CONTRIBUTIONS The SIGGRAPH 2003 Art ... - ACM Digital Library

CONTRIBUTIONS

The SIGGRAPH 2003 Art Gallery: State of Art in Digital Arts Dena Elisabeth Eber Bowling Green State University While experiencing art, viewers are best served by simply letting the art talk to them rather than thinking about the medium the artist used to make it. However, in some ways, the experience could be about the fascination with the medium, especially a new one, or perhaps recognition of its unique qualities and distinctive language. The former favors art for the sake of expression that looks through the tool thus making it invisible, and the latter celebrates the medium, allowing artists to explore new possibilities so they may extend their artistic palette and expressive capabilities. The two approaches to viewing and making art are far from mutually exclusive and indeed feed one another. CG03:The Art of SIGGRAPH 2003 thankfully encompasses both perspectives, as it is a showcase of expressive art that includes a healthy dose of introspection about the unique qualities that the semi-new digital medium provides. The exhibition contains an astonishing 189 works including sculpture, two-dimensional pieces, digital video and animation, as well as six critical essays. After 30 years of SIGGRAPH annual conferences, the 2003 art gallery returns to the roots of computer graphics with a focus on animation and video, print, and sculpture, thus emphasizing artistic expression that transcends the underling technology. Despite this, many works still pay homage to the digital seed from which they grew. After all, digital artists are still in the process of forming a new place in the language of art to come. Considering the time of its initial seed, digital art is presently at an interesting turning point. Although artists working in more traditional media, such as printmaking, photography, and sculpture are extending their expressive possibilities by absorbing digital technologies in their process, there are still those who identify with digital media as a distinctive tool that affords a unique language. Perhaps in the near future, as Ann Spalter [3] predicts, digital arts will be embedded in much of what we do artistically

20

Computer Graphics

to the point of making it almost invisible. In the end, it is the art that matters and the experience it affords for both the artist and viewer. However, what is new now is part of the artistic process and will, in some cases, be part of the expression. Digital arts are part of the larger art continuum and are thus connected to a network of media that influence one another and ultimately embody the human condition and creative innovation. While the works in the SIGGRAPH 2003 art gallery are about artistic expression, many also question and celebrate a new voice with digital technology. Although their art is ultimately about something much larger, a number of works by artists such as Juliet Ann Martin, Patrick Lichty and Hans Dehlinger inherently question or point out idiosyncrasies of the digital medium as an element of their processor as part of their motivation. Martin’s print From Computer Art to Digital Art (figure 1) is the antithesis of what she refers to as computer art, or a medium about process that separates the body from the soul. Instead, her work is what she calls digital art and through scale and the work of her hand she includes the body in her process. She is left with a multifacited product that she classifies as cybernetic art. Martin references the digital medium by creating work that is about the combination of machine and human, resulting in imagery that could only exist with digital technology, thus celebrating the medium. Patrick Lichty’s 8 Bits or Less series (figure 2) also celebrates digital, but unlike Martin, the medium sets a structure from which he questions the notion of truth surrounding it. Lichty uses a Casio WristCam, which is a low-resolution wrist-based digital camera. The inaccuracy of the imagery questions reality, but in a way 180 degrees removed from high-end digital color and resolution. Although he works with the pictures after shooting them, he uses the initial image capture as an artistic challenge that questions reality and truth through pixel obscurity. By enthusiastically revealing pixels, Lichty embraces and then transcends the medium

to create works that embody and talk about narrative in a new way, thus contributing to contemporary artistic language. Although his reference is not as direct as Lichty’s and Martin’s, Hans Dehlinger indirectly questions a characteristic of the digital medium. Turm Unter Glas and Tree11 (figures 3 and 4) are part of a series of experiments that Dehlinger is conducting that deal with the permanency of digital media. Even with the most archival methods, digital prints may last from 100 to 200 years, depending on the source of information. This is a relatively short time and to some, it is one downfall of digital prints. Dehlinger generates his images algorithmically, which in itself is part of the digital aesthetic, but he then realizes his images in a more permanent way than prints. First, he melts the images onto glass, then he melts the sheet of glass between two others and finally, he cuts it into stainless steel using lasers. The desire to make the work archival and permanent is an indirect commentary or reaction to the current state of digital technology. These and other artists in the exhibition have created works that directly and indirectly refer to the digital medium and its unique form as it is situated in the larger art continuum of the past, today, and the future. Tied to the peculiarities of digital media, many works in the SIGGRAPH 2003 art gallery bring up questions of reality mediated by digital formalities, including works by S E Barnet and Hillary Mushkin, Mary Flanagan, Ho Chien Chang and Wu Fu Che, and Teresa (Terry) Bailey. Barnet and Mushkin’s Mario ’S Furniture (figure 5) is an interactive video game in which players move objects of different scales from miniature to human sized. The video and physical world are brought together in the gaming space where participants race against an ever-rotating camera while trying to maintain what looks like a believable scale in the resulting environment.The process simulates the part real and part virtual space of video games. As a result, the artists blur notions of virtual and real. Those taking part in the game are performers, viewers, and artists caught in the

multi-dimensional world of the physical as we know it and the simulation that digital technologies often afford us. Mary Flanagan, Ho Chien Chang and Wu Fu Che’s [Unnatural Elements: Avatar Portraits] (figure 6) reveal the gaps and seams between the physical body and its representation in digital space. That representation, or avatar, is a new form of reality arbitrated by digital technologies. The images in the Unnatural Elements series were created using threedimensional head scans that the artists stitched together using custom software. In a sense, this work is a critical analysis of the imperfections of the body in digital space, much like the imperfections of the body in the physical world of nature as we know it. The avatar is a new representation, no more real than other social representations that we construct for ourselves, just different. Perhaps, as Lev Manovich suggests [1], the different reality that the digital medium yields is one that is too real, or hyper-real. Computer graphics technology is now capable of giving us more information than we can process, certainly different from the reality that we have come to know from traditional film and photography. Teresa (Terry) Bailey’s image Tea Gypsy (figure 7) calls into question the reality constructed by the photograph and digital media. Bailey is working with what she refers to as anti-illusionism, a technique she uses to remind the viewers that they are not looking at reality or a photograph. She leaves sketch lines and unfinished areas so her paintings, as she calls them, do not claim the hyper-reality that Manovich suggests is possible. In her attempt to remove her imagery from the realm of photography or the perfection that digital tools provide, she makes Manovich’s point that we use the photograph as a reality benchmark that digital tools, because of their extreme realness, are now succeeding to simulate. Many other artists in CG03:The Art of SIGGRAPH 2003 make reference to the alternative reality suggested by digital space such as Keith Brown (figure 8) and Terry Calen (figure 9). I believe that the hyper-reality created by digital media and the subsequent reaction by artists to it is simply an extension of the expressive qualities tied to the ongoing evolution of artistic language. Many other artists in the exhibition make no intentional reference to the digital form, but in their process they are clearly extending visual language. Some even create works that clearly augment traditional processes that will seed the future of art as predicted by Ann Spalter [3]. Artists such as Melissa Harshman, Anna Ursyn and James Faure Walker are expanding traditional media by developing methods that add to specific processes. Harshman’s prints Bette Davis Chocolate Layer

Cake and Ciliege (figure 10) are both examples of how she includes digital images in her printmaking process. She incorporates digital techniques as part of serigraphy, Xerox transfer to traditional litho plates, Pronto industrial litho offset plates, and most recently, photo positive and negative litho plates. More important than the process, her work is about creating new meaning from otherwise recognizable words or images. The included works are from her Word Play series in which she chooses words from antique dictionaries and other books and layers images and colors from sources such as cookbooks and children’s drawings in order to recontextualize and create new meanings of the words. Much of her work centers on women’s issues and some are overtly political while others are playful. The key is that Harshman is creating art that seamlessly includes the use of digital tools. Much like Melissa Harshman adds digital technique to her printmaking palette, Anna Ursyn and James Faure Walker combine digital and traditional media. Walker’s Pigeons, Kyoto (figure 11) is a Giclée Iris print that started as large-scale cardboard paintings that he rearranged and later drew on top of. Walker thinks and works as a painter, but seamlessly uses digital tools to realize his multi-layered drawings, photographs and paintings. Ursyn uses a combination of programming and two-dimensional programs to create photolithography as well as photosilkscreened prints on canvas and paper. Figure 12 is an example of her work. Other artists whose digital work helps define the landscape of today’s art include Diane Fenster (figure 13), Jessica Maloney (figure 14), Cynthia Beth Rubin (figure 15), Tina Bell Vance (figure 16) and Bruce Wands (figure 17). Although not making direct commentary about the tool, these artists are celebrating art that is a natural extension of their expressive palette, thus representing an art form that inherently includes digital. In The Language of New Media, Manovich [2] challenges us to help fully define the expressive possibilities and attributes of digital and new technologies. Until we reach this equilibrium, if we ever do, the medium will remain part of the message in some way. As it becomes seamlessly integrated into other art forms, digital art and questions surrounding it will not be so apparent. Instead it will be forever embedded in artistic practice that will continue into yet another artistic phase. As it is in 2003, the future annual SIGGRAPH art exhibitions will be a part of defining that continuance.

References 1. Manovich, L. The Paradoxes of Digital Photography in Photography After Photography: Memory and Representation in the Digital Age. Hubertus v. Amelunxen, Stefan Iglhaut, Florian Rötzer (eds.) Amsterdam: G+B Arts, 1996. 2. Manovich, L. The Language of New Media. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2001. 3. Spalter, A. Morgan. Will There Be “Computer Art” in the Year 2020?, in SIGGRAPH 2003 Electronic Art and Animation Catalog. New York, New York: The Association for Computing Machinery, Inc., 2003.

About the Contributor Dena Elisabeth Eber is Chair and an Associate Professor of Digital Arts at Bowling Green State University. She served as the SIGGRAPH Art Gallery Chair in 2001 and has worked with the gallery since 1997. Her research includes the creative process for artists working with digital media, the aesthetic experience for viewers in virtual environments and theoretical writings about digital art. Eber creates digital images, virtual environments, electronic installations and digital videos. Dena Elisabeth Eber Room 1000 Fine Arts Center School of Art Bowling Green State University Bowling Green, OH 43403 Email: [email protected]

August 2003

21

SIGGRAPH 2003 Art Gallery

Figure 1: From Computer Art to Digital Art, Juliet Ann Martin. Figure 2: 8 Bits or Less, Patrick Lichty.

22

Computer Graphics


Figure 3: Turm Unter Glas, Hans Dehlinger.

Figure 4: Tree 11, Hans Dehlinger.

Figure 5: Mario’s Furniture, SE Barnet and Hillary Mushkin.

Figure 6: [Unnatural Elements: Avatar Portraits], Mary Flanagan, Ho Chien Chang and Wu Fu Che.

August 2003

23


Figure 7: Tea Gypsy, Teresa (Terry) Bailey.

Figure 8: Geo_01, Keith Brown.

Figure 9: (Left to right) 2002_18, 2002_19, 2002_20, 2002_21, Terry Calen.

24

Computer Graphics


Figure 10: Bette Davis Chocolate Layer Cake and Ciliege, Melissa Harshman.

Figure 11: Pigeons, Kyoto 2002, James Faure Walker.

August 2003

25


Figure 12: City Matters, Anna Ursyn.

26

Computer Graphics


Figure 13: Your Dreams and Omens Revealed (Series title), Diane Fenster.

Figure 14: Hold On, Jessica Maloney.

August 2003

27


Figure 15: Digital Memories (assorted images), Cynthia Beth Rubin.

Figure 17: The Earth is Art, Bruce Wands.

Figure 16: Still Lives, Tina Bell Vance.

28

Computer Graphics