Project Data Sense combines algorithmic design with creative coding to create multi-sensory data experiences that enhance emotional engagement and accessibility.

03

Energy Bodies

Visualizing Emotional Currents through Somatic Interaction.

Energy Bodies is an interactive movement-capture installation that translates bodily expression into a dynamic, living visualization. Created in collaboration with expressive arts therapist Carrie Powell, the project explores how inner sensations, emotions, and gestures can become data, revealing the energetic patterns that shape human experience.

Using open-source pose estimation software (PoseNet) and a custom-built visual system, participants’ movements are tracked and transformed into fields of shifting color, line, and motion. Each gesture becomes data, each change in posture a visual phrase. The resulting “energy body” reflects real-time interplay between physical motion and emotional tone—an aesthetic visualization of embodied presence.

Energy Bodys, 2025. Screen captures from live system; custom software (p5.js with ml5/PoseNet), generative visualization; variable dimensions. A participant’s gesture stream renders as fine, filament-like paths within the abstracted body silhouette, revealing micro-shifts in tempo and flow.

LOGIC

Physical Properties

BODY

structure

weight

balance

posture

Mapping

POINTS/PATTERN
order / disorder

dense / open
symmetry / asymmetry
rigid / jellylike

Emotional Properties

EXTERNAL
loose / rigid

burden / pressure
equanimity / control
confidence / vulnerability

Formal Properties

INTERNAL PATTERNlines that fill the body
the lines pattern increases in density overlapping

the pattern lines become more regular/ less chaotic

outer body warps and twists

Emotion

anxiety / calm
sadness, joy, anger

calm

fear, calm

Grounded in somatic psychology, movement analysis, and interaction design, Energy Bodies draws on the somaesthetic stance in Designing with the Body¹ and on data-as-material perspectives from data physicalization (Bae et al.; Rogers and colleagues, e.g., Houben et al.’s “Physikit”)² ³ to foreground sensory and affective experience in data systems. Rather than abstract metrics, the interface invites participants to feel data as form—making emotion perceivable through movement and visual play.

The system’s movement analysis includes Laban-based principles—effort, direction, flow—mapped into visual parameters that mirror shifts in internal state. It surfaces rhythm and texture rather than numeric scale, resonating with Höök’s emphasis on felt, qualitative interaction.¹ Simultaneously, it embodies recent thinking on making data graspable through material and experiential qualities, enabling reflection through sense-making and emotional resonance.² ³

EXHIBITION

To deepen relational potential, Energy Bodies engages ideas of synchronized movement. Research shows synchronous motion enhances social cohesion, trust, and empathy, and activates neural reward systems.⁴ ⁵ ⁶ Clinical and dyadic studies further suggest movement synchrony can mediate prosocial effects such as pain reduction and rapport.⁷ In practice, the system acts as a “synchronized witness partner”—a responsive form that mirrors user movement in real time, inviting the participant into a form of interactive synchrony that may reinforce connection, co-regulation, and self-awareness.

The installation thus functions as both art and inquiry: a visual feedback loop that externalizes the invisible flows of sensation and neural rhythm. Through iterative testing, the prototype evolves into a sensitive, aesthetic experience that bridges creative coding, data visualization, and embodied knowing. As a research-informed tool, Energy Bodies positions data not merely as abstract representation but as a bridge between internal movement, emotional awareness, and shared human connection.