![AZ Awards 2022 Finalist: Pulse Topology by Dérive Art Agency](https://az-media.production-001.dev/awards/2022/06/D_LIGHTINSTALL_PulseTopology_01-1600x900.jpg)
Last fall, in an industrial storage facility beneath a raised highway in Toronto, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer of Montreal art agency Dérive suspended 3,000 light bulbs from an overhead cable grid. The installation, called Pulse Topology, resembled a kind of cosmic cloud, with bulbs hanging anywhere from one to seven metres above the ground. Sensors picked up visitors’ heartbeats, then fed this bio-metric data into an algorithm that regulated the rhythms by which the bulbs dimmed and brightened. The result: a dynamic artwork that was both transcendent and deeply, even intimately, human.
![AZ Awards 2022 Finalist: Pulse Topology by Dérive Art Agency](https://az-media.production-001.dev/awards/2022/06/D_LIGHTINSTALL_PulseTopology_02.jpg)
Team Rafael Lozano-Hemmer with Robert McKaye, Stephanie Dudek and Pavneet Pal Singh (The Bentway Conservancy); Claudia Roy (Dérive Art Agency); Nancy Kloek and Andrew Landrigan (Exhibition Place); Amirbahador Rostami (Artifacts); Steven Hoffart (Link 45 Productions); Richard Mui (Blackwell Structural Engineers)
The installation Pulse Topology resembles a kind of cosmic cloud, with bulbs hanging anywhere from one to seven metres above the ground.