text and images by Joe Nalven (except as noted)
August 25, 2003

© 2003 Joe Nalven

This was the first year that SIGGRAPH held its conference and exhibits in San Diego, California, and more than 24,000 persons attended the event. The City Council of San Diego took special notice of SIGGRAPH's 30th Anniversary, proclaiming the last week of July as Digital Art Week and underscoring the tone of the events in and outside the convention hall--that the spirit of art flourishes in new media and new technology. ABOVE: San Diego Convention Center--ground floor looking up. The architecture of the setting was an invitation to the spirit of art to roam and reinvent itself. The Art Gallery in the Hallways The art gallery director, Michael Wright, took advantage of the spaciousness of the convention hall. Looking for a new approach, Wright located most of the artwork in the hallways rather than confining it to a closed environment. ABOVE: Art Gallery on the 2nd Floor Hallway, San Diego Convention Center The Guerilla Studio and the Printer's Perspective One of the first to arrive at the print area was Ken Musgrave, also known as Doc Mojo and CEO of Pandromeda. He was eager to get a large format print of one of his fractal landscapes printed. The Guerilla Studio made it possible for attendees to bring in a digital file (or create an image on one of the many work stations) and have it printed on fine art paper, canvas, or banner cloth on a large format HP or EPSON printer. As I admired one of his images, Musgrave said, "You can also download a transporter from our site for free and explore the fractal landscapes we create." One of his favorite images can be found at the following URL: www.kenmusgrave.com/blessed.jpg. I was curious about whether an algorist (Musgrave) would mind being co-opted by a photo manipulator (me): "Would you be open to artists borrowing your images to make a collage?" I asked. "That would be great," he replied. A word to the wise: write Ken for permission first: musgrave@pandromeda.com. ABOVE: Ken Musgrave Jon Cone managed the operation of the large format printers at the Guerilla Studio. Jon and his collaborators printed large format prints for conference attendees--FREE. Jon was particularly impressed by the Sony Artisan Color Reference System. To me, it is just a hooded Sony monitor; to Sony, it is "an integrated display solution engineered to deliver stable, accurate, and repeatable color results." But to Jon, the Sony Artisan monitor allows for accurate soft proofing of the image, particularly for the print setting contrast. The Sony monitor's dynamic range of contrast compensates for the appearance of black and white on various papers. You can see more accurately what the color profile looks like on different papers. ABOVE: Jon Cone The Fog of Emerging Technology The roomful of emerging technology offered a tantalizing choice for digital imaging--the FogScreen from Finland, which draws an immediate crowd, especially when people walk through the projected image (see photo below). This technology was presented for the first time in the United States at SIGGRAPH 2003. The company describes the technology at its website: The basic components of the screen are a laminar, non-turbulent airflow, and a thin fog screen (or any particles) injected into and inside a laminar flow. Created this way, the fog screen is an internal part of the laminar airflow, and remains thin, crisp, and protected from turbulence. When the screen is formed, images can be projected onto it. The screen can be translucent or fully opaque. The projection properties are like that of an ordinary screen, and can be used with either front or back projection. The company recommends a projector with 3000 ANSI Lumen or more with a minimum distance of .5 meter between the projector and the screen. The "fog" can be made of a variety of substances although the company prefers the use of water and uses ultrasonic waves to generate the fog. The Finnish company is located at the Seinajoki Technology Center. Emerging details can be found at its website: www.fogscreen.com. Large amusement parks and technology-oriented museums would be a logical placement, especially with the initial cost being 100,000 euros. ABOVE: The FogScreen ABOVE: Joe Nalven walking through the FogScreen. Photo by Diana Jeon What to do in the Exhibit Hall Exhibit halls for conventioneers are like county fairs--except instead of cows, flowers, gemstones, and art mixed together, the focus is sharpened. Here, computer-related hardware and software competed for attention. Book publishers and schools from New Zealand, South Korea, and across the U.S. provided another point of view. In the midst of the compact showcasing, attendees could draw with archaic hand tools (colored pencils). And just around the corner, the Wacom tablet-monitor offered the modern alternative. ABOVE: Drawing demonstration at the Imageworks Pavilion in the Exhibition Hall. Jeremy Sutton flew into San Diego for the day, hopscotching from another convention in Las Vegas. After picking up his new book, Painter Creativity 8 (Focal Press), Jeremy danced over to the San Diego County Office of Education for another community-sponsored digital art event. Jeremy competed against Tiger Lee in day two of the Iron Artist Competition, which brought together lively and highly qualified digital artists. The goals of the competition included showing how different software and different personalities would transform common source images in a limited time, and also having a discussion of creativity based on the results created in this context. An educational video is being prepared; to obtain a copy, please contact the author of this review. ABOVE: Jeremy Sutton and publisher reps for Focal Press The Community Side of the Conference Conference organizers acknowledged budget losses at SIGGRAPH 2001 in Los Angeles and SIGGRAPH 2002 in San Antonio. These losses put pressure on various activities such as cutting back the conference by one day. Art Gallery Director Michael Wright took the momentum of a cutback in a different direction. He visited local San Diego art and technology institutions for nearly a year to promote an external side to the SIGGRAPH conference. This community involvement was officially promoted on the SIGGRAPH web launch page, and conference organizers encouraged its members to visit local digital art venues in San Diego. The resulting collaboration between the conference at the Convention Center and the many community art events was a first for SIGGRAPH conferences. One of the community events was a digital art show held at the San Diego Art Institute (soon to change its name to the Museum of the Living Artist). Luminaries in the SIGGRAPH community joined with the local artists to kick off the community side of Digital Art Week. ABOVE: Two of the several SIGGRAPH members who attended the reception at the San Diego Art Institute's California Digital show were Victor Acevedo (left) and Roman Verostko. Acevedo was a member of the L.A. Digilantes (name given to eight digital artists for their vision of computer art), and his art explores the structure of space, building geometric space frames or objects using 3D software. See his SIGGRAPH 2003 artwork at: www.siggraph.org/artdesign/gallery/S03/2d/0554.html. Roman Verostko describes his first project dating back to 1968 when he used a Univac for an animation, and achieving his the first algorithmic brush stroke in 1987. Verostko also served in 1988 on the board of ISEA at its beginnings in Utrecht where it worked to bring the fine arts and computer graphics together. View his SIGGRAPH 2003 algorithmic artwork at: www.siggraph.org/artdesign/gallery/S03/2d/0103.html. The first day wedded the community to the conference, with the action moving from reception to reception. From the San Diego Center for the Moving Arts and the Fusion show, to the San Diego Art Institute reception, the stalwarts ended the day with the final reception at the traditional Sake Barrel Reception. What is the Sake Barrel Reception? The conference included a variety of points of interest such as those organized as Birds of a Feather sessions. These 40 some sessions are attendee-organized and based on common interests, environments, technologies, or backgrounds. SIGGRAPH has been using one such event for the past 16 years to kick off the conference: The 16th Media Performances and Sake Barrel Reception, spearheaded by Japanese artist Toshihiro Yatsumonji. This year the event was held at the AIGA Center just across from San Diego's new ballpark that is still under construction (Petco Ballpark). ABOVE: Japanese artist Toshihiro Yatsumonji projected his animations on the wall prior to the breaking open of the Sake Barrel and the sharing of the sake among the attendees. The projected image offered the opportunity for the author to try out an experimental digital capture with his Olympus C5050--comparable to a motion blur picture with a film camera. Electronic Theater, et al. And yes, I enjoyed watching the Matrix Reloaded fight sequence along with the 26 computer animations (out of 635 submissions) at the Electronic Theater held offsite at the larger Civic Center venue. And there was much more with technical papers and education forums. At Ozone, another Birds of a Feather session that programmed 15-30 minute presentations around Art, A-Life and Archaeology, a lone voice for the socialist revolution called for using video technology to offer a viable alternative to the capitalist, high-cost production of the studios. Such were the range of voices under the big tent in San Diego. 2003 SHOW DETAILS: SIGGRAPH 2003 San Diego Convention Center San Diego, California USA July 27-31, 2003 www.siggraph.org/s2003 2004 EVENT: SIGGRAPH 2004 will be held at the Los Angeles Convention Center, August 8-12, 2004, in Los Angeles, California. This conference will be the 31st International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques. Details are available at: www.siggraph.org/s2004 About the Author: Joe Nalven is an anthropologist, lawyer, and digital artist. He has been active in the San Diego digital art community and recently served on the SIGGRAPH 2003 art gallery subcomittee. Joe's art website is www.digitalartist1.com. A hidden link to his SIGGRAPH artwork is at: www.siggraph.org/artdesign/gallery/S03/2d/0024.html. Joe Nalven can be reached at jnalven@aol.com.

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