A Foray into Experimentation, Illusion and Surreal Expression
at the SIGGRAPH 2003 Art Gallery

- By Diane E. Shapiro for the Silicon Valley SIGGRAPH Chapter

The curators of the SIGGRAPH 2003 Art Gallery made an interesting comment on the current state of digital art through their presentation of this year's gallery show. One bold action that evoked a plethora of comments from conference attendees was the sheer number of pieces that were included in the show. In the Art and Animation Catalogue there are 177 pages devoted exclusively to the display of the art gallery pieces. And, in addition to the huge number of pieces, the choice of display space was new and refreshing if not somewhat controversial. In years past there was traditionally an "Art Gallery" room devoted solely to the presentation of the digital art. One advantage of the choice to display the show in its own room is the ability to control the environment in which the art is being displayed, including the light levels, size of the space and other critical details that influence the user's experience of the art. This year the show, for better or for worse, was presented throughout the upper level of the conference hall as well as inside the Emerging Technologies room. It was as if the curators were saying that digital art is now very mainstream and therefore it should be displayed ubiquitously and not confined to it's own novel realm.

I was particularly fascinated by the choice to display several art pieces inside of the E-Technologies room. There is often a very fine line between "art" and "technology," and I thought this was a clever way to subliminally reference the relationship between the two disciplines. Many pieces that show in the Art Gallery often strike me as items that could easily be transferred to the E-Technologies display without notice, and vice versa.

Art Experimentation - Installations in the Emerging Technologies Room

One of the advantages of working in the digital art discipline is the freedom to expand into multiple dimensions and different non-visual mediums. Digital art is not bound to the 2D canvas the way traditional art generally is. In fact digital art is often more concerned with making a statement, exploring different mediums, or distorting perception rather than painting a pretty picture. And there is often less of a focus on the actual visual outcome of this type of work and more of an emphasis on its overall psychological effect on the viewer. This can be evidenced in the two particular pieces in this year's show.

Bruce Wands created an "interactive music installation" titled "Variations 703" that requires viewer interaction to complete the piece. It is a sculpture of cubes and tubes with spheres sitting on top. The viewer can move the spheres and thus change the effect of sound that is emitted from the display. Many modern art critics would challenge the idea that such a display is actually "art". Rather it might be seen as an "interactive experimentation" or an "experience," but not art. I don't have an opinion on the issue. I just find it fascinating that this sort of display is considered "art" by the powers that be at SIGGRAPH as opposed to "technology." The viewer composes sound and music by moving the spheres in space. Is it Art? Is it an Emerging Technology? Or is it just a fun experience?

Another such piece is "Waves_H" by Kumiko Kushiyama. This work is defined as an "interactive sculpture." The viewer touches a large touch-screen display, which then shows an image moving in reaction to the viewer's touch. The image looks like ripples in water created by the viewer immersing their fingers or hands in the "water." So the piece is actually "digital water" that takes shape only when touched by the viewer. In this way, the experience of this piece is completely unique and different for every viewer.

Illusion

Another common obsession for digital artists is the creation of illusion, which evokes the essence of something that may or may not actually be present in the physical work of art. The pointillists experimented with this to some degree. Put dots on a page and up close they look like dots but far away they compose a larger image as the viewer's eyes and mind loose track of the minute details and switch to perceiving a more generalized and synthesized view. The art is actually a bunch of dots. But our perception of the work is generally not as "a bunch of dots."

In "This is a Bottle" by Jason Howey a still life scene is rendered by computer code. This piece explores the same phenomenon that was explored by the pointillists only with ASCII text instead of dots. The page is covered in tiny ASCII text, which is strategically colored to create a larger image when the piece is viewed at a distance. There is no actual drawing of a bottle, a fork, or a plate. There is just a lot of different colored text on a page. But from a distance the text is imperceptible and all that is perceived is the still life of a bottle, a fork, and a plate. Is it text, is it an image, or is it both? Our eyes tell us one thing, but our mind tells us another.

"Battle Game" by Michelle Gay (see additional picture below) follows in the footsteps of the pointillists as well. Only instead of using random shapes, the artist used the C++ source code for the game Quake. So the idea is taken a step further. Instead of using random shapes, text with meaning and a useful purpose is appropriated into the illusion of a woven tapestry. Up close you see the C++ code and at a distance you see the Bayeux Tapestry. The illusion is impressive. The texture of the text/code is convincing as the threads of a woven tapestry; the pattern and composition of the text/code mimics the texture of a woven material. It is an interesting exploration of how we teach our minds to perceive things in a particular way (as woven threads) regardless of what we actually are seeing with our eyes (lines of C++ code).

Kamran Moojedi continues this theme in his work titled "Stephen Hawking Portrait". This is a piece that is largely constructed of pencil plotter lines drawn by a computer on a background of tiny numbers. Upon first glance the piece looks like chaos created by pencil lines. When the piece is first viewed there appears to be nothing, just plotter lines on a background of text. But if the viewer stares at the piece long enough, eventually the shape of a human face will emerge. The face has to be found within the chaos. It is incredibly subtle, and I imagine that a lot of viewers may not have the patience to really discover the coherent image. In the Art and Animation Catalogue's distanced depiction of the piece the face is evident. But when viewed in real life the piece delivers more chaos than it does order and it take some time for the viewer's eye to make sense of the composition.

"Hannya" by Yoichiro Kawaguchi (see additional pictures below) explores a similar effect. In the Art and Animation Catalogue the piece is actually described as "an illusion of stereoscopic images". A screen displays what at first looks like a bunch of polarized lines. They shimmer and shine or stand still based on the viewer's physical orientation to the piece. If you stand and stare at it long enough the face of a devil begins to appear. But because it is not completely obvious upon the first observation, the effect is that you might question whether you are actually seeing the face of a devil or if your mind somehow filled it in much the same way that your eyes and mind might make the random patterns of clouds display the shape of an actual real world image.

"Inclination of Time" by Hyunsuk Kim (see picture below) also delivers an interesting illusory experience. It consists of photographs that metamorphose over time. The picture of a baby morphs into a father in one frame and into a mother in an adjacent frame. When I viewed the piece at SIGGRAPH I thought that the picture changed depending on where you stood in relation to the frames. But in actuality it is an animation that changes the picture over time, and the movement is independent of the viewer's physical orientation to the piece. The animation is so slow that it is not even perceived as an animation. And the end effect is that your mind is playing tricks on you.

In a similar vein Joohyun Pyune's "Hanging Memory" (see pictures below) provides the viewer with a visual metamorphosis, only this piece does not use calculated animation. Instead the illusion is created when the viewer walks around the piece. From the side angles the viewer sees transparent blue/black fabric and a real hanging twig beyond the fabric. From a direct front view the viewer sees a picture of a girl on the surface of the fabric, and the twig beyond the fabric is obscured if not completely invisible. The fabric from the front angle also delivers an intense moiré pattern, which creates the illusion of movement on the actually still surface.

One of my more favorite pieces in this year's show is Monika May's "Out My Window." This piece masquerades as a nature scene of tree branches and leaves. It is built in 3D space (with what looks like a 3D modeling program) but contains blatantly 2D leaf-like images. This is the opposite of the traditional approach to visual art, which is a 2D space that uses shadows, highlights and perspective to evoke the illusion of a 3D scene. The whole setup disorients the viewer because it goes against what we expect to see in a piece of art hanging on a wall. Although the leaves are drawn as flat 2D elements, the branches are modeled in 3D, which further confuses our perception of the scene. The color, size and shadow of the elements in the composition all work together to create the perception of a 3D space. But the flat, choppy-edged 2D leaves throw our mind for a loop and create a disturbing effect as the eye struggles to resolve the dissonant composition.

Invisibility of Medium

I am always impressed when I see works of digital art that look as if they are composed of entirely traditional media. In the world of computer animation the developers are constantly striving to hide the signature elements that evoke the feeling of computer genesis. In fact, research and development in computer graphics has come so far that we can now create human flesh and skin on a screen that is almost imperceptible as a computer creation. A few pieces in this year's show rose to that height. Dona Geib's works of art, including "Remains of the Day" and "St. Patrick's Doors," (see additional pictures below) incorporate digital painting, photographs, and gold leaf metal. But when viewed they look like traditional oil paintings. Similarly, "Wallworks" by Jurgen Faust are photographic prints that from a distance look like fabric.

Surreal Expression

Richard A. McCann and Janet L. Parrish-McCann created my two most favorite pieces in this year's show. "Bits of Knowledge" and "Mother Sees All" (see additional pictures below) are two sculptures that transcend the typical digital art emphasis on the bizarre and different and instead push for depth of meaning. "Bits of Knowledge" is a display or model of two miniature model skeletons as symbols of the past erecting a billboard which depicts a scene of the present with (according to the artists) "hopes for a bright future." The figures are expressive, the scene is engaging, and the piece is packed with symbolism that makes the viewer ponder the artist's message. Without a direct explanation from the artists, the viewer is forced to calculate their own interpretation, which is often the case with many works of surrealistic art. "Mother Sees All" is an ornate chest of drawers with the female anatomy (breasts, belly, and genitals) welcoming the viewer inside the drawers. Within the drawers are mini scenes depicting (as quoted by the artists) "the earth's crust, the womb for her population and the bottom of her fiery bowels." Tiny lights and colorful mosaic stones and tiles make the piece feel as if it is candy waiting to be eaten. And the half open drawers draw the viewer in with a voyeuristic curiosity.

Visual Art with Movement

SIGGRAPH would not be SIGGRAPH without some visual art that moves. The computer graphics world is obsessed with animation. And animation makes its way even into the Art Gallery, which is traditionally about still visual art not animation. Two such pieces eagerly caught my eye.

"Gravity" by Michael Sansur is a collection of light emitting diodes displaying bouncing dots of light. The dots of light don't just move, but they actually bounce with precisely calculated movements that evoke the real world effects of gravity. The tiny light bulbs turn off and on in concert to give the effect of bouncing objects that could be balls that children are bouncing for play. Is this art? Or is it just an ornate display of technology? I'll admit that the piece was engaging. I not only watched the bouncing balls of light for some time but I actually analyzed the piece to the point of realizing that the five different bouncing lights were bouncing at different but consistent speeds.

The other captivating piece in this category was "Andy" by Dan Baldwin. "Andy" is a 2D still scene of a melancholy looking man seated in a room and surrounded by interesting objects: a lighted plastic Santa, an object with a painted clown that is juggling shapes while balancing with one foot on top of a beach ball, and a table lamp that has fallen to the floor. When I first saw the piece it just looked strange. The main character looked weird and the room looked chaotic. I wasn't sure what the artist was trying to convey. And something was very strange about how the composition was displayed. It is dark at the top and light at the bottom, which creates a very unexpected aura. But the most interesting and odd thing about the piece is the television set sitting on top of a little table. The TV set is actually some kind of monitor with static displayed on the screen, and the static is actually MOVING. For the first number of minutes that I was staring at the piece I did not even notice the moving static on the TV screen in the composition. We are so accustomed to the presence of television in our daily lives that I did not even notice its foreign presence in this otherwise still work of art. Once I did notice the "real" TV, I marveled at how normal it felt in the composition. It was so well integrated that it seemed natural, yet it was so totally unnatural. If the TV screen is moving, then every other part of the scene should be as well. Yet the scene did not need to move. And in this way this piece of art is a great depiction of our everyday lives: we are transfixed humans, among oddly familiar objects, paralyzed in response to the spell of the moving television screen.

This is what I love the most about the digital art of SIGGRAPH. The art embraces the freedom to use multiple mediums, which usually evoke surreal and illusory visual effects that make the work incredibly poignant and appropriate as a depiction of our present life in this world.

Select works of art from this year's gallery show are currently traveling the world in the SIGGRAPH Traveling Art Show, which will be on display in San Francisco in June of 2004. Go to the San Francisco SIGGRAPH chapter website (http://www.sfsig.org) in May of 2004 for more details on the upcoming Traveling Art Show's visit to San Francisco. The 2004 SIGGRAPH Art Gallery will be on display from August 8th through the 12th at the annual SIGGRAPH conference, which is being held at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, California. For more information on the conference go to: http://www.siggraph.org/s2004/