Pulse Now
2025
Interface · Planetary Rhythms · Embodied Sensing
Description
Pulse Now explores how a single bodily gesture can become a point of connection to systems far beyond human scale. The project began with a simple but open question: what does it feel like to belong to something larger than oneself?
Through research into circular structures, exchange systems such as the Kula Ring, Aristotle's wheel paradox, and real-time planetary signals, the work examines how different scales—bodily, environmental, and planetary—can meet through a shared center. Rather than treating these systems symbolically, Pulse Now approaches them as physical conditions that can be sensed and inhabited.
In the installation, participants place their hand at the center of a circular, fabric-covered surface. A depth-based touch sensor captures only three variables: whether the hand is present, how deeply it presses, and how long it remains. These values are mapped onto a heartbeat-inspired experiential scale that modulates light, color, and sound generated from live solar and electromagnetic data. The work invites participants to sense resonance rather than interpret or measure it.
Video
Concept
Pulse Now investigates resonance as a perceptual bridge between human-scale and planetary-scale systems. The project treats the "center" not as a symbolic point, but as a meeting condition—where different rhythms can briefly align.
Drawing on Aristotle's wheel paradox and circular exchange structures such as the Kula Ring, the work asks how motion and value can circulate without hierarchy. Instead of extracting data from the body, Pulse Now asks how the body can sense its alignment with larger oscillatory fields, including solar activity and the Earth's Schumann resonance.
System
The interface is intentionally minimal. Participants interact only by placing a hand on the center of the circular surface. A depth-based touch sensor captures three parameters:
- presence of touch
- depth of pressure
- duration of the gesture
These inputs are translated into a heartbeat-inspired experiential scale. The scale does not represent physiological measurement; it functions as a perceptual model designed to evoke attunement rather than feedback. As the scale shifts, it modulates a generative environment built in TouchDesigner, where live solar data streams and Schumann-based sound frequencies shape the visual and sonic field around the participant.
Images
RESEARCH SUMMARY
Pulse Now operates through a dual-stream architecture combining embodied input (pressure-based sensing) with real-time planetary data streams (solar flux, geomagnetic indices, Schumann resonance). The installation functions as a site of encounter where shifts in engagement—such as duration, pressure, and stillness—can become noticeable through repeated interaction.
The accompanying PDF documents the system architecture, technical decisions, and conceptual structure of the work.
Technical components include:
- Touch-depth sensor and microcontroller
- OSC / serial communication
- TouchDesigner (real-time graphics and sound)
- Live solar data integration (NASA sources)
- Schumann resonance–based sound generators
- Projection and circular tactile interface
Next Steps
Pulse Now will be exhibited at the Design Museum Holon in summer 2026, where it will be experienced by a broad and diverse public audience. This extended presentation will allow the work to be observed over time and across repeated encounters, opening the possibility for collecting qualitative impressions, behavioral patterns, and audience reflections as research material.
This phase marks a transition from a single installation toward a longer-term inquiry, where exposure, iteration, and audience response can inform future developments of the system.
Credits
Concept, research, and installation: Olga Stadnuk
Developed during the Rothschild Residency, 2025
Sound: Nir Jacob Yonessi
Photography: Daniel Hanoch