by Joe Nalven August 15, 2007 (all photos by Joe Nalven unless indicated otherwise) ABOVE: A broad view of SIGGRAPH would catch attendees walking aimlessly through the wide open Sails Pavilion (top photo); a sampling of one wall from the art gallery (middle photo); the exhibition floor was also a challenge to take in (bottom photo). The 34th SIGGRAPH Conference at the San Diego Convention Center (August 5-9, 2007) had 24,043 people in attendance including artists, gaming experts, filmmakers, academics and research scientists. SIGGRAPH is officially known as the International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques. Attendees came from 79 countries with more than 230 companies exhibiting. Getting a quick fix on this year's SIGGRAPH was challenging. Joe Marks, SIGGRAPH 2007 Conference Chair from Walt Disney Animation Studios, told an early morning news media group that when he was asked for his list of the top three or the top ten things to see, he would always give a different list to the interviewer. Not to be perverse, but to point to the wealth of art, exhibits, papers and things to see. Following in Marks' media philosophy, here are my favorites (which is not to say that I would have the same list if I were writing this on another day). The starting place for me is always the Studio. The Studio represents a chance to participate and play with the digital graphic toys. If you come prepared with a hi-res image, you can have it printed free on an Epson 9800. Now this is not something really new, but I had taken more than thirty images with my Nikon D50 that had been converted to a digital infrared camera. These were stitched together in the new PS3 with a file size of more than 600MB. I wanted to see it printed at 30 x 60 inches. This was far beyond what the Studio normally allows unless the image is really cool. Score one for a really cool pic. Kathy Beals was located adjacent to the print shop and helped individuals print a folding book. (See article "To Book or Not to Book" by Joe Nalven at the Digital Art Guild webzine www.digitalartguild.com). Of course, there is a lot of hard work to network together nearly two dozen computers allowing them to drop the prepared images into a printing queue. Karl Lang managed the 2D print shop. ABOVE: (left) Karl Lang and Kathy Beal ponder the print network. (right) The problem is resolved and Karl is delighted. We think we know colors and hues. But do we really? How accurate are we? One of the devices at the Studio was a monitor-based testing program that had hues scattered in a random pattern. X-Rite provided a color vision test. One sorted the hues into a flow from one color to the next, along several different color ranges. Color blindness and sensitivity to hues became apparent. ABOVE: Marcio Carvalho, from Brazil, tries the X-Rite color vision hue test. The 3D modeling, lenticular image-making, sound cards and artists in residence were across the hall from the 2D print shop. Individuals signed up to have their faces "fastscanned" with a laser. The 3D image was printed with a 3D printer--yes, like a doll's head. Neil Schell from Polhemus reported that this device is being used by the Smithsonian to take images of archaeological objects such as deerstones in Mongolia. No need to take the real object. ABOVE: (top) Peter Rosen has his faced fastscanned. (bottom) Several 3D fastscan views of Joe Nalven. And, yes, his head was printed, but he wasn't sure that the doll-sized head he picked up was his own. Up in the SIGGRAPH Art Gallery, Alexa Smith and MD Dundon interviewed artists about their work. Their goal was to post the interviews online at the artfuture webzine (www.artfuture.com) as well as to be a source of art content for the news world. "People are starved for creative content and we are trying to meet that need." ABOVE: (Left) Alexa Smith and MD Dundon interview Lyn Bishop about the artist's book on which she led the collaborative effort: If Dreams Could Talk. (Right) With Lyn Bishop (in red) is one of her collaborators, Kumkum Nadig (India). The Art Gallery included monitor-based art, installations, wall-based art, artist books, digital performance and animations (apart from the Electronic Theatre with a wide array of shorts). The theme for this year's Art Gallery was Global Eyes that featured social content and explored transcultural and transdisciplinary approaches to digital art. The most unusual art object, as it were, was an installation by Tammy Knipp, titled Case Study 5510 / Case Study 5510-B, that mimicked a scientific study that had attendees (pseudo study participants) sit in a chair that looked like an electric chair, but really massaged individuals in a variety of ways. The loud sounds that accompanied the changes added to the startle effect, all of which was mapped out as a pulse readout. A more normal artwork was a hologram type image, titled Luminous Presence, by Paula Dawson. An interactive wall-based installation captured the image of the viewer and placed the viewer inside the bar at the Folies Bergère. In this image, I positioned myself to be with the bartender. And, of course, the bartender wandered off from time to time, totally disinterested in the non-paying customer--but she did return. ABOVE: (Upper left) Luminous Presence by Paula Dawson; (lower left) "A Bar at the Folies Bergère" by Shawn Lawson and Wafaa Bilal; (upper and lower right) Tammy Knipp setting up her "Case Study 5510 / Case Study 5510-B" and below, a participant--Joe Nalven, and in this instance the photo was taken by an onlooker. Curiously, Microsoft's new Surface--a way to surf the computer's contents without a keyboard and without a mouse--was housed in Emerging Technology instead of on the Exhibition Floor. One expects the pace of introducing new technology to fly out of the laboratory and directly onto our table tops. However, there are some intervening steps. Microsoft is working with commercial partners to introduce the Surface. For example, if you were in a lounge and wanted to order drinks. You would tap the Surface for drink menu and when you found the one you wanted you would put it into the queue and if you wanted you could order several and charge them to your table partner or split it in various increments. Then touch the Surface again and go to the song menu and pick out which ones you wanted and put them into the song queue. If you had some on your MP3 player, you could put that on the Surface and pull those songs up. Or vice versa and place those tunes into your MP3 player. (Did I really hear that?) The representatives from Microsoft were having a field day as they went from one application to the next. A paint box that you could touch your finger to and start painting on the Surface. One finger at a time or multiple fingers or multiple people at one time. If you were in a store and wanted to have your photos developed, you would place your camera on the Surface and your images would pop up and you could pick which ones you wanted printed or sent to a friend by sliding those images into the name of your email pals on another side of the Surface. If you were in a store and wanted to do a price and spec comparison, you would simply lay down the two cameras and a detailed menu would appear showing those comparisons. And on and on and on. This drew the crowds. Yes, personal home use is still a few years away but expect to see this in hotels and stores in a few months. I was wondering whether there could be a fine art paint program, not just the finger painting application they had here. I asked a knowledgeable source from a well-known device who said they were working with Microsoft and yes, there should be a fine art application on the Surface as well. But treat this as a rumor. ABOVE: A low-light photo of a Microsoft representative demonstrating the Surface. Yes, this is worth its weight in fun. I had hoped to discuss large format printers with representatives from HP, Epson, Canon, and other likely manufacturers. However, only HP had a presence on the SIGGRAPH Exhibition floor. HP touts its machineÕs color consistency. The printer's embedded spectrophotometer can be convenient to users in building profiles for third-party papers. Fred Zuill explained how HP's decision to pick pigment inks aimed for longevity was made a priority in its product development. It would have been nice to test these concepts and tools against what other manufacturers offered. Ah well, not today. ABOVE: HP's exhibition booth. (Inset photo) Fred Zuill and Jacint Humet (from Spain) discuss the HP Z6100 printer. At the end of the day, exhaustion sets in, regardless of where one finds a final resting place. Here, a woman ended up at a table in Emerging Technologies. ABOVE: A woman takes a rest. Next to her is a sign identifying the occasional presentation, "Would you like to befriend the virus?" There will be two SIGGRAPHs next year: SIGGRAPH 2008 in Los Angeles and SIGGRAPH Asia in Singapore. SIGGRAPH 2008 will run from August 11-15 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Conference Chair is Jacquelyn Martino from IBM Watson Research. Some changes are being announced for next year's conference. The announcement for next year says that "SIGGRAPH 2008 is evolving along with the computer graphics and interactive techniques community. We're dissolving the borders between traditional SIGGRAPH programs to create a more fluid, interdisciplinary conference. And we're offering presenters more flexible options for sharing their work." The art gallery is explicitly having both a curated and juried parts. The Curated Art Chair is Lira Nikolovska, Autodesk, Inc. and the Juried Art Chair is Lina Yamaguchi, Stanford University. The theme of the juried show is "Slow." Apparently, there is a slow food movement and there are slow cities (think of fast food and then reverse your thinking). SIGGRAPH Asia will be inaugurated in Singapore from December 10-13, 2008. Media contacts are Yvonne Lim, Koelnmesse, Tel: +65 6396 7181, Email: y.lim@koelnmesse.com.sg and Chew Chien Way, Flame Communications (PR Agency), Tel: +65 6259 3193, Email: chienway@flamecomms.com. ----------------------------------- 2007 SHOW DETAILS: SIGGRAPH 2007 San Diego Convention Center San Diego, California USA Aug. 5 - Aug. 9, 2007 www.siggraph.org/s2007 2008 EVENT: The 34th Annual SIGGRAPH 2008 event will be held July 30-August 3, 2006 at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, California. For more information: www.siggraph.org/s2008 About the Author: 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. He had several pieces (World Identity Cards) in the SIGGRAPH 2007 Art Gallery. ^ back to top read other Events Reports here

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