ERIC FORMAN | CO-EVOLUTION | PERSON AND MACHINE

ERIC FORMAN
CO-EVOLUTION | PERSON AND MACHINE

For nearly twenty years, Formans’ work has used playful interaction to reveal language, simulation, and perception issues. Underneath all is an investigation of the uncertain presence of human and technological co-evolution: the overlapping’s of natural and artificial, real and simulated, person and machine.

Eric Forman (1973) works in the intersections between art, design, and new technology. Forman develops his own software and tools to create sculptures and installations that dynamically respond to viewers and other physical phenomena. For nearly twenty years, his work has used playful interaction to reveal language, simulation, and perception issues. Underneath all is an investigation of the uncertain presence of human and technological co-evolution: the overlappings of natural and artificial, real and simulated, person and machine.
Forman’s work creates modes of interaction not often found in dominant forms of new media: subtle, slow, surprising. Sometimes delightful, sometimes unsettling, his work plays on our uneasy fascination with new technology without cynically denying its magical qualities. The technical complexity in this work is sometimes transparently revealed as itself worthy of reflection, while at other times,
it is hidden to focus on the nature of vision itself. Forman creates art to be experienced, not just seen, imbuing craftsmanship and engineering with mystery and beauty.
Eric started programming as a child in the 1980s and was an early member of the groundbreaking online media entity Pseudo Programs in the mid-1990s.
Eric Forman Studio was founded in 2003, and in 2012 was invited to be a founding member of Newlab, a next-generation innovation space in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Eric received his Masters in 2002 from ITP at Tisch School of the Arts (NYU) and his B.A. from Vassar College in 1995, where he developed his own interdisciplinary program called “The Philosophical Ramifications of Computer Technology.”
His thesis work there was a pioneering academic investigation of virtual reality and its potential impact on space, ontology, and identity. Eric is currently faculty and Head of Innovation at the MFA Interaction Design program at SVA (School of Visual Arts). He also likes to ride a bike.

“Wood/Light II – Tangle” (2020-2021)

“Tangle” is a series of intertwined geometric forms that float off the wall. Each appears to be solid wood with 3D printed joints, yet unexpectedly illuminates from within. This series is part of an ongoing investigation of merging technology with natural materials, creating surprising juxtapositions of both form and behavior.
The shapes start as hand-drawn sketches, then become 3D models randomized and mutated with a parametric process subject to both aesthetic and structural constraints. Those shapes are then selected and “cross-bred” while further tweaked by hand, in a back and forth exchange between artist and software.
Each sculpture’s geometry and light patterns in the “Tangle” series are intended to hover between organic and synthetic. The animated patterns are derived from natural systems, abstracted to create shifting glowing patterns within. The first edition, shown here, uses footage filmed under the ocean of fluid dynamics, coral reefs, and aquatic life.
This unfolding motion of a living system is abstracted into light behavior that seems ambiguously both alive and programmed.

“Human Hair Knot” (2015)

Some of the Scale/Scape series pieces have dots so small that they do not rely on blurring panels for viewers to resolve the images. The weakness of human vision is sufficient, as, at an average viewing distance, we cannot consider the pattern as individual components. The dots are discretely visible, but our brains give us no choice but to experience the gestalt of recognition. This image is from the microscopic scale, a single strand of human hair tied in a knot, adapted from a scanning electron microscope photograph.

“Death Valley” (2015)

An investigation into the thresholds of human perception, this series presents images from three scales: planetary, microscopic, and telescopic. Each image is both abstract and representational, and the scale of each is ambiguous. Apparent undulations could be molecular surfaces, or folds of fabric, or mountain ranges. This indeterminacy refers to textures and patterns found in nature, which occur across vastly different sizes and materials.
This image is from the planetary scale, an aerial view of the mountains of Death Valley, California. The image is formed by thousands of tiny holes of different sizes, an homage to the history of halftone printing techniques. Here, rather than black ink on white paper, light shines through opaque wood.
The images are translated with custom software into dot patterns and then laser-cut. The dots of light are optically blurred with raised translucent diffusion panels. The viewer’s own human visual system does the rest, interpreting the topography of holes as shadows, depth, and three-dimensionality. Paradoxically it is only when blurred that they become recognizable. The panels leave portions of the image exposed so that viewers can see the pattern both blurred and unblurred. In this way, they can simultaneously feel and examine the mechanism of their own perception.

“Dis/Connect” (2021) | [by Eric Forman, with Ben Luzzatto and Dan Gross]

“Dis/Connect” is an illegal sculpture that confronts pervasive connectivity and surveillance capitalism. It revises the near-archaic signifying formality of the traditional chandelier instead of delineating an area of mutual disconnection.
“Dis/Connect” disables all cellular and internet connectivity directly below it, casting not only light but unmediated space.
COVID-19 amplified our reliance on the technologies that enable remote connection. Our devices connect us to the virtual world, but they often disconnect us from people in the same room and even from ourselves. It is well documented that the online platforms we increasingly inhabit pose a threat to our health and well-being as individuals and as a society. Device addiction and over-use contribute not only to the proportion of personal life open to corporate surveillance but to the atrophy of our ability to simply be present.
Very few of us have been successful at managing our device usage — they are, after all, designed to be always connected, always with us, and highly addictive. It’s not that we can’t turn them off… it’s that we don’t. For those who choose to sit together beneath “Dis/Connect,” human-to-human engagement can only be device-free — an elegant provocation to the laws that ban signal jamming even at home.
Made from translucent acrylic that glows from within, each arm has RF jamming antennae instead of bulbs. The classic arrayed catenary curves of the hanging antennae cables reference traditional chandelier forms. 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G, and WiFi are all disabled in a small radius.

Read the full article on Art Market Magazine Issue #61