Jurying the SIGGRAPH 94 Art and Design Show Deanna Morse Chair, Art and Design Show The art and design slide set, which is shown in this issue, provides a visual record of many of the works juried into the SIGGRAPH 1994 Art and Design show exhibited at the Orange County Convention Center, Orlando, Florida July 24-29, 1994. From over a thousand entries, 94 pieces were selected, representing artists from ten countries. These included 55 hanging works, 22 animations, 5 essays, 9 interactive installations, and 3 sculptures. The 1994 exhibit was unique in several ways. For the first time, a "museum orientation" video was created to accompany the exhibit. Titled "Persistence of Vision" the tenminute video included comments from the jurors and the chair, designed to place the work in a context. Second, the Orlando show included site-specific works, shown outside of a gallery setting. Above the registration area was "Winke Winke" by X-space, a robot waving brightly colored semaphore flags, providing a communication link between two computers. Another interactive installation, "Rest Rooms" by Tim Binkley, connected the men's and women's lavatories with computers that had a live video feed and a common grafitti space. For the first time, an interactive catalog was produced for the show, published on the Multimedia CD Rom. A hard copy catalog was published in the "Visual Proceedings." Some works are graphic displays of mathematical concepts. In these, the computer has determined a distinctive appearance, a syntax, that makes the work easily recognizable as computer art. Examples of this include: "MM9505" (slide 12) by Hiroko Inakage, "Blue Glass" (slide 13) by Kevin Suffern, "Azure" (slide 17) by Robert Russ and "Radiosity Ellipses with Depth of Field" (slide 25) by John Kahrs. Another more subtle signature of the mathematical nature of the computer on art works is the presence of vast amounts of visual detail in the work, achieved through layering. We see examples of this in "Sgraffito" (slide 31) by A n n e t t e Weintraub and "Memorium Tripytch" (slides 45-47) by Raffals Estate. In "Surface Tension" (slide 6) by Heather Fernon, the artist uses corrupted files to render digital photographs. In other works, where the artist has used the tools for more traditional artistic inten- tion, the marks of the computer are less obvious. Occasionally artists will intentionally manipulate their images so that they lack distinguishing "computer" characteristics. We see this approach represented in "Urban Man" (slide I I ) by Corrine Whitaker, the digital photographs of Deanne Sokolin (slides 37 39), Nancy Macko's bee series (slides 57-59), and in the collaged works of Kathleen Chemelewski (slides 28-29) and Dorothy Simpson-Krause (slides 22-23). In many of the interactive works the computer serves another function. By redefining the relationship of the viewer and artwork, the computer can serve as a medium as well as a tool. Slides 70-78 represent five of the interactive installations that were juried into the show. In "Turbulance" by Jon McCormack (slides 75-76), the viewer uses a touch screen to navigate through text and animation segments exploring artificial life. In "Please Touch Me" (slides 71-72) by Marta Guitart, the viewer is invited to stroke the computer screen, altering the animated heartbeat. Artists Toshihiro Anzai and Reiko Nakamura use the computer as a tool, as they exchange drawings on the Internet between their studios, creating collaborative paintings or linked pictures in "Renga" (slides 77-78). The primary criterion for acceptance, as stated in our call for participation, was aesthetic. As you might expect, the work was evaluated with "traditional fine arts" criteria, including use of compositional elements, color, line, form and tone. In addition, the jurors considered the aesthetic intention of each, judging the artworks on what we felt the artist was trying to achieve. We selected works that approached artistic design and creation in original ways. We looked for work that would challenge our perspectives. We included art that was visually exciting or had a strong emotional content. We see some themes in the works that were entered and selected this year. Several of the pieces represent a search for cultural roots. Some reflect the experience of being a tourist. Several look at family and memories. There were works that interspersed reality and fantasy elements. Some are obviously playful. There were a few with overt political statements. Many of the pieces considered the human form, and several were self-portraits or portraits filtered through technology. As with all art, this show challenges our perspectives, stretches the limits of the expected, embraces change, and considers the meaning of visual language, codes and symbols. Unlike many art shows, all of these artists are working with "tools" that were invented during their lifetimes, providing comment on the present. Within SIGGRAPH, the A r t and Design Show is one of the few places individual voices are expressed through technology. Much of computer graphics work is collaborative, and here is one opportunity to consider the statement by a single artist. Unlike most of the conference, this art work is not intended to be in the service of commercialism. Art and Design Show Jurors: ¢ Young Harvill, artist, software designer and Fellow, Macromedia, San Francisco, CA. ¢ Isaac Victor Kerlow, author, designer and Chair, Computer Graphics Department, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY. ¢ Barbara London, Associate Curator, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; ¢ Joan Truckenbrod, author, artist and Chair, Time Arts Department, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL. ¢ Deanna Morse, animator and Professor, Grand Valley State University, Allendale, HI. Deanna Morse Chair, Art and DesignShow School of Communications,Grand ValleyState University,Allendale,M149401 Tel: 616-895-310I Fax: 616-895-3106 Email: morse@siggraph.org Computer GraphicsFebruary1995

/lp/association-for-computing-machinery/jurying-the-siggraph-94-art-and-design-show-rJQkyZqbeb