As SIGGRAPH 2024 celebrates more than 50 years of bringing the world together annually as the world’s leading education experience showcasing the latest in the computer graphics industry, the conference looks toward the next 50 years while featuring findings with the Art Gallery and Art Papers programs. This is where art meets technology, as the advancements of art, language, and contemporary media art will be displayed.
The Art Gallery invites attendees to closely examine contemporary media art culture with varied practices ranging from craft to design to installation, software, hardware, mixed media, sound, and more. This year’s theme, “Beyond Words: Transcending Language,” invites artists to present projects highlighting innovative approaches to language and technology, along with their unique artistic perspectives. The event will take place at the Colorado Convention Center from Sunday, 28 July, to Thursday, 1 August 2024.
“We wanted to rethink the relationship between art, technology, language, and culture — reconsidering it through the latest developments and AI technology, which is becoming more and more dominant in our everyday lives with large language models. And, of course, language is important because it’s the foundation of our entire culture. It shapes how we think and interact with the world,” Dr. Şölen Kiratli, SIGGRAPH 2024 Art Gallery Co-Chair, said. “It’s allowing us to open new windows and critical discussions while giving opportunities for artists to create new expressions, explorations, and experiences,” she added.
This year’s Art Gallery acknowledges that the essence of language is at the heart of human culture. The Art Gallery takes attendees on a captivating journey through the evolution of language technology in creative expression and the broader societal dialogues. SIGGRAPH 2024 recognizes that the harnessing of human language on an unprecedented scale is epitomized by large language models (LLMs), a technological advancement that signifies not only a significant leap in AI capabilities but also a deeper integration of machines into linguistic, visual, and cultural environments.
“We’re looking at language as a technology, both human and machine technology. We aim to get a different sense of the concept beyond the devices we usually put on the market,”Mohu Moruti, SIGGRAPH 2024 Art Gallery Co-Chair, said. “This means making connections to technology through cultural and philosophical means, inviting artists to bring their perceptions of media arts and unique engagement with technology. In other words, transcending limits and boundaries to achieve a diverse yet cohesive media arts representation.”
The SIGGRAPH 2024 Art Gallery takes a comprehensive approach to language that extends beyond verbal communication alone. Language is defined as any structured and symbolic system used to convey meaning, encompassing words, signs, symbols, images, and other nonverbal cues. With this perspective in mind, SIGGRAPH 2024 invited artists whose work spans the realms of art, design, technology, and research to contribute to this crucial exploration with their creative practices. This year, there were 188 submissions from artists. Of these submissions, 12 projects were selected and will be featured in the exhibit.
“We believe that the Art Gallery has a unique position within the conference, which is much needed within this large industry and community. Since art does not have the mission to be a mass commodity, it is less entangled with capitalistic and market-driven agendas. Many of the artworks the jury carefully picked for the Art Gallery are highly critical, some posing uncomfortable questions about the ramifications of the technologies that we create that ultimately shape humanity,” Dr. Kiratli added.
While the Art Gallery serves as an interactive installation, SIGGRAPH Art Papers is the premier venue to publish critical findings within these diverse fields of art practices where they converge on screen, through interactive methods, and within digital, mechanical, or biological interfaces. Accepted papers are published in The Proceedings of the ACM on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques (PACMCGIT).
The Art Papers critically explore contemporary media art culture, spanning practices from craft to mixed-media and algorithmically generated content. As we transition from visual to acoustic spaces, new methods and questions are essential to understand the impact of algorithmic advancements on media art. This program serves as the premier venue for publishing insights into how these diverse practices intersect and evolve within digital, mechanical, and biological interfaces, under the constraints of our networked, planetary environment.
