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George (Poonkhin) Khut

A man in a puffer vest, smiling, inside a large, open industrial building.

A man placing a small black, metal device around the head of another man. The second man is smiling, his eyes closed.

A man sitting at a basic plywood table, in deep conversation with a second man, sitting on a plastic stool, inside an old industrial building. On the table is a laptop and coffee urn. Next to the table is a recording device mounted on a tripod. Underneath the table is a powerboard, a stack of electrical equipment, and a dense tangle of power cables.

A man leaning on a basic plywood table, in conversation with a second man, seated, inside an old industrial building. On the table is a laptop and two small audio speakers. The second man is wearing a simple black device around his forehead.

A man leaning forwards, looking downwards, with a serious, focused expression. In the background, a man lies on a basic plywood platform, bathed in red light.

A man leaning on a basic plywood table, looking intently at a laptop. On the opposite side of the table is seated a woman, with a serious expression, wearing a simple black device around her forehead.

A woman in a winter coat, wearing a simple black device around her forehead, lying on a white pillow, bathed in red light.

8 small blackboards, each with an identical template of the outline of an adult human body, lined up against a black wall. The first 6 templates have each been filled in with a range of written notes, arrows, wavy lines and zigzags.

A man in a puffer vest sitting at a basic plywood table, inside an old industrial building. On the table is a laptop, a range of small electrical devices, and two red lamps. The man is in conversation with a group of six people, in warm winter clothing, gathered around the table.

George (Poonkhin) Khut

born 1969 in Adelaide, Australia
lives and works in Sydney, Australia

George Khut was a participating artist in the Australian Artists' Residency Program as part of Marina Abramović: In Residence, 2015.

Explore the residency

George (Poonkhin) Khut is an Australian artist and academic at UNSW Art & Design, working across the fields of electronic and participatory art, interaction design and health. For the past 12 years he has been working with biofeedback technologies, creating intimate, body-focussed participatory artworks, that re-frame our experiences and representations of embodiment, presentness and body-mind interactions. Khut works with biofeedback technologies to challenge popular assumptions about the impact of digital technologies on the body. He challenges the idea that technology minimises our ability to pay attention and uses technology instead to slow down and focus our attention into our body, the bodies of others, and the psycho-physiological dimensions of our being.

In 2012 Khut was awarded the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art National New Media Art Award, for his heart rate controlled interactive artwork Distillery: Waveforming—a work developed as part of his residency at the Children’s Hospital at Westmead, Sydney, where he collaborated with Brain Injury Specialist Dr Angela Morrow on a heart rate controlled application for use with children undergoing painful procedures. Recent exhibitions include The Heart Library Project, exhibited in the Group Therapy group exhibition at FACT, Liverpool, UK, and MoCA Taipei, Taiwan, 2012, ThetaLab presented at ISEA2013, Sydney, and Cardiomorphologies presented at the Biennale of Electronic Arts, Perth, 2007, and InBetweenTime 2006, at Arnolfini, Bristol, UK.