Presense Is All U Need

This thesis is a small part in a long line of work that explores the role of technology in contemporary society, in particular how the attention economy incentivizes the replacement of “real” human experiences in organic spaces with “simulated” experiences in digital spaces, and how such incentives have been drastically heightened with the recent proliferation of transformer-based generative Artificial Intelligence technology. The project itself presents a speculative vision of the world where technology can fundamentally augment those human experiences (that are already occurring) rather than replacing them, through the amplification of real-time biological signals that present the present (moment) in the embodied senses of those consenting individuals providing those signals, and others within the vicinity. This iteration of the project focuses primarily on heart-rates as a fundamental signal of life that represents the present physiological state of being, visualized within an environment of open-minded observers and participants in a concert setting. This work hopes to present opportunities to expand research of real-time biometric visualization further into more biological signals and more diverse environments. Above all, this thesis tries to impart the importance of presence, if not onto the audience, at least onto the author himself.