Art and Tech at SIGGRAPH 2009

The two areas which I’m always the most excited about at SIGGRAPH are the art gallery and the emerging technologies sections. The art that gets accepted to SIGGRAPH is always top notch, and this year SIGGRAPH collaborated with LEONARDO, the leading journal for art, science and technology to bring a special issue featuring SIGGRAPH artists.

The theme of the art gallery this year was BIOLOGIC: A Natural History of Digital Life. One of the most stunning works on show was fellow Canadian, Philip Beesley’s Hylozoic Soil (video) (assisted by Rob Gorbet, brother of our own Matt Gorbet!), an artificial forest made of clear acrylic and driven by a distributed network of sensors and actuators. Also impressive was Petko Dourmana’s Post Global Warming Survival Kit, an infra-red video installation experienced entirely through night-vision goggles.

The boundary between art and technology is often blurred in the emerging technology area. For example the University of Osaka Human Interface Engineering Lab was showing off their Funbrella. An umbrella that has been modified to be able to record and play back the tactile sensation of different types of rain falling on it (including a rain of noodles, or stuffed cats and dogs). Or the Crystal Zoetrope, a 3D laser-engraved, well…crystal zoetrope. Beautiful.

Of course one of the most exciting parts of the emerging technologies section is seeing brilliant ideas and techniques that are simply executed and well within the capabilities of most artists to use in their own work. This year was a big year for tactile interfaces. The Photoelastic Touch project uses the light distorting properties of transparent rubber moulds and a polarization filter to create a tactile touch overlay on a LCD screen. Carnagie Mellon was showing a new scratch based interface for mobile devices called Scratch Input , which allowed users to place their mobile on any surface and scratch the surface to control the device (it does this using a microphone, and some audio analysis to detect gestures). Micah Kimo Johnson developed a very impressive technique called GelSight for capturing the texture of an object and using it on 3D virtual objects. Finally, Tachilab was showing a sort of side-scrolling game called Twinkle, which let the user guide their projected character though real-world objects and obsticles using a hand-held LED projector connected to a webcam.

While these projects are definitely have some high-tech behaviour, the innovation is in the concept rather than some new expensive piece of technology. Their underlying simplicity and affordability make them well within the realm of possibility for artistic use. It looks like high-quality multitouch interfaces might be well within the price range of ordinary mortals soon as well. Touchco, a company co-founded by Ken Perlin (yes, of Perlin noise), was showing off their new multi-touch material which is thin, cheap, and transparent can be placed over displays. I only hope they put it to market soon, the data you can get out of these looks incredible!

Though the show floor was smaller than normal, there were a few things of interest to our readers. 3D displays were everywhere, but they still either need you to sit in a specific location (lenticular displays. If you don’t sit just right, you get a headache), or require you to use glasses. Of these, NVidia’s 3DVision seemed popular among exhibitors, and is relatively affordable and high quality ($400 for the 120hz LCD and $300 for NVidia’s shutter glasses). Looking for 3D software, but don’t want to fork out the usual $1000+? Give the open-source Blender a try; they were showing off the new version 2.5 due out in the fall, and they have done a lot of work on the interface. Can’t afford a 3D printer? Shapeways lets you send them your model, they’ll print it in the material of your choice (including steel!), and ship it to you.