How the experiment works

Can an image affect the body?

We decided not to argue about it and not to offer a ready answer. We built Teleportation Lab, an open online experiment where a person looks at a photo portal for five minutes while the system measures what happens to their pulse and their subjective state, before and after the session.

This is a study. Your pulse may slow down, speed up, or stay the same. Calm, energy and lightness may also change in different directions. All of it is data, and every response is personal. We promise nothing and suggest nothing. Just look. Your body will answer.

What a photo portal is

Photo portals are aerial images of Earth, created by Stanislav Bartnikas during flights over the planet's places of power. Images through which a person can enter a state of contact with a place and with themselves.

Every photo portal has its own character. The same portal may produce a different response in different people, or no noticeable change at all. Teleportation Lab does not try to prove a particular effect in advance. The task is simpler: let a person go through the experience and record what can be measured.

How a session works

1. The participant chooses one photo portal.
2. Before the session, the system measures pulse and asks for a rating of calm, energy and lightness.
3. The participant looks at the photo portal for five minutes, with no additional task.
4. After the session, the measurement is repeated.
5. The system shows the before and after values and the size of the change.

In extended mode, heart rate variability is measured as well. This requires a longer recording.

What we measure

Pulse. The main public metric of the study. We compare measurements before and after the session. The direction of change can be anything: slowing, speeding up, or no noticeable shift.

Subjective state. Before and after the session, the participant rates calm, energy and lightness separately. These answers help relate measured changes to personal experience, but they do not replace physiological data.

Heart rate variability. In extended measurement, the system calculates HRV metrics. They serve as an additional analytical layer. Short recordings and home conditions limit interpretation, so these values are not a medical assessment.

How the camera measures pulse

Contactless measurement uses remote photoplethysmography (rPPG). The camera picks up barely visible changes in skin colour caused by blood flow, and the algorithm estimates pulse from them, plus heart rate variability in extended mode. The camera is active only during measurement. The video stream and the original frames never leave the device and are not recorded anywhere. Face detection and cropping happen locally in the browser.

When the cloud VitalLens model is used, the cropped area is turned into a compressed sequence of thumbnails about 40 × 40 pixels, without audio and without personal identifiers. This data is sent over a secure connection through the Teleportal server, which acts only as a technical proxy and does not store it.

According to the Rouast Labs privacy policy, VitalLens processes the received data in volatile memory only and deletes it immediately after the result is returned. Only calculated numerical values come back: pulse, signal quality metrics and, in extended mode, heart rate variability metrics.

The Teleportal database stores only measurement results, participant answers and technical markers. Original images and video of the measurement are not stored.

Accuracy can be affected by movement, lighting, head position and camera quality. During measurement it helps to sit still and keep your face evenly lit. If you have arrhythmia, readings may be distorted.

What the results mean

The result of a single session shows how one person's values changed at one moment. It does not confirm a universal effect of a photo portal and does not explain the cause of the change.

Public statistics are built on the whole body of sessions. We look at how often and how much values change, at differences between photo portals, and at the relationship between pulse and subjective ratings.

How we handle data

Each session receives an internal identifier and is linked to the chosen photo portal. We store measurement results and the ratings for calm, energy and lightness.

No registration is required. We do not ask for a name, phone number, documents or any other data needed to identify a person. An email address is stored only if the participant enters it themselves, in order to receive the photo portal or other project materials.

If a participant leaves a written review, it may be published without a name and without any other link to the person. A recorded review — video or voice — is used in project materials only with the participant's separate consent, given before recording starts.

Research data is stored on a server in a European data centre in Germany. Transfers use secure connections. All published results are anonymised.

Detailed description of data processing: teleportal.art/privacy

How public statistics are built

A participant's first completed session counts towards the main public statistics. Repeat sessions are stored and analysed separately, so that response dynamics over time can be studied later.

Test sessions are excluded from the main statistics. Measurements with low signal quality or an unusually large change are flagged for review. They are not quietly deleted and not adjusted to produce a more striking result.

Limitations of the study

• This is an open online study, not a clinical trial.
• Participants choose the photo portal themselves and know that measurement is taking place.
• There is no control group and no random assignment.
• Pulse can be affected by breathing, expectation, fatigue, caffeine, stress, temperature, movement and lighting.
• Camera and rPPG give an estimated pulse, not a direct ECG recording.
• Subjective scales depend on personal perception.
• Results are not intended for diagnosis, treatment or health assessment.

We do not hide these limitations. They exist so that the data can be read honestly, without claiming more than it shows.

What we publish

As data accumulates, we publish the number of completed and valid sessions, the distribution of pulse changes, results for individual photo portals and the relationship with subjective ratings.

The principle stays the same: we do not promise an effect, we measure it and publish it as it is.

The author

Teleportal was created by Stanislav Bartnikas. For more than 13 years he has been flying over the Earth and creating photo portals at its places of power: dozens of countries, thousands of hours in the air, more than 200 international awards.

Teleportation Lab grew out of a repeated observation: next to some works people felt a strong bodily response, next to others nothing happened. Instead of a ready explanation, there was a question that could be tested by measurement. The first measurements were done offline, with small groups. The online format takes the same question to a large sample.

Short answers

Is this a medical test? No. The session is not intended for diagnosis, treatment or health assessment.

What counts as a response? Any measured change: a slower pulse, a faster pulse, or no noticeable shift. Subjective ratings can also move in any direction.

Why is pulse the main metric? It is easy to understand, it is measured before and after the session, and it depends less on verbal interpretation than self-assessment.

Can I take a session more than once? Yes. The first completed session counts towards the main public statistics, repeat sessions are analysed separately.

Why is camera access needed? The camera is needed for contactless pulse estimation via rPPG.

Is my face recorded during measurement? No. No video recording is created or stored. The calculation uses low-detail frames of about 40 × 40 pixels without audio, which are deleted after processing.

Can conclusions be drawn from a single session? No. One session describes one person at one moment.

Can a recorded review be used without permission? No. A video or voice review is used only with the participant's consent, given before recording starts.

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Technical note: the description of rPPG and frame processing is based on the public VitalLens / Rouast Labs documentation (docs.rouast.com/guides/how-it-works/) and the VitalLens 2.0 technical report (arxiv.org/abs/2510.27028).