SIGGRAPH Asia 2008: Synthesis


 

Art Show Overview:

This year, the 35th annual SIGGRAPH conference was held in Los Angeles, and the first SIGGRAPH Art Gallery was presented in 1982. Since then, the conference has featured many ambitious displays of digital art and interactive technologies, from Tomorrow’s Realities in the early 1990s to Slow Art at SIGGRAPH 2008.

The title of our show, Synthesis, refers to a kind of creative chaos, a random transformation of structured knowledge and exploration in digital art and emerging technologies. Thus we have combined the two programmes, Art Gallery & Emerging Technologies, this year to merge their experimental histories. We are so happy to show you this fruitful result of emerging creativity, here in Singapore, at the melting point of culture and business.

There are over 30 brilliant works altogether, and in all the projects, attendees can enjoy the vast potential and rich diversity of hybrid art and technologies. The Art Gallery presents art that transforms, melds, and transcends current Asian paradigms. Emerging Technologies presents a rich resource of delicate, aesthetic technologies and vivid, innovative ideas that define the future of computer graphics and interactive techniques.

The curated work in the Asian Hybrid Art area and other related events, including collaborative panels with the Japan Media Arts Festival, also demonstrate this area’s creative communities and possibilities.

Recently, Singapore has hosted many international festivals and art shows: ARS Electronica, ISEA, the Singapore Biennale, the Japan Media Arts Festival at the Singapore Art Museum, and more. Along with SIGGRAPH Asia, common to all these events is an undercurrent of creating tools, interfaces, and platforms for information-sharing, collaboration, or externalisation of knowledge in order to share it with society. At the end of the last century, our society changed greatly, and the new media art and technology field changed along with it. There were so many intersections between different areas of science, engineering, technology, and art that, as with the 3D boom that comes into and out of fashion, the fruitful digital-art evolution of the 1960s is sometimes forgotten. Yet, when contemplating the peak and the origin of current trends in Asian digital content, which has been highly praised internationally, we should not forget the underlying experimental arts and sensory experiments. At all times, there are infinite difficulties as well as pleasures for the explorers on the frontiers, as they establish new fields beyond the limits of previous possibilities.

Finally, we would like to express our most sincere gratitude to the contributors, sponsors, individuals, and institutions whose kind cooperation and great dedication make this show possible. They are helping all of us explore our future digital experiences.

Tomoe Moriyama

SIGGRAPH Asia 2008 Art Gallery & Emerging Technologies Chair

 

The Art Gallery in SIGGRAPH Asia 2008 reflects a culmination of creative minds – a showcase of various cultures from all corners of the globe. The experience: profound, thought provoking and visually stimulating. Twenty works selected from nearly 300 entries, while different in content, application, and inspiration, have one thing in common: successful representation of culture and exploration. Through ground-breaking digital works, the artists question and invite responses from attendees. We are extremely pleased to bring to you, at the inaugural SIGGRAPH Asia 2008 in Singapore, a collection of exciting, inventive, and inspiring creative works that will certainly make its mark as the first in Asia.

 

Stephanie Choo

 

Art Gallery Chairs

Tomoe Moriyama, Art Gallery Chair, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo/The University of Tokyo

Stephanie Choo, Art Gallery Co-Chair, Orita•Sinclair – School of Art & New Media

 

Reviewers

Jean Ippolito, University of Hawaii at Hilo 
Rika Iezumi Hiro, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Getty Research Institute 
Erkki Hohtamo, University of California, Los Angeles 
Lin Hsin Hsin, Lin Hsin Hsin Art Museum 
Linda Lauro-Lazin, Pratt Institute 
Lai Ying-Ying, National Taiwan University of Arts 

 

Video:


 

https://www.siggraph.org/asia2008/attendees/art/All_NTSC_anime30-h264.mov


Exhibition Artworks: