Pulse

-
Val and I were in Washington, D.C. for a week. He attended a training course in the city and I was on vacation mode, fresh from boot camp. I was so happy because this trip made one of my wishes true: I got to visit the Smithsonian!

---

Hirshhorn Museum. One of the more disturbing art installations I've seen on this trip is Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's Pulse Index. It's an immersive piece which invites the audience to have their fingerprint scanned and their heart rates converted into a wave image. The last 10,000 fingerprints are projected on a huge screen and the latest fingerprint and heart rate are the biggest image. I did not want to have my fingerprint scanned here so I moved on.


But his other installation, Pulse Tank, was more relaxing. It invites the audience to put their finger on a sensor and the pulse it detects sends ripples onto the water in a tank. The ripples are then projected onto a screen for the rest of the audience to see. 

The last installation, Pulse Room, is filled with light bulbs that pulsate based on the heartbeats of audiences willing to be strapped to a heart monitor. It reminded me of yet another SFMOMA art installation that involved incandescent light bulbs suspended in a dark room.

I'd say that Lozano-Hemmer's installations are my highly recommended exhibits in the Hirsshorn Museum. I just have to say that though I am not a big fan of modern art, his works made a lasting impression on me. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Thank you for dropping by!

Before moving on, please share your thoughts or comments about the post. :)

Thanks again!

Popular posts from this blog

Skyflakes

-
One of the more famous Philippine exports is Skyflakes , a wheat-based, salty cracker. It is one of my emergency food items: I typically have some stocked at home and in my handbag in case I become hungry (like in traffic jams). When there's no electricity and it's impractical to cook rice (because the leftover would spoil), I'd open a pack of Skyflakes and generously coat each cracker with Cheez Whiz... if I had a bottle of it within reach. Anyway, each time I spent more than two weeks outside the Philippines, I'd be elated to see boxes of Skyflakes inside Asian stores (particularly when in I was Australia and in the USA). Back then, I took it as a sign of homesickness. When I moved to California, I didn't miss Skyflakes because Mommy made sure that there's a steady supply in the house. Skyflakes is embedded in Filipino gastronomy as a snack, a panawid-gutom , that anyone who reacts positively upon seeing Skyflakes outside the Philippines must have spe
Read more

10 things I learned while driving on Marcos Highway to Baguio City

-
I went on a day trip to the City of Pines, which was around a 700-km drive from my house. I drove  going up there and then from the city to Victoria, Tarlac. After that, my dad took over the driving duties. It was day trip with Tita Ising and Tito Sibing with us. Anyway, this trip was my first time to go to Baguio City with me behind the wheel. As everyone who drives up knows, there are three main routes to Baguio from the lowlands: Kennon Road, which ascends from Rosario, La Union. It was out of my options because it's too dangerous to use that road in the rainy season. The second route is via Naguilian Road, which makes my trip a lot longer because the beginning of the ascent is in Bauang, La Union (further north). The last route, and the one I took, was the Marcos Highway, now known as the Aspiras-Palispis Highway. This 47-km road starts from Agoo, La Union and is touted as the safest route among the three.  As I drove up and then down (on the same day; we were in Bagu
Read more

Surat Mangyan

-
Image
In high school, part of the Filipino curriculum was learning about one of the country's ancient native scripts called Baybayin . I learned back then that this script was eventually abandoned because the Spanish, and eventually the Americans, encouraged the use of the Latin script for written communications. But that's in the lowlands; the rules were different up in the mountains. In the lush mountains of Mindoro, groups of indigenous people called Mangyans  live largely in isolation away from the Christianised Filipinos. This isolation has led to the continuous development of the Mangyans' old script, Surat Mangyan . As I walked inside the Ayala Museum , I saw this bamboo tube (I'm not sure if it's an instrument) with Mangyan script written all over it. I suppose that this was equivalent to a book or a song. But I haven't figured out what's written yet, despite the translation guide provided. What I can do, however, is write my name in Ma
Read more