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FORMLITH

By Hannes Bend · DE

FORMLITH begins with a dark surface in a place people pass through. Our bodies continually emit infrared radiation, outside the range of human vision. The proposed thermal and depth sensing would translate that heat and movement into a shifting field. One person would see a formation change with their presence. With several people, the fields would meet and form something no one could produce alone. After sustained presence, the dark surface would open into virtual architecture, navigated through bodily movement. I conceived FORMLITH in 2014 within Metaverses, the art and research project I initiated at the University of Oregon. It emerged from collaboration across neuroscience, quantum and nanoscale physics, creative technology and contemplative practice. The published paper Mindful Technologies: Research and Developments in Science and Art includes a dedicated FORMLITH section describing motion and thermal sensing research between the University of Oregon and Virginia Tech. I first-authored and presented the paper at the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence's 2016 Spring Symposium on Well-Being Computing at Stanford University. The presentation received a Best Presentation Award. The wider programme included EEG research on responses to visual images, exploratory meditation studies, and the realized mYndful biofeedback environments. My subsequent Biofields, AWERE and SEAing Breath projects continued this inquiry through heart-rate and breath-responsive experiences. SEAing Breath brought it into museum and public programmes, including the Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science. The supporting PDF connects these realized works and research records to IN & OUT and the related Heaven or Hell proposal, including its adaptive-interface patent lineage. FORMLITH itself has never been realized. These five AI-assisted views make its intended encounter visible: the waiting surface, its architectural setting, individual presence, shared presence and the virtual threshold. The original research poster detail connects them to the earlier proposal. For me, wellbeing belongs to the relationship between attention, body and environment. Could an artwork help us notice a bodily process that normally escapes awareness, and encounter another person through it? That question needs artistic and scientific evaluation. A heat map cannot read a whole person or establish what they feel. I want the sensing to open possible perspectives, while keeping its limits visible.

Category
CONCEPTS MIXED MEDIA
Approved
14 October 2026