Pulse Room demonstrated how cardiac activity can become a shared public experience, while Philip Beesley's Living Architecture Systems investigate responsive architectural ecologies that continuously interact with their occupants. Mona Gandhi's work explores affective and bioresponsive environments informed by physiological data, and more recent architectural research, including that of Yiping Meng and Yiming Sun, examines how real-time biometric information can inform adaptive environmental systems through AI and digital twins. Together, these projects reflect a broader shift in design thinking: from viewing buildings as static containers for experience toward conceiving environments that can enter into an ongoing dialogue with the bodies that inhabit them.
HeartBeat Bloom approaches this conversation through an immersive contemplative experience. Rather than using physiological data to optimise environmental conditions, the project explores how cardiac activity can become the generative material of a shared visual environment. A single participant's heartbeat shapes the visual space in real time, transforming an internal physiological process into a shared aesthetic experience that invites attention, interoceptive awareness, emotional reflection, and collective presence. Unlike forms of interaction based on deliberate control, the heartbeat is an intimate physiological rhythm that cannot be consciously commanded at will. By making this ordinarily invisible process perceptible, HeartBeat Bloom shifts the role of physiology from something measured or controlled to something witnessed, shared, and contemplated together.
The project is still at an early stage. We do not see HeartBeat Bloom as a finished work or a validated model, but as the first prototype in an ongoing process of Research through Design. The reflections that follow emerged from our first pilot sessions, not as definitive answers to our initial question, but as new questions that only became visible once the experience was brought into the world.

Designing the experience

HeartBeat Bloom is a biofeedback-based immersive meditation experience lasting approximately twenty-five minutes. Developed by Interior Consciente as part of its ongoing research into bioresponsive environments, it is, to our knowledge, among the first immersive meditation experiences in Peru to integrate real-time cardiac biofeedback into a shared audiovisual environment, not as a tool for monitoring or optimisation, but as a medium for perception, attention, and collective reflection. One participant, the portador, wears a chest heart-rate monitor that streams cardiac activity in real time into a generative visual environment, while the remaining participants (the observers) share the experience by attending to the unfolding audiovisual landscape generated from another person's heartbeat.
The visual system was developed through an iterative design process. Its initial prototype emerged from recreating feedback techniques presented in Pao Olea's educational TouchDesigner YouTube tutorial TD Capsule. Building from this technical foundation, the system was progressively extended through iterative experimentation, integrating custom Python scripts, OSC communication for real-time cardiac data, and custom physiological mappings that translated biometric signals into responsive visual behaviours. The development process involved continuous trial and error, supported by AI-assisted programming tools and code refinement, while all system integration, parameter mapping, and design decisions were developed and validated through iterative experimentation. Across successive iterations, both the network and its visual behaviour evolved away from pursuing visual complexity for its own sake, focusing instead on how physiological signals could become quietly perceptible within a shared immersive experience rather than being presented as spectacular visual effects.
Once integrated, the system translates several physiological signals, including heartbeat, heart rate (BPM), heart rate variability (HRV), and beat-to-beat intervals (RR), into evolving abstract floral forms. Rather than using universal physiological thresholds, the system calibrates itself to each participant's own cardiac range, allowing every session to generate a unique visual language. The heartbeat itself triggers small pulses in the form; BPM sets the pace of its overall movement; HRV shapes its color and fluidity. The system also listens for something subtler: the faint trace breathing leaves on the heart itself, the RR interval shortening slightly on the inhale and lengthening on the exhale, and lets that trace surface as a second, quieter layer of color, without needing a separate breath sensor.
The guided meditation script that accompanies the experience follows the same instinct toward restraint. Participants are led through five unhurried phases, arriving in a stable seated posture, a slow body scan from the legs upward, a sustained attention to the chest and the heartbeat before the image is ever shown, an extended period of simply watching the visual while returning to the breath whenever thought intrudes, and a closing return to the chest and the body before opening the eyes. At no point does the script ask anyone to interpret the image, control their state, or reach a particular outcome. It asks only that they notice the same instinct that shaped the visuals themselves.
Importantly, the environment does not simply mirror the body. Approximately seventy percent of the visual behaviour responds to the participant's real-time physiology, while the remaining thirty percent follows a fixed temporal progression that gradually softens the atmosphere over the course of the twenty-five minutes, regardless of what the body is doing. This decision intentionally prevents the environment from becoming a passive reflection of physiological activation. Instead, it gently accompanies the participant, offering a sustained invitation toward calm no matter where the body begins, and, as it turns out, no matter which of two very different physiological paths that body eventually takes.

From Physiology to Perception

Interoception, the capacity to perceive the body's internal signals, such as heartbeat, breathing, and other physiological changes, was central to HeartBeat Bloom from its very first premise, not an idea that emerged along the way. Although these processes continuously shape our experience, they often remain outside conscious awareness until something draws our attention to them.
This matters beyond curiosity, interoception is one of the ways the body informs emotion, attention, and our basic sense of presence. Research has associated greater interoceptive awareness with emotional regulation, wellbeing, and the integration of bodily signals into conscious experience. A signal we rarely notice still shapes how we feel; making it perceptible, even briefly, opens a door that everyday life often leaves closed.
Recent work in neuroscience also suggests that the dialogue between the heart and the brain is not one-way. Cardiac signals continuously travel to the brain through autonomic pathways, contributing to how attention is allocated, how emotions are experienced, and how we construct an ongoing sense of self. Rather than being passive background activity, these physiological rhythms participate in the brain's continuous interpretation of both the internal body and the external world.
HeartBeat Bloom was not designed to measure the body more accurately than existing biofeedback technologies already can. Instead, it explores a different possibility: whether translating these normally invisible physiological processes into a shared sensory environment can change the way people perceive themselves, their bodies, and each other.
The experience focuses on cardiac activity because the heartbeat is one of the body's most continuous internal rhythms. Instead of presenting heart rate or heart rate variability as numerical information, the project transforms these signals into evolving abstract forms, inviting participants to encounter physiology through perception rather than interpretation. In doing so, the heartbeat shifts from being hidden biological information to becoming a shared experiential phenomenon around which attention, contemplation, and interpersonal connection can emerge.
Three measurements shaped what was recorded during each session: BPM is simply how fast the heart beats, rising with alertness or effort and settling with calm. RR interval is the time, in milliseconds, between one heartbeat and the next, the raw signal underneath the other two. HRV is how much that spacing shifts, moment to moment, a marker often associated with the nervous system's flexibility and capacity to adapt, rather than with speed or intensity.
This approach is also informed by neurophenomenology, which holds that understanding human experience requires physiological measurement and first-person accounts together. In HeartBeat Bloom, physiological recordings, participants' reflections, and observational notes are treated as complementary ways of understanding the experience, making the prototype not only an artwork, but a research instrument through which relationships between physiology, perception, and shared experience can begin to be explored.

Reading the First Pilot: What the Body Showed Us

Rather than evaluating HeartBeat Bloom as a finished intervention, we approached these first sessions as an exploratory Design Inquiry. The aim was not to test a hypothesis in a controlled experimental setting, but to observe what kinds of questions emerged when the experience moved from concept to practice.
Before participating, all volunteers provided informed consent for their participation in the pilot sessions and for the collection and use of physiological data, questionnaire and interview responses, photographs, video recordings, and other materials generated during the experience for research, educational, and publication purposes related to HeartBeat Bloom.
Across two pilot sessions (6 participants in total), one participant in each group wore a Bluetooth chest heart-rate monitor (two participants in total took on the role of portador) while their cardiac activity drove the generative visual environment in real time. The remaining participants experienced the installation together through a guided contemplative practice lasting approximately twenty-five minutes. The sessions themselves were guided by the same twenty-five-minute script: an arrival and settling into posture, a body scan, a phase centered on the chest and the perception of one's own heartbeat, an extended period of open-eyed observation of the generative image, and a closing return to the body.
To understand the experience from multiple perspectives, we combined several forms of observation. Physiological recordings (heart rate, heart rate variability, and RR intervals) were collected continuously throughout the sessions. Participants also completed brief questionnaires before and after the experience (six responses before the session, five afterward), which combined two complementary components. The first was a brief seven-item state questionnaire exploring momentary interoceptive awareness, such as awareness of breathing, heartbeat, bodily sensations, and perceived connection with one's internal state. Rather than using the Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA-2) directly, we developed an exploratory scale conceptually informed by several of its dimensions, adapting original items to capture participants' immediate experience during the session. The second component consisted of a semi-structured interview embedded within the same pre- and post-session form. The interview guide explored eight dimensions of the experience, ranging from bodily awareness and interoception to participants' relationship with the environment, the shared nature of the experience, and the personal meaning they attributed to the visual installation. During the experience, researchers also carried out structured observations, documenting posture, attention, interactions with the visual environment, and moments of shared engagement among participants.
Following the pilot, participants received a brief ten-minute guided meditation to support continued personal practice beyond the installation. Although this was not part of the study or its evaluation, it reflected HeartBeat Bloom's broader intention: to encourage an ongoing relationship with interoceptive awareness rather than limiting the experience to a single immersive session.
Rather than treating any single source of information as definitive, we read these materials together. The physiological recordings revealed what the body was doing; participants' reflections described what the experience felt like from within; and observational notes helped situate both within the shared environment. These multiple perspectives on the same event allowed the first pilot to be understood not as evidence of effectiveness, but as the beginning of a conversation between physiology, perception and design.

Two bodies, two rhythms

The two portadores' physiological traces told noticeably different stories, and the difference itself turned out to be the more interesting finding than either trace alone.
The first portador's heart rate stayed within a narrow, steady range through most of the session, with heart rate variability moving actively, rising and falling, rather than sitting flat. The most visible shift in this session appeared only near its end, coinciding closely with the transition into the closing phase of the script: heart rate rose, variability dropped. We can't say from a single session what produced this: anticipation of the ending, stillness fatigue, or simply where the guided arc was designed to resolve, but the timing, sitting right at a designed transition, is itself worth noting.
The second portador's session moved almost in reverse. The largest single shift happened in the opening ninety seconds, tracking the instruction to settle into posture and slow the breath, before any image was visible. There was no sharp break at the close. What stood out instead was something quieter: the moment-to-moment variability of the heartbeat itself grew steadily smoother across the whole session, most consistently through the long phase of open-eyed observation, not a dramatic drop in rate, but a nervous system settling into a more even rhythm.
Read together, these two traces resist a single story. One session's most physiologically active moment was its ending; the other's was its beginning. If anything, they suggest that whatever HeartBeat Bloom is doing to the body, it is not doing the same thing, in the same place, to every body, a finding that matters more for how we design the next pilot than any single number would.

Observation: From data to shared perception

The sessions did not begin with relaxation. During the first five minutes, we observed that frequent posture adjustments, fidgeting, and repeated changes of position were common across participants, particularly among those with little or no previous meditation experience. Rather than immediately calming the body, the experience seemed to heighten awareness of it.
This pattern was reflected in the self-report measures. Item 7 ("My body gives me clear information about my current state") dropped from a baseline average of 4.00 before the sessions to 3.40 after the session. At first glance, this might appear to be a negative outcome. Read alongside the interviews, however, it suggests something more nuanced. Several participants realised that consciously locating their own heartbeat was much more difficult than they had expected. As one participant reflected, "I couldn't detect my heartbeat, although I noticed my breathing at times." Rather than reducing body awareness, the experience appeared to reveal the limits of participants' own interoceptive awareness. An assessment of their physical condition appears to have increased participants' awareness of tension they were previously unaware of. In this sense, the first shift was not toward confidence, but toward a more honest perception of the body.
At the same time, Item 3 ("Awareness of my heartbeat"), showed the largest increase, rising from 2.17 to 3.00 after the session. The projection turned one person's private heartbeat into something the whole room could see and respond to. Several participants seemed to settle into slower breathing and appeared to align with the visual changes on screen, and at points the group exhaled together audibly. Before the session, several participants described their heartbeat as something that usually "goes unnoticed." During the experience, one participant explained that they became aware of it not by feeling it directly, but by watching the generative projection. The visual system did not simply represent a physiological signal; it made an otherwise inaccessible bodily process perceptible.
Interestingly, this shift was most evident in the participants wearing the cardiac sensor. Behavioural observations suggested that they gradually settled into stillness, showed fewer posture adjustments, and appeared to establish a stronger connection between the evolving visual environment and their own bodily sensations. Some spontaneously placed a hand over their chest, while one portador described the twenty-minute session as feeling closer to ten; an altered perception of time often suggests being absorbed by the experience. At the end, participants appeared more a part of the group and less preoccupied with their personal discomfort.
Some participants attributed personal or emotional meanings to the evolving forms; they spoke about colours, flowers and movement, suggesting that the visualisation transformed biometric information into an aesthetic experience rather than a clinical representation. The heartbeat became something to perceive and interpret, rather than simply something to measure.
The group dynamics also became an unexpected part of the experience. Participants often mentioned becoming aware of one another's breathing, movements, and silence. For some, these sounds were initially distracting; for others, they gradually reinforced the feeling of participating in something shared. One observer described feeling "in sync" and sensing their body moving to the rhythm of the projected image, even though it was another person's projected heartbeat, while others spoke of "everyone watching together." At the same time, not everyone experienced this collective dimension in the same way. Some remained focused on their own internal process, reminding us that co-regulation is not a guaranteed outcome but a possibility that different participants enter differently.
Despite these varied individual pathways, participants converged remarkably in how they described their final state. When asked how they felt after the session, nearly every response included some variation of "calm," "relaxed," or "content." Whether this convergence emerged from the shared visual biofeedback, the contemplative practice, the social setting, or the interaction between all three remains an open question.

From Observation to Inquiry

Reflecting on these initial encounters, the most compelling finding was not a uniform descent into relaxation, but rather the non-linear path the sessions took. Instead of leading directly to calm, the experience often began with heightened interoceptive awareness, making participants notice tension, physical discomfort, and even the difficulty of perceiving their own heartbeat. Only after this phase of active noticing did many describe a gradual shift toward presence. In that process, a heartbeat ceased to be experienced as private biometric data and became a shared aesthetic medium through which attention, perception, and human connection could be explored. Rather than simply visualising physiology, the installation appeared to create moments in which multiple people gathered their attention around a single living signal, transforming an individual bodily rhythm into a shared experiential focus.
From the perspective of interoception, this process is particularly intriguing. Rather than immediately increasing confidence in bodily awareness, the experience appeared to reveal the limits of participants' existing interoceptive perception, perhaps a necessary first step toward developing a more accurate relationship with the body. Contemporary neuroscience increasingly suggests that the anterior insula plays a central role in integrating internal bodily signals with attention, emotional awareness, and conscious experience. Although this pilot cannot speak to those neural processes directly, HeartBeat Bloom raises the possibility that shared bioresponsive experiences may engage these processes in ways that remain largely unexplored.
Could repeated engagement with bioresponsive environments, combined with contemplative practice, gradually strengthen interoceptive awareness, confidence in interpreting bodily signals, and ultimately support emotional regulation? Could transforming one person's physiology into a shared sensory experience also cultivate new forms of collective attention, co-regulation, or relational awareness? This first prototype cannot answer these questions. What it does suggest is that immersive bioresponsive environments may offer a promising context in which to investigate not only how we perceive our own bodies, but how shared physiological experiences might reshape the relationship between perception, emotion, and the environments we inhabit.

Where We Go From Here

Designing with physiological signals is not simply a matter of translating data into visuals. What seems to matter is the relationship that emerges between the body, the environment, and the people sharing the experience. Once externalised through an immersive environment, a heartbeat can become more than a biological measurement; it can become a shared point of attention, a relational rhythm, and a medium through which people perceive themselves and one another differently.
Perhaps the most valuable outcome of this prototype is not the installation itself, but the line of inquiry it has opened. The initial question was whether a biofeedback-based immersive environment could support emotional regulation, coherence, and states of calm. While these first pilots cannot answer that question, they suggest that the relationship between physiology, immersive environments, and wellbeing is more nuanced than we first imagined. Rather than leading participants directly toward calm, the experience often began by making them more aware of their own bodies, sometimes revealing tension, uncertainty, or even the limits of their own interoceptive awareness. When calm emerged, it appeared less as an outcome designed into the system than as something that arose through sustained attention.
That, in turn, opens a broader question for the emerging field of responsive and bioresponsive environments. If environments can sense and respond to human physiology, how might they also participate in emotional regulation, recovery, and wellbeing, not by replacing the body's own processes, but by creating the conditions through which people become more aware of them?
HeartBeat Bloom explores one possible direction: it translates a living physiological signal into a shared sensory experience. In this approach, physiology becomes not simply data to optimize an environment, but a material through which people may perceive themselves, relate to others, and inhabit space differently.
Whether this approach can meaningfully contribute to emotional regulation remains an open question, one that future prototypes, larger studies, and different contexts will need to explore. We see this work as part of a broader Design Inquiry into the future of responsive and bioresponsive environments, particularly in healthcare settings, recovery spaces, and other places where supporting human experience is as important as supporting human function.
The prototype did not provide definitive answers; it generated better questions. And perhaps that is where design can make one of its most meaningful contributions: not by closing uncertainty, but by opening new possibilities for how environments and bodies might learn to respond to one another.

Project Credits

Project Lead, Concept, Research, Creative Direction, Experience Design: Ingrid Silva - Architect, Founder of Interior Consciente
Pilot methodology development and results analysis:
-Geraldine Padilla - Clinical Psychologist, MSc in Neuroscience, Founder of Te Amas Psicoblog
-Adriana Antonella Lavalle Ccahuana - Psychology Student and Research Collaborator
Pilot Sessions: Conducted in collaboration with Geraldine Padilla.
Special Thanks: To everyone who participated in the first pilot sessions of HeartBeat Bloom. Their openness, reflections, and willingness to explore this experience made this first stage of the research possible.

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