The foundational idea was articulated in a position paper, which was submitted and accepted for the 2025 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) workshop on Affective Interaction and Affective Computing. The paper can be found on the workshop webpage under the title How Well Do You Know Yourself? Towards A Holistic Understanding of Emotions.

The diversity, complexity, and nuance of emotions became strikingly clear during the experience. Some visitors felt a whirlwind of emotions, stepping between two at a time and moving around the feeling ground frequently, while others experienced just one or two, remaining stationary throughout.

The fluctuation in heartbeats was just as varied. One visitor, for instance, with a resting heartbeat around 90 beats per minute, shifted between 85 and 95, while another, starting at 100, stayed close to that range. Some showed broader fluctuations—from 70 to 100. A few experienced a gradual decline in heartbeat, while others saw sharp spikes.

Even when visitors shared the same emotion, like ‘Joyful,’ their heartbeats were completely different. This underscored how personal emotional experiences can be, and how looking at patterns within each individual might reveal something meaningful about how we feel and express emotion.

One moment that stood out was when a visitor described shifting between two very different emotions, and her heartbeat spike seemed to align perfectly with that change. At the same time, there were visitors whose heartbeats barely shifted, even while moving through a range of feelings. Some even showed slower heartbeats during emotions like ‘Energizing.’

Altogether, this exhibition opens up both insights and questions—about the intricate relationship between body and emotion, and the endlessly unique ways we each inhabit our inner worlds.