The SIGGRAPH 2005 Art Gallery: Threading Time will showcase digital artwork that maps or traces threads through time and space. Six world-renowned artists were invited to exhibit their works in the SIGGRAPH 2005 Art Gallery in addition to the featured juried works. A record number of 1,100 pieces were submitted from which 53 artists were chosen. Works include 11 Art animations, six Art Papers, three Art Symposia discussions, six Art Installations (to be shown in the adjoining Emerging Technologies area) and three distributed performances on Access Grid.
SIGGRAPH 2005, the 32nd International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, will take place July 31-Aug. 4 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
The SIGGRAPH 2005 Art Gallery: Threading Time showcases digital artwork from the cerebral to the visceral. The artists examine the passage of time and the marking of space in their work: some lingering, some looping, some humorous, some perennial. All of the work will engage the audiences perceptions of time and place, said Linda Lauro-Lazin, SIGGRAPH 2005 Art Gallery chair from the Pratt Institute in New York.
More work by fewer artists gives a greater depth to the exhibition, she continued. Each piece is inherently digital it cannot exist without computer graphics. However, the exhibition is arranged by curatorial theme and content. Here the technology is in the service of the art not the other way around.
The SIGGRAPH 2005 Art Gallery is collaborating with the SIGGRAPH 2005 Computer Animation Festival, Emerging Technologies, Sketches, Access Grid and Web Programs to provide artists with a wider forum to speak and exhibit their work.
A Few Highlights from the SIGGRAPH 2005 Art Gallery: Threading Time include:
INVITED ARTISTS
* Camille UtterbackEXTERNAL MEASURES UNTITLED 5Untitled 5 is an interactive art installation. It creates imagery that is painterly, organic, and evocative while also remaining completely algorithmic. While the specific rules of the system are never explicitly revealed to participants, the internal structure and composition of the piece can be discovered through a process of kinesthetic exploration. Engaging with this work creates a visceral sense of unfolding or revelation, as well as a feeling of immediacy and loss. The experience of this work is the experience of embodied existence itself a continual flow of unique and fleeting moments. The effect is at once sensual and contemplative.
* Jim CampbellAMBIGUOUS ICONS SeriesAmbiguous Icons explores the relationship between information and meaning in the context of reduced or compressed levels of information. Observers are exposed to grids of LEDs on which figures move through space. They go seamlessly through analog and digital worlds. The electronic panels hang like wall paintings and are both aesthetic and powerful.
* Perry HobermanMY LIFE IN SPAM Series and ART UNDER CONTRACT (End User License Agreement)ART UNDER CONTRACT satirizes the endless attempts to price and profit from what has become known as "intellectual property" a term that emphasizes ownership above all. The viewer must accept a stringent End User License Agreement (the document that appears with all new software) before looking at the work.
The MY LIFE IN SPAM prints consist of superimposed images of every Spam email message that the artist received over a given period of time. Since deciding to save his Spam in 1998, Hoberman has amassed a large archive of useless, often offensive messages. He notes that the amount of Spam he has received has tripled (on average) each year. This piece showcases the Spam in an expressive and intuitive manner.
* Paul Kaiser and Shelley EshkarARRIVALViewers peer down onto small figures moving through an ambiguous synthetic world of the video game. The piece presents viewers with not only a spatial, but also a temporal puzzle. A portion of the figures move forward in time, the others move in reverse; and since the piece loops perfectly, it has no beginning or end.
* John GerrardWATCHFUL PORTRAIT (CAROLINE)This work presents two virtual portraits that track the position of the sun and the moon at all times. This is achieved by inputting the precise scientific information as to the movement of these elements and designing the portraits so they follow these co-ordinates with their eyes and head at all times.
JURIED ARTWORK
* Ansen SealeEVERGREENRather than suspending a single moment, this photography examines the passage of time. With the aide of a digital slitscan camera (of the artists invention) the horizontal axis of the image is rendered as a time exposure. A single sliver of space is imaged over an extended period of time with moving objects inserting themselves into the data stream at different speeds and directions.
* Brian KnepDRIPDRIP is a site-specific piece. Organic patterns grow and flow along gallery walls and pillars. The piece inhabits these structural elements and becomes a living architectural detail. This work explores complexity-out-of-simplicity and infinite-out-of-finite. The works brings architectural spaces to life.
* Jan PiribeckCOLORTINThis project uses GIS (Geographic Information Systems) to chart the geography of physical and psychological space. The goal is to make maps of individual and societal perceptions, views and opinions which serve both to unite and separate human beings from one another.
* David CrawfordSTOP MOTION STUDIES SERIES 13This project is a series of experimental documentaries that chronicle the artists interaction with subway passengers in cities around the world. The aim of the project is to create an international character study based on the aspects of identity that emerge.
* Kate PembertonTRACERTThis piece is an examination of how traditional craft ideas translate into the modern multi-media networked world. A sampler has been cross-stitched from a transposed graphic of a Tracert DOS command. TRACERT can be seen as a modern metaphor for the crafted tradition of creating cross-stitched samplers.
* Roman VerostkoIllustrated limited edition artist book of George BOOLE'S DERIVATION OF THE LAWSThis edition attempts to honor Boole with illustrations created with algorithmic procedures that embody his theories. All of the drawings and brushwork for this edition were executed with original coded procedures. Since these procedures are informed with Boolean operations, the illustrations are descended, to some degree, from his pioneer work. To some extent, they are expressions of Boole on Boole.
* Jessica Hodgins and a Team of Artists, Actors and Computer ScientistsORAL FIXATIONSORAL FIXATIONS is a single channel video installation that evolves over a seven-hour time period. The project is a darkly humorous look at a habit of endless consumption and the resulting accumulation of waste. A narrative gradually emerges from the on-screen action. An interdisciplinary team of artists, actors and computer scientists produced this project.
For the first time in SIGGRAPH history, selected storyboards and concept art from the Electronic Theater will be shown in the Art Gallery. They will provide an insight into the creation of the animations. These 52 beautifully executed artworks will include boards and concept art for award winning animations.
SIGGRAPH 2005 Art Gallery: Threading Time opens July 31 at 1:00 pm and closes Aug. 4 at 5:00 pm. For more complete details, visit http://www.siggraph.org/s2005/main.php?f=conference&p=art.
SIGGRAPH 2005 is sponsored by ACM SIGGRAPH, a leading professional society for computer graphics and interactive techniques. Information on ACM SIGGRAPH membership and other conferences and activities can be found at www.siggraph.org.
Bill Desowitz, former editor of VFXWorld, is currently the Crafts Editor of IndieWire.
