My name is Beer van Geer and I’m a hybrid interactive media artist. I am half based in Netherlands and half in Serbia and work around the world. I work with biofeedback (working at the moment for Playstation Studio Japan) and getting into blockchain. I think we need tools to intuitively understand networks and dynamics of value exchange. Understanding and interacting with abstract concepts of frequency and vibrations are going to be essential to navigate in this coming time of digital value exchange.
Intro
After all the Crypto 2.0 promises of dapp's, dao's and smart contract's, I'm really happy to see finally a practical application of blockchain technology, let the social crypto 3.0 begin!
In 2009 I finished studying at the HKU, a school in the Netherlands that teaches on the edge of traditional media arts and interactive art. This was a great time for me to get involved into coding and the creation of interactive narratives.
After my study in 2009 I went for a break and a travel through South-East Asia. This travel made me realize that in the west we are totally missing out on any spiritual system embed in society. Where in South-East Asia everybody gets the change to be part of a temple and learn from the Buddhist teachings, we in the West (especially Netherlands) are left with tons of closed churches and no spiritual guidance anymore.
When was the last time you saw a monk on the street?
AppleTemple in Amsterdam, whats your religion?
My first Neurofeedback Apps
These days we are left with only the cooperate temples. Apple is trying his best to replace the church with their army of disciples, but do we really learn anything spiritual from these guys ? ;)
This situation made me think of how we can get reconnected to spiritual teachings and get back connected to our natural environment again. Now that we are embedded in this technological environment, can technology help us to get guided back to ourselves?
In that period of time after my travel, the first EEG devices came on the market that promised to measure all kinds of things. For example the NeuroSky EEG promised to give a measure of relaxation and meditation.
True or not, I was eager to experiment with these kind of devices, to see if it can be anyhow connected to meditation practices that I learned.
The first application I made was Dagaz. This is a meditation came that gives the player the ability to create Mandala figures with their mind. I was fascinated by Mandala’s because they are really beautifully designed maps of reality. Maps that represent all kinds of natural and cultural systems. A roadmap on contextualizing our existence, for the Micro to the Macro. With Dagaz I won a developers price and I got quite some good reactions on it.
Please visit here to see a video demonstration of Dagaz.
My second app was not anymore inspired on human made geometry, but I made a switch to geometry in nature. From the Northern Lights, to the spirals in a sunflower, I went from Micro to Macro.
I decided to create a interactive visual synthesizer that can be connected to any wave-input like a EEG neurofeedback device. This app was called Grapheme. It’s a particle based, magnetic simulation system. It makes it possible to draw shapes with your mind.
Please visit here to see a demonstration of Grapheme.
From Brain to Heart
Because I made these first Neuro-Apps, I was invited by a institute in the Netherlands that worked with Heart-Rate biofeedback to work for their product HeartLive. HeartLive is a heart-rate sensor that gives people inside in their heart-rate-variability (HRV). HRV shows that the heart is never in a steady rhythm. When you measure your heart-rate at a doctor or sport school, it always shows a average measurement, but in real-time, the heart-rate fluctuates always!
These fluctuations are like a wave, and this wave can tell something about the condition of a person. Depending on what the person is doing, feeling or even saying, this wave fluctuates.
This HRV wave is highly connected to the breath. When you breath in your hear-rate goes up, when you breath out the heart-rate goes down. This makes the HRV wave a highly interactive signal, that can be used for a lot of different things.
After helping with creating HeartLive I worked with a artist called Jarno Burger on the BioDome. A 360 projection environment, where people get feedback on their HRV trough color, geometry and sound.
Please see video here.
After the BioDome I also used HeartLive together with a Harpist to create interactive musical piece with generative visuals. The harpist could control the generative piece by breathing exercises. By teaching people breathing patterns, people create different waveforms with their HRV. These different wavesforms gives different feelings and emotions, exactly like how music works!
Think about it, is not more that a wave of fluctuations. This one wave is build out of a lot of different frequencies, together forming the harmonic composition. The heart is not much different and the breath is the tool to play it.
See here video of Piece for Heart and Vibrations.
Everything goes up and down, everything consists of waves embedded with frequencies, just like crypto-currencies…
Like you have seen in this article, my work is all about transforming waveform data into something intuitively understandable.
When I got to into cryptocurrencies and started to follow all the fluctuations happening on the exchanges, it reminded me immediately of the human heart. Like with the human heart, I have the feeling more activity around a currency, more fluctuations and frequencies it has embedded, the healthier the system.
Just like a rich piece of music that is filled up with different frequencies, that make the music dynamic.
Traders are already quite familiar with riding these waves, but with platforms like Steemit, everybody will start riding these value waves.
Like the pulse of a human heart, the currency of a platform is the pulse of the community giving value to the platform.
A great visual was made about the DAO. It showes the creation phase of the organization as a pulse of light, coming to life. Imagine what happened after the creation and the current decline of the platform. In the end it’s a pulse of attention vibrating trough time.
From this article.
Just like our earth itself:
In the case of the Dao the pulse is fading out. But much more pulses and waves to come, and to visualize. I encourage all the artists, musicians and creatives to start working with the data available and making these feedbackloops to connect people to the energies we are creating trough these new blockchain communities.
Like using the breath as a tool to get in contact with our physiology to create health, we can use blockchain technology to exchange value freely again and create wealth…
Let it pulse
