Sid Mehta Works
Bloom; who are you

Bloom; who are you

Project details

Role

Solo

Year

2025

Tools

TouchDesigner · MediaPipe · MadMapper

Client

Self Initiated

Project highlights

One question

who are you?

Solo

installation design & build

TouchDesigner

generative visual system

Overview

A self-initiated thesis installation where visitors meet generative mandalas, responsive sound, and a single question: who are you?

Installation · TouchDesignerSolo · Self Initiated

Thesis Paper · v1 The academic write-up PDF Bloom · A Visual Diary Mandala explorations, illustrated PDF

The world I was asking people to step away from. Loud, lit, everything at once.

The guided sit begins.

Spiral concept of evolution interested me.

I wanted to combine the spiral shape with the stories of shared human experience.

Introspective spaces

The lit room. Brighter, more reflective. People found it harder to settle.

Mandala light thrown across a darkened room
An early projection test, a single lantern in a dark studio
Foil, candles and prisms on the desk, refracting the projection
The rig at night: lamps, glass and a mandala on the far wall
The installation lit in red, with the question What is the point on the panel

Measuring the calm

Calm should not be a claim, so an EEG headband read every visitor.

Four channels, read live. The meditation score rising and drowsiness falling as attention settled.

The Bloom operator view, with live audio levels and the session log

Mandalas

Mandalas made on festival floors, then walked over and dissolved. This started from that memory.

Painted mandalas on the studio wall, and one laid out in candles on the floor
A card left outdoors: who are you, to you

Sid's record. A brain scan, a name in binary, a voice. Inspired by the Voyager golden record.

Guided meditation

A projected mandala filling a wall, with candles along the floor
Watch Full Meditation

Most people needed a prompt to begin. Without direction, reflection stayed on the surface.

Research: sketching the system, and interviews about what happiness is

Bloom

The Bloom sticker, holographic on white

Experimenting with translucent acrylic shades and reflections.

A cut acrylic mandala catching daylight

Breathe

An earlier experiment. A 2D pixel art game asking if play could make you more still.

Play Breathe

Mandalas style explorations

The goal was for people to not use the cursor. The coin is a distraction.
When you shake your hand, the mandala ripples.

Going beyond mandalas and playing with different eye tracking forms.

Try the Full Experience
A visitor at the installation, the mandala forming on their screen
A visitor working through the session

A report of what you stayed with, and what that might say about you.

Reflection

Some people closed their eyes and let go of the visuals entirely. That told me more about immersion than anything I had designed for. The generative system was doing its job, but the room was doing more.

Building the mandala engine in TouchDesigner was slower than expected. Each parameter change cascaded into three others, and the system had its own logic that took time to understand. By the end I was adjusting less and listening more.

The installation worked best when the space held still. Darker rooms, fewer people, quieter conditions. What surprised me was how much the lighting and acoustic setup shaped the experience before anyone even looked at the screen. Design kept expanding to include things I had not thought of as design.

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