In last month’s Portfolio section, we highlighted images from Intersections, the SIGGRAPH 2006 Art Gallery. This month we continue to look at this exhibit, which included 88 wall-mounted pieces that ranged from digital paintings and collages to new forms of art such as “motion painting,” algorithmic images, LED optical art, robotics, electronic fiber art, and 3D animated Lenticular prints.
Other Intersections highlights were interactive art installations that allowed visitors to use their bodies to control various aspects of the artwork. Viewers were encouraged to step on virtual puddles to cause flowers to grow, use their heart rate to affect the movement of virtual people, control the movement and lighting of a balloon ballet, feel temperature changes in an abstract animation by touching a thermally reactive table, splash water on a water fountain that lights up when it senses the water, and use Internet chat sessions to control the growth of a robotic plant.
The art gallery also contained experimental Web art and interactive programs that pushed the boundaries of what can be done using the Internet and computer programming. In addition, there were sculptures created using digital processes. The pieces ranged from abstract to representational and static to dynamic. Some began as mathematical models and others as artistic ideas; one was triggered by sound to create moving spikes of liquid metal that climb up and down a spiral cone. Other sculptures were the result of 3D computer models that are output on 3D stereo lithography printers.
A selection of Intersections images appears on these pages. —Karen Moltenbrey
Vladimir Sierra: Still Life #2 The artist’s work is heavily influenced by Japanese ukiyo-e prints from the 1800s and by Spanish modernista architecture. Though the piece appears abstract in design, it is in fact a loose rendition of a still life featuring a close arrangement of pottery.
Tim Borgmann: Shape.53a#2 This piece is the result of merging traditional and modern work flows. The images were created with Realsoft 3D, with some post work in Photoshop. The artist created all the materials and shaders procedurally.
Carlo Séquin: Hilbert Cube This 3D work, which was later rapid prototyped, emerged from a recursive procedure that started with a simple path along the edges of a cube, and each corner was replaced with a copy of the path, scaled down by a factor of two.
Dennis Miller: Introspection This piece represents the artist’s attempt to bring the principles of organization and development drawn from musical composition into the visual world. It was created in 3D using POVRay, a public-domain image compiler, and Cinema 4D.
Zack Booth Simpson: Moderation An interactive algorithm project, it extends the infrared touch-screen technology presented at SIGGRAPH 2004, which used multiple, diffuse infrared light sources cast from oblique angles. Here, the image-processing system detects where a person is standing, thereby generating a flowering of colorful images at the participants’ feet.
Toshihiro Kamei: CODE_LINE_Yellow Here, the artist observed real plants to understand their form and structure, and then wrote an algorithm to express the data. The process was performed in LightWave and LScript.