Your heart, that organ, that very special muscle that often goes into overdrive and whose effects we feel instantly but never see. Your lung, that other organ that is tuned to the first, conditions it, drives it, reassures it without us ever really knowing why. What if, this time, it is different? What if, this time, it is them we see beating and breathing? Them deciding to beat faster and breathe deeper? Or, conversely, to slow the flow of our blood and moderate the inflation of our alveoli?

In V|LF-Spiro3D, we investigate a behavioural artwork, Everything goes, in which the three-dimensional translucent reflection of viewers reveals hearts beating, lungs breathing and blood circulating through bodies. The experimental setup is an augmented mirror that adapts to the viewer’s cardiac and respiratory rhythms, making them its own and potentially playing with them. We explore the influence of this virtual self on our own behaviour by focusing directly on our physiology, where everything happens, in a biological feedback. Air is a vehicle, blood circulates.

Everything goes relies on former prospective works, especially the triptych Primary Intimacy of being, that have been jointly carried by UPSaclay and La métonymie at Le sas. Primary Intimacy of being is a set of three mirrors that reflect a human being, a woman, a man, as probed by X-rays, established by positron emission tomography, or revealed by magnetic resonance imaging. It is the image in depth, three unique avatars of the viewers. These are their images augmented by medical imaging. As the persons standing in front of the mirror move toward or away from it, they move into or out of the body through CT, PET or MRI. In Primary Intimacy of being, the viewers alone discover a morphological or metabolic intimacy that was previously hidden from them: that of the density of matter that supports and holds them, that of the energy that drives them deep inside, or that of the water that constitutes them.

This art-science research is part of Work Package 4 (WP4). It supports the philosophical and social studies on the objectivation and alienation of 3D MR spirometry in the experience of patients and practitioners. It takes the research out of the clinic and into public spaces.