Google Arts & Culture Virtual Exhibition Tour

“Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s “Pulse Topology” exhibit was installed in the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in June of this year. In his site-specific work, Lozano-Hemmer created an all-encompassing scene of upside-down mountains and valleys using 3,000 LED filament light bulbs suspended from the ceiling.

The sight of the exhibit alone is breathtaking, heightened by the interactive experience it brings to the visitor. A touchless remote technology, called PPG, was included in “Pulse Topology” to coordinate the thousands of flickering bulbs to a single person’s heartbeat.”

“Any recent visit to the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art or even a quick scroll through your artsy friend’s Instagram will show you the well-lit landscape of Pulse Topology. Pulse Topology is an immersive light and sound environment created by Mexican-Canadian artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. This site-specific project features an upside-down canopy of peaks and valleys made from 3,000 suspended light bulbs that mirror the pulse of visitor participants. The immersive environment highlights the basic but essential biological element—the heartbeat—shared amongst us all.

“The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art opened a free exhibition in late June, Pulse Topology, which will be available to the public until January. The exhibition is the newest installation from artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, who worked with the museum throughout the COVID-19 pandemic to create his project.

The exhibition is housed in a 5,000-square-foot space and is made up of 3,000 LED filament light bulbs strung up along the ceiling. Sensors hung from the ceiling use photoplethysmography (PPG) technology to detect a heartbeat. Visitors can place their hands underneath them. The rhythm is reflected by the lightbulbs surrounding the sensor, and this pattern grows throughout the rest of the room. The lightbulbs are strung in a pattern that emulates the Flint Hills and related topography.”

“As we come out from behind our screens, bleary with tech fatigue, Kansas Citians have begun to seek out safe and meaningful ways to come together. Museums are working out how to balance public engagement with visitor safety, in a world still warily emerging from its pandemic cocoon. Artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, whose installations center around human interaction, aims to address that conundrum in the exhibition “Pulse Topology,” on view through Jan. 2 at Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art.”

“The summer solstice has just passed; our days are now getting shorter, with a little less sunlight from now until the darkest days of December. A season, for me, to be grateful for the light and appreciate the way it shapes our world.

A good season, then, for an art installation composed of over 3,000 light bulbs suspended from the ceiling in a dark room in rolling, rollicking waves. It’s an inverted topology in which you may see reflections of the land surrounding us: the soft hills of our neighborhoods, the dramatic curves of the Ozarks, the rise of the Flint Hills to our west.”