Is art a solitary pursuit? I traveled to Boston this week to get a glimpse into a world that says art is most definitely collaboration, a world where some powerful projects are being created, where expression is taken to new level.
Some of the most interesting work I’ve seen lately ahs been the product of an intersection of tradition and technology, and of multiple minds and hands exploring this space. The Guerilla Studio, held in conjunction with SIGGRAPH, the graphics/art/technology show, is a hands on laboratory and display area for artists who are actively working in this emerging area.
In a triple room space in the new Boston Convention Center, hundreds of artists from around the world dropped in over the week, creating together a fusion of still, moving, 2D, 3D, and multi media imagery. A dozen or so technologies ringed the area, available for individual, collaborative, or remotely collaborative use.
For example, at one end of the area art students in Bangalore, India were collaborating with artists in the Guerilla Studio in real time to create shared work. Files zipped back and forth, traditional and digital tools created different elements, and the end result blended old and new, Boston and Asia, young and older and oldest experiences into a mélange that transcended any individual. Yup, it was all enabled by a range of technology applications, but the applications were background to the real focus: art making.
Nearby, animation rendering was going on ... on thousands of machines around the world, linked together in one application of another collaboration, the TeraGrid project, from Purdue University. TeraGrid is a computing infrastructure combining high-performance computers, data resources and tools, and high-end experimental facilities around the country. The collaborating sites provide more than 102 teraflops of computing capability and more than 15 petabytes of online and archival data storage. That’s right PETABYTES. Can your mind get around the scale of that?
Just across the way, a company named PhaseSpace had motion capture suits available. You could put one on and you and your technical team would create a wireframe image of your movements – and you could map that to various pre-existing characters and backgrounds.
If you loved the way you looked, well, there were several options for creating a 3D model from a wireframe image. Literally. In goes the 3D file data, out comes a physical object. Your favorite game avatar, a design prototype of your new teapot, or that wireframe image of yourself – from digital file into the physical world.
Lest the fashionistas feel left out, fabric and clothing art were also represented. There were workshops in creating wearable art, where in boots or vests take on a whole new dimension.
But no matter what the focus area, one of the things that struck me continually was how the past, present, and future all interact to create art. I had a lot fun playing with an animation capture program. I drew each part of the frame with basic markers – how traditional is that? But used a frame capture system to record and each and quickly compile and play back my work. I could have done something similar with clay.
In the print making area, it was much the same story. Traditional inks and papers and other substrates like silk combined with digital printers and digital output. There was no differential between one end of the spectrum and the other. The cool thing was it was all part of an array of creative tools, creative toys.
At one point in the morning, Adobe’s student design winners showed off their work – which ranged from fold out 3D multi-image design from a student in France, to a London-based film-maker, to a Minnesota web designer whose work with Minnesota parks showed the ways a generation raised on interaction creates whole new styles of interactive communication. The presentation was impressive ... and once again demonstrated the seamless blending of tools and techniques from traditional to digital to emerging and experimental. It was also a pretty strong statement that the future of design is rich and strong.
By the time I clambered into my car and headed back toward the bridge, I came to believe that events like Guerilla Studio also represent the future of “the trade show.” The official show floor at SIGGRAPH, with its glitzy booths and loud noises felt so, so, 90s. Passé. The cool and exciting action was happening in the connected studio, where the real impact of emerging tools and technologies brought together past and present and people to show what human interaction and creation can really be all about.
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