text and images by
Joe Nalven and Dolores Glover Kaufman
September 1, 2005

© 2005 Joe Nalven, Dolores Glover Kaufman

Twenty-nine thousand plus descended on the Los Angeles Convention Center to experience this year's SIGGRAPH Conference (July 31-August 4). Two of those thousands were Joe Nalven and Dolores Kaufman. The LACC lobby was filled by an X-Wing Starfighter while George Lucas gave the keynote address. Elsewhere, the Exhibition Floor hosted over 250 exhibitors, the Art Gallery showed about 10% of over 1100 submissions, the Guerilla Studio had plenty to experience, and Emerging Technologies was as inventive as always. ABOVE: X-Wing Starfighter in the LACC lobby. The Guerilla Studio was a hands-on place. People could pick out a design for fingernails and have them printed with inkjet onto their nails. Others were demo-ing cyber-clothes in anticipation of a cyber fashion show. Still others brought digital files to have them printed on large format machines by some of the most knowledgeable printers around. Joe Nalven brought a file to print out a six-foot-long roll of the featured art in the new book, Going Digital: The Practice and Vision of Digital Artists (see artist signing below) with the aim of eventually having the art hanging in a gallery and making the book come alive. Michael Wright sat in the middle area of the room, capturing the images of those who sat with him and changing the photo into a painting. Slowly, over several days, Michael accumulated almost a hundred images as he once again created his Portrait Virus. ABOVE, TOP: Guerilla Studio--Michael Wright with Michael Massucci. Massucci looks at his image projected onto the wall. BOTTOM: Detail of Portait Virus. Lyn Bishop was busy each morning with Kumkum Nadig, Faculty of the Srishti School of Art Design and Technology. They communicated with students in India in an international live video conference as they all worked through an art project. ABOVE: Lyn Bishop (left) and Kumkum Nadig Down on the ground floor, the Emerging Technologies area backed up against the Art Gallery. You could press a finger against a latex screen and watch a flower blossom--or so it seemed. The finger actually was pressing into multiple layers of projected images behind the screen. ABOVE: In upper frame, latex screen shows closed flower while below the hand touching the screen "opens" the flower. Or you could draw on a screen and the drawing would move as one continued to draw. ABOVE: Emerging technology showing a person drawing on a white interactive screen There was a dizzying array of showcased technologies, so it was on to the Art Gallery. Unlike the display at Emerging Technologies where the inventor stood by to explain his gizmo, the artists were hard to find at the Art Gallery, and getting permissions to take pictures was far more difficult. Fortunately, Dolores had a series of prints included in the Threading Time theme of the Art Gallery. ABOVE: "Touring Suburbia" hung in the SIGGRAPH Art Gallery An interview with Linda Lauro-Lazin (Art Gallery Director, 2005) by Caitlin Winner can be found at: http://reports.siggraph.org/interviews/linda-lauro-lazin/index_html and also, http://reports.siggraph.org/articles/art-gallery-2005. The SIGGRAPH Art Gallery was a relatively small but significant part of the total SIGGRAPH experience. Sharing space with six interactive installations it was, nevertheless, a calm oasis in an overwhelming experience of technological buzz. Even the interactive pieces there allowed for some quiet contemplation permitting the viewer to interact--intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually--at his or her own pace. For those who had experienced digital fine art mainly on the Internet, the Art Gallery provided a real treat. Nearly all of the works were large and all beautifully printed, enhancing both scale and sense of presence. One of the criticisms often leveled against digital art is its lack of tactile quality compared to natural media (paintings), yet the works displayed more than made up for a lack of 'real' brush work. A few of the works solve this problem by combining digital printing with traditional and hand-worked techniques, including tearing the edges of the canvas (Heather Freeman), or using the prints as an element in constructions such as the wonderful kites by Mark Millstein or the Labyrinth by Joohyun Pyune. And one of the exhibitors created an illusion of brushstrokes with ingenious in-camera techniques (Ansen Seale). But many seduced with lines, patterns, and textures that no hand could have drawn before the age of the computer, while others invited viewers to enter dreamy depths of lush transparent layer upon layer, or mesmerized with illusions so real you could hardly keep from touching the surfaces. You could not help but leave the Siggraph2005 Art Gallery with the impression that, despite all of the advances in emerging technologies including new and exciting methods of presentation, digital fine art printmaking remains alive and well. On Wednesday afternoon we bunched up our activities so we could be on the Exhibition Floor. Our publisher, Thomson Course Technology, had arranged for a book signing and a fair number of the artists and contributors to Going Digital came to the signing, including Michael Wright, Helen Golden, Renata Spiazzi, Dolores Kaufman, Stephen Burns, Michael Massucci and Joe Nalven. ABOVE: Artists at "Going Digital" book signing. From left to right: Dolores Kaufman, Helen Golden, Renata Spiazzi and Joe Nalven. The days were long and eyes sought a place to rest, often finding a person corralled with his or her laptop. Another SIGGRAPH drew to a close. Next year, Boston. ABOVE: Taking a Break. 2005 SHOW DETAILS: SIGGRAPH 2003 Los Angeles Convention Center Los Angeles, California USA Aug. 31-Sept. 4, 2005 www.siggraph.org/s2005 2006 EVENT: The 33rd Annual SIGGRAPH 2006 event will be held July 30 - August 3, 2006 at the Boston Convention and Exhibiton Center in Boston, Mass. For more information: www.siggraph.org/s2006. About the Authors: Joe Nalven is the co-author of Going Digital: The Practice and Vision of Digital Artists (Thomson Course Technology 2005). He edits the Digital Art Guild's webzine, which can be found at www.digitalartguild.com. He is also an anthropologist, lawyer, and digital artist. Joe previously served on the SIGGRAPH 2003 art gallery subcomittee. Joe's art website is www.digitalartist1.com, and he can be reached at jnalven@cox.net. Dolores Glover Kaufman is an artist-photographer who began using digital media in 1995. She has exhibited her work in Boston, the Northeastern Ohio region, Tampa, Fl., New York City, Washington, D.C., New Mexico, California, and Australia. In addition to Siggraph 2005, images from her Touring Suburbia series were included in this year's International Digital Art Awards, Tech Art II at The Boston Cyberarts Festival, and La Jolla Digital. Dolores can be reached at: dgk@tampabay.rr.com. Visit her website at www.dgkaufman.com. ^ back to top read other Events Reports here

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