The Art Gallery
Siggraph 2006
Preliminary version, only 1st Part developed
Digital fatigue or Advent of a New Era ?
The first impression out of a first walk through the SIGGRAPH 2006 Art Gallery could be termed "Digital Fatigue". But we can also find here some germs, or weak signals, or important things to come.
Have we not to day, for more than four decades, walked and stopped to admire digital painting, sculpture and, more recently, animation and interaction ?
True, some very simple ideas, such as the mobile balloon grid of XXX show that there is still place for creative minds using rather cheap if not minimal means. But that does not change a general feeling of "déjà vu" which, in fact, arises also in the main Contempory Art Shows, be it in Basel, Venice or Miami. Add to this the fact that our Digital World, seen from a large Convention Center, in an annual Event gathering Industry and Education as much as, if not much more, than Art, allots scarce room to bizarre materials (as chocolate walls or fresly oil ointed objects), provocative Thrash (sometimes nauseous), let alone political protestation (let's be PC). Even if a small card at the entrance of the floor warns the visitor that he may be expost to "adult material".
Yes, We, digital artists of today, are the heirs of an impressive generation of pioneers. And the marvelous retrospective exhibition of Charles Csuri is here to show us the length of the road they traced (and keep tracing with untired eyes) in unbroken ground. By itself, the catalog of this show will stay as a precious milestone.
On the same vein, trough a a wider angle lens, Art of the Digital Age, that Bruce Wands signed at the conference Bookshop, details the diversity of these 40 years old or new tracks, from imaging and sculpture to Net Art. The number and quality of image printing lets spring fully the pleasure or discovering, or looking once more to, the best products of our Community. Perhaps shall we personally regret not to find there the robotic theme, nor a reference to the peculiar way opened by Harold Cohen and his Aaron Code. But such an absence is probably no accident.
Here some lines on the book of Faure Walker.
Still history, but on personal theme. With the double spiraling of
Mix of Art and emerging technologies
Haptic,
To morrow, brain/tool more direcdt connexion
What says Wands about that.
Importance of the material
Importance of painting, and 2D objects power.
Importance of the tradition
More social engagement
General public PC, but freedom on Internet
Robotics and automata (eg human like automaton, Breans or something like that).
Secretary of the Paris ACM SIGGRAPH chapter.