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Electrical Forest

October—December, 2009
Curated by Lauren Wolk

This fall, The Arts Center of the Capital Region is excited to exhibit the work of Noah Fischer. The main gallery will hold a newly commissioned work called Electrical Forest: Made in Troy. This site-specific work explores the distinction between industry and nature, as it is a man-made ecosystem featuring new “species” created on a factory production line. Electrical Forest is dynamic as Fischer himself who blurs the distinction between the categories sculptor, painter, designer, mechanic, DJ, videographer, arborist, and factory director.

Electrical Forest: Made in Troy is a dense constellation of actual felled trees, surrogate trees, handmade leaves, leafy projections, found objects, and mobile sculptures and lanterns. A site-specific work, the Forest invites the contemplation of nature, art, and the sublime—conjuring the regional history of the 19th century Hudson River School. Additionally, Fischer’s method of construction draws more specifically on Troy’s industrial legacy. The piece begins with a week long “Factory Phase,” during which Fischer transforms the Arts Center into an industrial production line. Volunteers from the community become workers who collectively make 10,000 unique leaves out of translucent acetate paper and gel color paints. After the factory has closed, Fischer will build Electrical Forest by recycling and retrofitting myriad discarded objects found in Troy. The dense canopy of hand-made leaves—a massive amount of fragmented film—shimmers like stained glass as natural and artificial light pulses through it. Underneath the foliage, a path leads viewers to a clearing at the center of the Forest, which functions as a panorama within the space. Here, Fischer alludes to the popular mid-19th century panoramic paintings and models as a way to represent landscapes and historical events. From the clearing, viewers watch lo-tech apparatuses that cause sculptures and lights to whirl and move, shadows of leaves, and other viewers. Within the 360-degree clearing viewers are provided an opportunity to perceive their environment

Electrical Forest: Made in Troy is a timely project. Harkening back to the pre computer-age technology of the 20th century, Fischer’s simple machines allude to the golden age of industrial production in the U.S., and links Troy to a host of other cities re-inventing themselves in the post-industrial age. Given the current state of the economy, the installation brings up many questions about how to reconcile our current recession with the American grandeur of yesteryear. Further, the concept of creating new variations of “nature” custom-made on the assembly line casts doubt on the very division between nature and industry. Mass production made the US an economic superpower, and at the same time has devastated our natural environment. Electrical Forest puts itself at the crux of this paradoxical problem. The Forest is a koan: an unsolvable riddle, which viewers ponder perhaps to no conclusion. Within Fischer’s Forest neither industry nor nature wins. Instead the two cease their battle, coming together in a new hybrid form of existence: an electro-mechanical bio-network.