Closed Loop – Research Residency

Closed Loop is a six-month research residency led by calibuYau in collaboration with Dr Samit Chakrabarty’s neurophysiology laboratory at the University of Leeds. The research investigates how high-resolution biophysiological signals can function as creative material within real-time, implicit aesthetic digital environments.

This supporting material provides context to our previous biofeedback works and demonstrates the progression toward high-speed, implicit interaction that this residency seeks to examine.

Previous Work

Over the past decade, calibuYau have developed a sustained artistic enquiry into how biophysiological signals can function as creative material within immersive systems. Beginning with Thought Forms, which used EEG brainwave data to generate responsive audio-visual environments, and extending through Touching Sleep, which translated heart rate variability into tactile resistance, the duo have explored how internal bodily processes shape aesthetic experience.

Together, these works examined explicit biofeedback, where participants could consciously perceive and interpret the relationship between body and system. Closed Loop builds on this foundation by shifting toward high-speed, implicit interaction within a neurophysiology laboratory, asking what becomes possible when physiological data operates below conscious awareness in real-time digital environments.

Thoughtforms

Thought Forms (2015–ongoing) is an artistic research project exploring perception, agency and the limits of conscious control through real-time interaction with complex biological systems. Presented as gallery installations, live performances and a permanent installation, the work uses EEG brainwave data (delta, theta, alpha, beta, gamma) to generate responsive audio-visual environments.

Brain activity, captured through an EEG headset, drives five algorithmic instruments based on swarming, flocking and chaotic behaviours found in nature. While users can influence global aspects of the system through shifts in attention, much of the interaction operates indirectly, producing uncertainty about whether change is consciously willed or emergent from unconscious processes. Blinks trigger structural shifts in the system, reinforcing the illusion of causal control.

Thought Forms established calibuYau’s long-term engagement with biofeedback, real-time systems and perceptual ambiguity. It demonstrated how physiological data can drive immersive environments while revealing the constraints of explicit feedback systems. Closed Loop extends this trajectory by moving from EEG-driven interaction toward high-speed, implicit biophysiological integration within a neurophysiology laboratory context.

Stuart Murray, Christophe De Bezenac, and Dave Lynch’s account of their techno-art project, “Touching Sleep” was such a wonderful project to learn about: conceptually inventive, aesthetically playful, and philosophically expansive.”

MIT REVIEWER

Touching Sleep

Touching Sleep (2025) explored sleep as both biological process and cultural condition, examining how physiological data can shape embodied artistic experience. Developed through LivingBodiesObjects, the work recorded heart rate variability during eight structured sleep sessions and translated that data in real time into magnetic resistance using Open Sound Control systems.

Participants engraved bespoke tiles using a stylus influenced by fluctuations in sleep data. Where HRV was high, spirals were controlled and stable; where HRV was low, magnetic resistance disrupted movement. In this way, sleep actively shaped the gesture of the engraver. The body’s internal state became a material force within the artwork.

Touching Sleep demonstrated the potential of explicit biofeedback systems to structure aesthetic interaction while revealing their limitations: participants consciously interpreted resistance and feedback. Closed Loop extends this trajectory by investigating high-speed, implicit interaction, where physiological signals operate below conscious decoding within responsive digital environments.

Murray, De Bezenac, and Lynch is a fantastic description of an art project that is genuinely “critical.” This is a great piece and actually mind-blowing if you dwell on it.

MIT REVIEWER

Selected Publications

Touching Sleep: Feeling Data, Situated Process, Distributed Object – Leonardo Journal [2026]

Book chapter – Sleep and Its Meanings: Socio-Cultural Investigations from Critical Sleep Studies – MIT Press [2026]