SIGGRAPH 98 REVIEWED : BY GREG PEARLMAN

Wearing liquid crystal stereoscopic glasses looking dow into a screen at a portion of someone's leg I am given a scalpel. Reaching under the screen I begin cutting into it. I can feel the tension of the skin splitting and can hear the sound of the slice as I press and drag the scalpel across the immaterial seemingly live flesh. Next I am told to press hard until I can feel the bone. This is a project created by the University of Colorado Health andSciences School of Medicine Center for Human Simulation (www.uchsc.edu/sm/chs) as a means to train surgeons on simulated live flesh rather than a cadaver. It was just one of many exhibitions featured at Siggraph '98 (Special Interest Group in computer GRAPHics).

Siggraph, a branch of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), is the world's largest annual exposition of the leading computer graphics technologies, products and services presented by the industry's established leaders and emerging vendors. This year's conference took place in Orlando, Florida July 19-24 and featured courses, panels, papers, a touchware galley, a guerrilla gallery, the exhibition floor, digital pavilions, digital campfire, the electronic theater, a career center, job fair, sigkids, an interactive dance club and a 25th anniversarycelebration.

Siggraph began in 1974 in Boulder, Colorado with only 600 attendees and the worldwide computer graphic market amounted to $540 million. This year the market was up to $63.5 billion and the number of attendees was estimated at 60,000. The growth in attendance merged many international cultures and ideas.

From France came Maurice Benayoun, exhibiting his piece "World Skin" in the Touchware Art Gallery. It is interactive art which could be categorized as a virtual reality experience. Approximately ten spectators stood in a darkened room wearing LCD glasses surrounded by screens onto which a universe of mute violence with ambient sounds of a modern battlefield were projected. As a participant, I was given a device to drive the group through the war zone and digital cameras were distributed to the others. With my thumb on a small pad pushing according to the desired direction the entire room moved through the zone, passing through tanks, soldiers and civilians caught in the line of fire. People with cameras took pictures of the VR environment which immediately printed out just outside the room to be picked up on the way out.

Another interesting exhibit in the Touchware Art Gallery was a telepresence installation called " Project Paradise". One walks into a private booth and sees a naked man and woman on video monitors whose bodies appear to inhabit a forest setting but are really in the same building you are in. You can then control a robotic arm to feel their body. The interaction occurs through telerobotics, live video and audio conversations between participants. The piece was created by the Center for Metahuman Exploration.

Elaine Rechin from Scotland displayed a sculpture called "Windgrass" which contained 768 strips of grass-sized metal. When blown across, the tips of each blade, which contained tiny incandescent lights, lit up.

Motoshi Chikamori and Kyoko Kunoh created an interesting piece called "Kage". In a darkened, room a spotlight illuminated colored cones set on the floor. On top of each cone was a tiny sensor which triggered a specific event when touched. One such event was the shadow of a jetliner, projected by a ceiling mounted video projector. The sensors were hooked into a macromedia director application that understood each touch as a key command returning true or false.

Paul Vanouse created an installation called "Items 1-2,000" containing a living naked man half submerged in wax inside of a large glass case. On top of the glass over his body were bar code stickers which when scanned revealed the inner tissues of his body.

In "Telematic Vision" created by Paul Sermon from Germany, two identical blue sofas were placed in remote locations. In front of each sofa stood a video monitor and camera. The camera images were relayed between the site via an ISDN line, chroma keyed together and displayed on monitors in front of each sofa simultaneously. Viewers in both locations assumed the function of the installation and sat down to watch television, experiencing a live image of themselves sitting on a sofa next to a telepresent person.

Along with the many interactive works shown were 2D works printed on paper. Tactility has always been a characteristic of art, and the greatchallenge of digital art is to have a tactile process and surface. Many forms computer art attempt to create the illusion of tactility. Madge Gleeson, a pioneer computer artist, spoofs the idea of authenticity in digital art. Her work exhibited called "Replica" was a contemporary still life of edible and fake pears. In the printed output, both pears are strikingly similar in visual appeal.

In the Electronic Theater two great works stood above the rest in terms of quality and originality. The first was the Academy Award-winning "Geri's Game" created by Pixar. Geri is an old man playing chess with himself in the park. Somehow he manages to win every time, even if it means cheating. The film opens in the morning of a sunny autumn day as Geri sets up the pieces and begins to play. He is a kindly looking old man but when he walks around to the table to make moves for the black side he becomes his nasty alter-ego. The film follows the game in Geri's imagination as nasty Geri drives nice Geri to the brink of defeat. Nice Geri finally wins by cheating outrageously. The film concludes with Geri on his own, enjoying the spoils of battle at the end of the day. The second was "Hand Drawn Spaces", choreographed by Merce Cunningham. This virtual performance featured figures modeled and rendered as three-dimensional sketches dancing across three projection screens and the spaces in between.

The exhibition floor was an experience of sensory overload in itself. In the dimmed space, a couple of football fields in length, giant booths competed for attention with bright, flashy logos and giant screens displayed animation or software demos. Several people in electronic body suits danced on stages displayed as 3D animated characters in real time.Representatives worked the floor and companies offered a variety of services, such as Newtek's professional tutoring from the Lightwave team.

The Silicon Graphics booth boasted the world's biggest real time theater, capable of immersing hundreds people at one time. The theater was used to present the new Onyx 2 super visualization computer which was linked up to an orbiting satellite. The Onyx 2 was created to allow large groups of people to navigate geospacial terrain data. It is capable of drawing 18 trillion polygons a second, rendering a clear horizon out to 100 miles and making eye color visible from outer space.

The Onyx 2 is also powers "Disney Quest" (which opened June 22, 1998), an enjoyable VR theme park. The most thrilling attraction is the roller coaster. Here you build your own roller coaster ride by laying out the loops and twists and scenery. To ride it, you enter a large metal cylinder attached to robotic arms (the same technology used by the military for combat flight training). After being strapped in you enjoy a full range of movement coupled with the graphics of your creation. By the time you walk away your blood is definitely pumping.

Several exhibitors threw parties in the evening and if you asked nicely you could probably score a ticket. Many events had conflicting times, places and performers to compete for your attention. The Amazon Interactive party was most enjoyable primarily because it was held at the Orlando Museum of Art. It was a bizarre experience watching hundreds of drunk international computer geeks groove to the sounds of a live band and wander through the halls of the museum looking at the art until three o'clock in the morning. Security looked tired and grumpy by the night's

end.

My favorite product being sold on the exhibition floor was the Venus 3D. It is a digital camera that takes only one shot to create a 3D model (with a surface) of a person or object, with shutter speeds up to .005 seconds. This product could be purchased for a reasonable $10,000. Another cool tool I spotted was a machine that could carve digital 3D models into physically present objects, for only $1500. In November, Lego releases their new brainchild: robotic Legos. Yes, you build robots with Legos! A set called "Mindstorm" will be available for $200 and comes complete with all parts and an easy-to-use graphical programming interface for programming the robot's "mind". The robot receives instructions from a infrared beam and comes with tank treads for riding over rough terrain and gripping claws to pick things up. It is believed that just as ATMs broke through a major sociological barrier to widespread acceptance of the computer as a common appliance, digital toys will not only become commonplace, but will recreate the way people interact with computers.

Many people attend Siggraph in hopes of finding their dream job. The career center posts numbered resumes in a large room on boards according to job category. Recruiters select prospects then proceed to a pick-up area for resumes and samples. There was also a separate room where companies in the industry could post numbered job openings. Interested job seekers were able to forward resumes to the appropriate companies and rooms were set aside to conduct interviews. At one day's job fair prospectives were given the opportunity to present themselves at employers' booths. Most booths were either for gaming companies such as Simm City, or feature film special effect companies such as Rhythm and Hues or IBM's Digital Domain. Many recruiters were looking for experienced 3D animators. Needless to say, the career center was busy all week.

Panel chair Celia Pearce calls 1998 "The Year of the Human" for computer graphics. She says that "For the past 25 years, we have concerned ourselves primarily with tools, technologies and techniques. Over time we have occasionally entered into a realm of the sublime, but mostly, we are just trying to get everything to work right. Fortunately, we've gotten better, so much so that we can now begin to take a hard look at what it all means". Many panels addressed this paradigm. Some topics of discussion included ubiquity in computing, "transparent" interfaces, and more meaningful forms of interactivity.

The improvement of navigating 3D worlds on the internet was a hot topic. Sun Microsystems, makers of Java, announced the completion of Java 3D. This allows developers to easily build, render and control the behavior of 3D objects and visual environments on the web. Developers can upload 3D objects as 3D objects without any special compression. The new software is available at www.sun.com/software/graphics.

The panels also addressed the three major phases of modern computing: big computing (circa 1960s), the personal computer and the integration of the virtual and real worlds, which we are just now transiting toward. Mark Weisner of Xerox coined the term "ubiquitous computing", addressing the need for computers that are designed for a specific task rather than a one size-fits-all approach that dominates today's computer design. The general idea of ubiquitous computing is that computation should be both transparent and everywhere. Some goals in this realm are to create a seamless feel from device to real world, make a calm device that gives you a piece of mind and design devices that take little attention. If computers are tools, then this ubiquitous way of computing is the ultimate goal. Charles Ostman of Ozone lectured on nanotechnology, along the same lines as ubiquitous computing but on a smaller scale. He spoke of this technology as existing. He mentioned organic robots on a protein-sized level that can enter the body for preprogrammed purposes, such as rebuilding tissue and destroying disease agents. For more information on nanotechnology he can be contacted at charlesooo@aol.com.

Siggraph '98 was a good year and well worth attending. It was pleasurable seeing pioneers of computer graphics and hearing them speak, though with so much going on I was only able to see but a fraction. There was much to learn from the world leaders in computer graphics for the novice and the expert. Both the arts and industry were buzzing with experimental computation. I got a sense of how the future is evolving, and from where. I walked away with a feeling of the world becoming a sort of interconnected brain which will grow and unify.