We use “coherence” in two linked operational senses.
Nervous system coherence — the natural state of the human nervous system when it’s in an environment that matches how it evolved to function. We start from a baseline that already helps. Our installations are sited in heritage gardens, arboretums, parks, churches, cathedrals, ruins, and other historic and natural spaces — places where the natural world or the architecture is already doing some of the work of calming and grounding the body before our installation begins. The venue is the first layer of the design.
From that baseline we use entrainment to gently guide the nervous system the rest of the way back to coherence. Heart and breath in rhythm, parasympathetic activity returning, the felt sense of safety in a body that has been holding too much sympathetic charge. The body knows the way; we help it get there. Our light, our sound, and the art itself provide deliberate signals the nervous system can synchronise with and follow back into regulation. This is what we mean when we say our work brings “audience nervous systems into coherence and regulation” — and what we mean by “the coherence the modern world has stripped out.”
Coherence between technology and the living world — light and sound designed to work with the nervous system rather than against it; built environments and ambient frequencies aligned to the body’s tolerances rather than overriding them. In the broader sense, light, sound, and art can be designed to work in coherence with our nervous systems and with the natural world.
Both senses run together. An installation cannot entrain a nervous system into coherence if the installation itself is incoherent with how nervous systems work.
Both are instances of a wider structural principle the company works from — see the-coherence-principle.