lucía hinojosa gaxiola

synchrony (or language as a living system) | 2016

electrocardiogram with written notes (poem/sound notation), performance, soundwork

Entrainment is a law in physics described as the process where two interacting oscillating systems with different independent periods, assume a common period. The two oscillators may fall into synchrony. “Two or more living or non-living systems that generate frequencies and are close in time and space, tend to fall into synchrony.” Christiaan Huygens, a Dutch physicist and the inventor of the pendulum clock introduced the concept after he noticed in 1666 that the pendulums of two clocks mounted on a common board had synchronized, and subsequent experiments duplicated this phenomenon.

I’ve been researching this phenomenon through the idea of language as a living system, and how the cardiac rhythms may adapt or synchronize with the temporality of specific genres in literature, speech, and memory. For this investigation, I went to a cardiologist and brought five different texts. I read fragments of these texts in silence while doing the EKG test, and recorded the sound of my heartbeat. Over the electrocardiogram I wrote notes, sketches, and ideas as a form of sound notation that is later used as a score where language and pulse meet and synchronize. The score has also been interpreted by musicians as part of poetry & sound performances.