Heartbeat of a City is a walkable projection-mapped installation that transforms urban history into a spatial experience. Visitors move through a twenty-foot hallway where each footstep triggers visual and sonic changes across a fictional port city. Inspired by the histories of Singapore and San Francisco, the work explores migration, modernization, protest, rupture, rebuilding, and the changing identity of cities.
Visitors walk alongside a projected row of storefronts. As they cross sensor zones, the city changes decade by decade. Food stalls, markets, communication hubs, clothing shops, service stores, and social spaces gradually transform, showing how daily life reflects larger historical forces.
1900 - Migration + Trade
Informal food stalls, handwritten signs, open-air markets, oral communication, handmade repairs.
Informal food stalls, handwritten signs, open-air markets, oral communication, handmade repairs.
1930 - Commercial Structure
More permanent storefronts, bilingual signs, organized menus, printed materials, growing middle class.
More permanent storefronts, bilingual signs, organized menus, printed materials, growing middle class.
1950 -Rupture
Fire, earthquake, scarcity, political unrest, protest, damaged architecture, collective resistance.
Fire, earthquake, scarcity, political unrest, protest, damaged architecture, collective resistance.
1970 - Reconstruction + Regulation
Concrete storefronts, fluorescent lights, standardized layouts, packaged goods, radios, televisions.
Concrete storefronts, fluorescent lights, standardized layouts, packaged goods, radios, televisions.
2000 - Globalized Modernity
Neon signs, malls, digital screens, branded goods, computer repair, cafés, global consumer culture.
Neon signs, malls, digital screens, branded goods, computer repair, cafés, global consumer culture.
Why
This project is driven by an interest in how cities construct identity over time, particularly through moments of rupture, acceleration, and reinvention. I was initially drawn to Singapore’s rapid rise to independence and its negotiation between modernization and tradition: the tension between industrial growth and inherited cultural forms, between infrastructural efficiency and lived memory. At the same time, I am equally interested in San Francisco’s volatile growth cycles: the Gold Rush boom, natural disaster, waves of migration, and the emergence of distinct districts that operate almost as semi-autonomous cultural enclaves. Both cities reveal how urban identity is not stable but constantly rewritten by economic shifts, political transformation, and environmental forces.
Rather than attempting a fully historically accurate reconstruction (which would require extensive archival validation and decade-by-decade precision); I decided to merge key thematic aspects of both cities into a fictionalized urban timeline. This approach allows me to focus on shared structural patterns: independence movements, industrialization, natural disaster, waterfront transformation, material innovation, and district formation. By working fictionally, I can represent the essence of these urban transformations without being constrained by exact historical documentation. This shift also allows me to prioritize the technical and interactive goals of the class: sensor integration, projection mapping, embodied navigation, rather than spending the majority of time sourcing and clearing archival imagery.
Aesthetically, combining both histories opens up a richer visual language. The installation can move between traditional architectural forms and industrial materials, between wooden settlements and steel infrastructure, between hand-drawn textures and mechanical overlays. Conceptually, it allows the project to explore dualities: tradition versus modernization, resilience versus fragility, civic growth versus environmental vulnerability. Presenting this through a walkable projection-mapped floor is important because it shifts urban history from something read or viewed into something physically navigated. The visitor’s body becomes the mechanism that advances time, positioning them not as a distant observer but as an active participant in the city’s unfolding narrative.
How
The project is being developed through a combination of technical prototyping and historical research. On the technical side, I established a proof-of-concept backend using Arduino-based pressure sensors to detect footsteps across the floor surface. These sensors communicate with projection software (Unity/TouchDesigner workflow), allowing movement to trigger visual state changes. each section is being restricted to 5 seconds, 5 segment chunks, over the span of 100 years.
Parallel to the technical build, I have been studying archival materials from both Singaporean and San Francisco history to ground the fictionalized city in real urban forces. Rather than replicating exact events, I am analyzing recurring factors that shape urban transformation: shifts in clothing and public appearance, food culture and markets, transportation systems, building façades and materials, advertising language, newspapers, consumer goods, and the types of products circulating through everyday life. These surface-level cultural markers act as indicators of deeper structural change: industrialization, migration, economic booms, disaster recovery, and modernization.
This research process directly informs the projection design. For example, changes in transportation might alter the spatial rhythm of the projected streets; shifts in building materials might change the visual texture of the ground plane; evolving advertisements or headlines could appear as layered fragments beneath the visitor’s feet. By grounding the fictional city in real observable urban components, the installation reflects how cities “push and pull” in response to economic, environmental, and political pressures. The method is studying archives and then abstracting them into responsive visual layers.
The technical system behind Heartbeat of a City connects physical movement to projected visual change. Arduino-based motion sensors are placed along the walking path, dividing the hallway into temporal zones. As visitors walk through the installation, each sensor detects their movement and sends a signal to Unity. Unity then triggers the corresponding batch of videos, allowing the projected city to shift from one historical moment to the next. This makes the visitor’s body the main interface: instead of clicking, scrolling, or reading a timeline, they activate time by physically moving through space.
The projection system is built around three synchronized projectors that work together to form one continuous city street across the hallway wall. Each temporal stage is divided into three separate videos, one for each projector, so the storefronts, crowds, and environmental details can span the full installation space. Unity manages these video outputs and coordinates them with the sensor input, creating a real-time relationship between the viewer’s position and the city’s transformation. This setup allows the installation to feel less like a single screen and more like a walkable environment, where technology becomes a hidden structure supporting the experience of moving through urban history.
Iterations over time
