How many heart-beats do you have left?
My "Life Timer" program presents the user with a short questionnaire concerning age, gender and lifestyle. It then calculates the user's life expectancy, and presents this as the number of heartbeats that the user has remaining before their 'predicted' death. The user is also connected to a heart pulse sensor (plethysmograph), and so the 'timer' is decremented in sync with the user's actual heartbeat.Externalising and displaying this usually hidden but crucial bodily process has the effect of reminding us of our own mortality. Thoughts of death and mortality tend to be suppressed in daily life; and being made aware of one's mortality can be an unnerving experience.
The awareness of the passage of time can be anxiety inducing in itself. This is particularly true when one has an unpleasant deadline to meet. Pressure and anxiety escalate as one approaches this deadline. Our own death is perhaps the most profound example of an unpleasant "deadline". This project attempts to link these notions of mortality awareness, time and anxiety.
My project uses a bio-feedback as a component of the experience. Personal bio-feedback devices are often used as a monitoring aid during exercise; they are also employed in bio-feedback games designed to achieve deep states of relaxation and concentration. This project attempts to induce a rather more negative feeling in the user, by creating a sense of anxiety.
I see my "Life Timer" prototype as an installation piece to be displayed in a public space. It could be used in an educational context to show how one's lifestyle influences life expectancy.
I would like to develop my "Life Timer" as a wearable device.
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