13 August

A visualization that pairs to your breathing.

Again it could be a phone website — this time the microphone: it picks up
audio and reads the breath.

Or no microphone at all — movement: the phone against your ribs, rising
and falling with them. (The accelerometer would feel the heartbeat too —
each beat jolts the chest a little. Breath and pulse from one gesture.)

Another input the body gives without being asked: pressure, pulse, now
breathing.

In an exhibition — one person at a time sees their breathing in it. Or a
person volunteers to be the breather: the piece breathes with them while
everyone else watches. Could be a strap, but the phone is easy — maybe
just a simple phone holder against the ribcage, so they don't have to
think about it.

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So in reality: biological feedback, captured through an enthralling,
attention-focused piece. The body's involuntary signals — pressure,
pulse, breath — fed back as an image compelling enough to hold your
attention on them.

A phosphene is already the body showing itself to itself. Driving the
ring with breath and pulse doesn't illustrate the body — it restores the
kind of signal that produces the real phenomenon.

The breather isn't a user, they're a guest. (Mieke Bal)

Meditation apps use the image to optimise the body toward a target
state; here nothing is measured and no one is improved. But I'm not sure
I want to be located *against* wellness — maybe that isn't the relation.
To sit with.