Tian Lutz and an interdisciplinary team at Hyperwerk FHBB are creating a range of dynamic bracelets which can be used as an additional form of communication between the wearer and his or her surroundings.

The bracelets “Kontinuum” and “Veränderung” (change) take the wearer’s heartbeat as a reference and convert it into light that either pulsates or glows in different colors, thus displaying some information about the assumed state of the person. The bracelet “Endlichkeit” (finiteness) features a countdown to your last heartbeat, based on the calculation that an average male person’s heart has beaten 2.3 billion times at the end of his life. Similar to Life Counter (Via Designboom) by Ippei Matsumoto, both projects having a certain memento mori notion of communication towards the user.

Lutz and his colleagues say that it is especially crucial to try and use these extravagant artifacts in real-life situations, documenting the wearer’s experiences. Like this they want to gain more information about the communicative potential of mediated body-data.

See also I.E.D. Armband and The Emotional Wardrobe.