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




01

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 Bodies, 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.

MOVEMENT TO EMOTION TRANSLATION


Physical InputEmotional InterpretationVisual Output on Screen Emotions
Order / DisorderLoose / RigidLines fill body with varying regularityEmotion Dense / OpenBurden / LightnessLine density increases or overlapsSadness, Joy Symmetry / AsymmetryEquanimity / TensionLines become more regular or chaoticCalm Rigid / FluidConfidence / VulnerabilityOuter shape warps, bends, or stiffensFear, Calm Centered / Off-centerGrounded / DisorientedSymmetrical vs. asymmetrical body shapesFear, Calm
EFFORT (Movement Qualities)
Small / Large GesturesArousal LevelIncreased motion and jitter in line behaviorAnxiety Slow / Fast MovementUrgency / CalmColor or motion acceleration (e.g., ripple rate)Calm, Anxiety Linear / Erratic PathwaysFocus / DistractionMovement trails or directional energy flow patternsVaries by intent
SHAPE (Body Contour & Gesture)
Smooth / BumpyEase / StrainCurves vs. jagged edge shapesTension, Joy Straight / Curved LinesControl / FluiditySofter or sharper outlines around the bodyCalm, Anxiety Degree of Torso RotationOpenness / TensionSpiral or tensioned distortionsFear, Joy Expand / ContractPresence / WithdrawalShape inflates or compresses dynamicallyJoy, Fear, Sadness
SPACE (Body in the Environment)
Orientation in X/Y SpaceOpenness / ConstrictionForms move toward or away from screen edgesFear, Calm Height of Movement (Y-axis)Power / SubmissionShifts in body verticality influence visual elevationJoy, Sadness Range of MotionExpressiveness / ContainmentArea of the screen filled with the shapeJoy, Sadness


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.

Notes 


  1. Kristina Höök, Designing with the Body: Somaesthetic Interaction Design (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2018).
  2. S. Sandra Bae et al., “Making Data Tangible: A Cross-Disciplinary Design Space for Data Physicalization,” in Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (New Orleans, LA: ACM, 2022), https://doi.org/10.1145/3491102.3501939.
  3. Steven Houben et al., “Physikit: Data Engagement Through Physical Ambient Visualizations in the Home,” in Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (San Jose, CA: ACM, 2016), 1608–1619.
  4. Bronwyn Tarr et al., “Synchrony and Exertion during Dance Independently Raise Pain Threshold and Encourage Social Bonding,” Biology Letters 11, no. 10 (2015): 20150767, https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2015.0767.
  5. Giacomo Novembre, Giulia Sammler, and Peter E. Keller, “Empathic Perspective Taking Promotes Interpersonal Coordination by Enhancing Accuracy in Predicting Others’ Behavior,” Scientific Reports 9 (2019): 12264, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-48556-9.
  6. Stefanie Hoehl, Thalia Fairhurst, and Vittoria Schirmer, “Interactional Synchrony: Signals, Mechanisms and Benefits,” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 16, nos. 1–2 (2021): 5–18, https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsaa024.
  7. Pavel Goldstein, Irit Weissman-Fogel, and Simone G. Shamay-Tsoory, “Clinician–Patient Movement Synchrony Mediates Social Analgesia,” The Journal of Pain 21, no. 5–6 (2020): 663–676, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpain.2020.02.007.
View the exhibition proposal here.

02

BIRD SOUNDS

How might a visual evoke the sensation of hearing a bird? These p5 sketches explore the conversion of sound into visual data capturing bird songs in rhythmic visuals.

Click to play sound


Bird sounds from left to right: American Robin, Redwinged Blackbird, Northern Cardinal, Eastern Bluejay, Song Sparrow, Catbird. 

LOGIC




The color patterns in the bird song visualization are inspired by the typical color identification used by birders, focusing on key parts of the bird's body such as the wings, belly, head, and beak. The circles are distributed in a ratio that generally matches the scale of the bird body parts. Multiple colors can be selected for frequently multi-colored areas like the wings and head. 
This approach produces an iconic symbol that mirrors the bird's coloring. The resulting graphic provides a dual-channel output, pairing sound with visual elements, which can enhance the retention of both the bird song and its associated colors in memory. The diagram below illustrates how the dual channel output enhances our perceptual understanding of the bird.



APPLICATIONS



  


Bird song visualization can be integrated with smart devices to provide alerts for various users. It can benefit those with no auditory abilities, older individuals experiencing hearing loss, or birders in urban environments where bird sounds compete with traffic, airplanes, and other human-generated noises. A gentle haptic vibration could accompany the visual output, adding a tactile dimension to the perceptual awareness channels. This feature could be implemented on a smartwatch or as part of a wearable device, minimizing distractions and enabling real-time awareness without the need to navigate through screens and buttons to capture the sound.

03

WEATHER DATA


As temperatures warm around the globe, the Current Temp Quilt visualizes temperatures from different cities around the globe with jSON weather data. Like the feeling of heat on your skin, this display converts current temperature data to color values on a scale from cold to warm mapped with cooler temps in the blue-green range to hotter in the red-orange. The display allows for comparison among cities giving you an at a glance sense of what the world feels like right now.



 


APPLICATIONS



PATTERN GENERATOR
Reminisent of Johannes Itten’s cold warm contrast grids, the weather quilt captures allows the weather to create the constrast for you. Where better than the beach to show off how rising temps are affecting our well being and environment.  Or perhpas while you enjoy a cup of coffee that may soon be unavailable do to rising tempatures

04

Moonflower


Mapping Lunar Rhythms through Generative Bloom.


 Moonflower is a generative visualization that traces the moon's phases through the form of a flower. The project began with a real moon flower, a plant grown from a seed packet that had sat dormant in the garage for a season, encountered in full bloom on a walk and later identified by its namesake trait: moon flowers open and close in sync with the night sky. That discovery reconnected the work to an earlier sketch built in p5.js, one that pulled live moon phase data from an API and attempted to render the moon accurately in step with it, a technical exercise that felt incomplete until it had a form worth building toward.


Moonflower, 2026. Custom software (p5.js), generative visualization; variable dimensions. Live moon phase data drives a kaleidoscopic bloom that opens, closes, and reconfigures across the lunar cycle, echoing the plant's own photonastic rhythm.

APPLICATION



FLOWER GENERATOR
The current piece merges that moon phase sketch with a kaleidoscope system originally built for a student, layering lunar data into a set of formal parameters, angle, distance, size, and ring count, that reshape the flower as the moon moves through its cycle. Rather than displaying the phase as a number or icon, the system lets the data bloom: the flower's fullness, symmetry, and density shift in step with the sky.

Like the tides and the body's own cycles, the moon offers a quiet model for responsiveness, an ongoing external rhythm rather than a fixed state. Moonflower treats that rhythm as material: a reminder that data, like light, can move.

ENERGY BODIES

BIRD SOUNDS

WEATHER DATA

MOONFLOWER

ABOUT


Thomas Jefferson Universtiy
Visual Communication Design
4201 Henry Ave, 
Philadelphia, PA  19144  Information
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