Sana Maqsood

Sana Maqsood is an installation artist, Lead UX Designer, and educator whose work explores the relationship between the body, emotion, and technology through immersive installations, biofeedback systems, sound, and interactive media. With over a decade of experience in UX design and emerging technology, her practice bridges art, research, and human-centered technology. Translating real-time brainwaves into visuals and sound, Waves of Us captures the fleeting moments when two human minds synchronize, blurring the boundaries between self and other. Through extensive research into biofeedback technologies, Maqsood developed a system that transforms invisible states of mind into a shared sensory experience. This sonic installation focuses on the unique moment when two human minds come together to create a multi-sensory experience that can exist only once. Driven entirely by brainwave activity and synchrony between participants, the work reflects on the importance of fleeting moments, human connection, and the mind’s response to stimuli.

Who are you? Who are we? What can we create when our minds come together? How can we blend together? This sonic experience aims to focus on a unique moment when two human minds come together to create a multisensory experience, which can only be created in this exact moment in life, showing us the importance of fleeting moments and our minds reaction to stimuli. An experience that is purely driven by two people's minds and the synchrony between one another. Sana's journey in creating Waves of Us was inspired by two moving experiences in her life: a sound bath in Bali, Indonesia and a sound sculptured theater in San Francisco, California that is experienced in pitch darkness. Both experiences had common characteristics in that they are based on impact to an individual by sound and vibrations. This paired with Sana's user experience background and constant desire to understand humans on a psychological level, pushed her to see what else she could explore when it came to human beings, which is where Biofeedback comes in. Biofeedback is the study of humans based on body functions in order to create the best personalized experience.