SIGGRAPH 1999: technOasis

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Chair(s):

Marla Schweppe -
- Rochester Institute of Technology
- Northwestern University
- School of the Art Institute of Chicago
- The Ohio State University

Art Show Administrator(s):

Margaret Thompson -
- Rochester Institute of Technology

Art Show Overview:

The SIGGRAPH 99 Art Gallery: technOasis presents 100+ artworks including digital paintings, drawings, photographs, sculpture, installations, Web-based projects, animations, and site-specific works. For the first time, experienced docents guide tours through the gallery providing insights into the artists’ visions and methods. In gallery talks throughout the week, the artists themselves offer further insight and opportunities for direct interaction with attendees.

The concepts of this years’ installations integrate well into the technOasis, with elements like water, sand, and light. Participants interact with each other, with digital beings, and with objects via intriguing means: movement through space, the pulse, a net, the placement of a cup on the table. A silver ball slowly draws patterns in the sand. Approach some “paintings,” and you will be transported into another world.

SIGGRAPH 98 initiated ARTsite for Web-based artwork: new forms of artistic expression that wrap around and extend beyond the Web. This year’s site is available remotely via the Internet before, during, and after the conference, online in the Art Gallery and the Creative Applications Lab during the conference. Some of the works utilize features unique to the Web to create a sense of community, connectivity, and interactivity. In some, the method of exploration applies chance and disorientation to parallel the content. Some have powerful imagery, concepts, sound, and structure, and clever writing. All are strong examples of electronic art delivered on the Web.

Each artist takes a unique approach to generating two-dimensional artwork digitally. The show includes digitally inspired painting, collages, algorithmically generated image components, images created with X-rays, in 3D software, with “digital” lights or produced on a plotter. The variety is tantalizing.

Artists’ imaginations run wild with creativity. As an audience, we experience the variety of experiments performed by these artists to communicate ideas. The questions to ask as you experience technOasis are:

What idea, thought, or vision is the artist communicating to me?

Do I understand or am I confused?

If you attend the conference, enjoy the work and the space in the first person. If you are looking at this catalog after the event, imagine the opportunity to experience the creative energy of over 100 artists working with digital technology in the last year of the century. Reflect on the incredible developments in the digital art world in the past 50 years.

All of us on the Art Gallery: technOasis Committee invite you to explore these questions and their answers during and after SIGGRAPH 99. We have enjoyed working with the artists who raise them, and with each other, to present technOasis to the international computer graphic community.