In the area of digital performance, a standout work is J. Walt Adamczyk's Autocosm 2007, a continuation of his ongoing Autocosm project that premiered at SIGGRAPH 2005.

Another area of Global Eyes that will no doubt garner a great deal of interest is digital performance. One of the standout works, Autocosm 2007, is by a California artist, J. Walt Adamczyk. This work is a continuation of his ongoing Autocosm project that premiered at SIGGRAPH 2005, in which the artist creates artificial worlds in solo live performances. An autocosm is a self-contained personal world, apart from the world we all share. In this case, it is a world of growth and evolution, of life and transformation. It is a realtime 3D animation that is somewhat like Fantasia, only it is performed in front of a live audience, hence Adamczyk has dubbed his work, Spontaneous Fantasia. It is his way of bringing the acts of drawing and animating into the domain of live performance.

Adamczyk began this groundbreaking work in 2003 after years of work in real-time effects and animation for movies, TV and location-based entertainment. "Live performance is a way I get to connect with an audience -- a way to let them share the fun of exploration that I experience in the studio," he explains. "For many years, I've created realtime systems that were used in the studio only, but the excitement that I had making things develop and evolve almost never made it out of the studio."

In his 2005 piece, Autocosm: The Gardens of Thuban, we ventured into a new world near the distant star Thuban (Alpha Draconis) in the constellation Draco. In the course of the piece, the world grows and, with the help of a catalyst, bursts into life. The action is an allegory of awakening and transformation.

"There is something magical to me about 3D objects moving through space," says Adamczyk. "Even a simple rotating shape captures my interest. Computer graphic techniques allow us to create these with a new facility -- to achieve forms that are realistic or impossible, or something in between."

For new fun ways to use a cellular phone, Performing Arts for the Future Mobile Generation by Hiroshi Matoba predicts new styles of play that children will enjoy with future mobile phones. 

With these pieces, Adamczyk explores a new kind of performance that, like improvisational theater, never repeats itself. "These performance works are not complete, but always in a state of change. The only time a piece is finished is when I'm performing it -- but it lasts only as the moment. With the push of a button, I erase it, and it is gone. It's my way of breaking away from the notion that animation has to be a polished, precious artifact. It can be something more loose, more dynamic, more... spontaneous!" You can preview Adamczyk's work at www.spontaneousfantasia.com.

Those of you who are interested in new fun ways to use your cellular phone will no doubt enjoy Performing Arts for the Future Mobile Generation by Hiroshi Matoba, Shizuoka University of Art and Culture. These two performance works predict new styles of play that children will enjoy with future mobile phones. One is made from six units of wireless displays based on LCD technology. The other is based on three units of wireless LED projectors.

Although the Art Gallery is at different venues than the main exhibition, SIGGRAPH 2007 shuttle bus service will be available for round-trip transportation from the San Diego Convention Center to the performance venues at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Cal-IT2) and the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts (CRCA) at the University of California, San Diego.

J. Paul Peszko is a freelance writer and screenwriter living in Los Angeles. He writes various features and reviews as well as short fiction. He has a feature comedy in development and has just completed his second novel. When he isn't writing, he teaches communications courses.