Jean Dupuy really begins to take advantage of and enhance our perception of the world around us. Dupuy does this by transducing one sense into another, allowing the viewer to experience that sense in a different way than ever before. For example, the work Heart Beats Dust, exhibited in "The Machine" in 1968, takes an organic process that takes place within our very bodies, our pulse, and solidifies it into movement and sound. The dust within the black box is bounced and a sound is generated in response to the viewers own pulse. [1]

The viewer actively participates in the art, and thus is essential to its completion; however, they are also separated from the work itself (viewing it from the outside through a window). They are not completely immersed in the new dimensions of motion and sound, so how enriched is their perception of their pulse? The viewer experiences their own heartbeat in a new way, but are separated from it and now experiencing it from a distance.

The choice of color is quite interesting as well. The deep red of the light is reminiscent of blood and the frequency of the light is one that excites the senses [2]. The viewers reaction to this color would play a role in the piece itself because it would be evident in the rate of their pulse. The loop that is then formed by this realization causes a never ending chain of reactions (or interactions) between viewer and installation, each responding to the other.

Rather than creating illusions of motion and sound like traditional art [3], Dupuy creates a new reality in which each sense and action takes on these dimentions and acts within them. It is concrete art, existing within actual space and time rather than illusions, so it "exalts Being, because it practises it." [3]

1 Edward A. Shanken, Art and Electronic Media, (Phaidon Press Limited, 2009), 21.
2 Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, (1911).
3 Art and Electronic Media, Asociacion Arte Concreto-Invencion, Inventionist Manifesto, (1946).