SIGGRAPH’s Art Gallery again presented work connected with the digital world and its relationship to analogue media. The organisers exhibited 107 artists. Two installations illustrate the range.
Jeff Liebermann’s Slink is a steel spring approximately 70 centimetres long, stretched in front of a blue-lit frosted-glass panel. Several hundred blue LEDs create the light and flash too quickly for the eye to perceive directly. The spring is driven into oscillation from its left side, while the LEDs flash at a matching rate to create the impression of a standing wave.
#Liebermann Installation
The LED surface is divided into strips whose flashing frequencies can be adjusted independently. Liebermann can stop the apparent standing wave or make it travel forwards or backwards in each section separately. The resulting animation repeats every five minutes.
The second work is an interactive installation called reacTable. Visitors place Plexiglas blocks on an illuminated table. A symbol on each block indicates its function, including a sine-wave generator, flanger, wobble effect, pulser and percussion module.
#reacTable
Each block generates or modifies sound. When visitors place the sound modules on the table, they connect automatically. Rotating and moving them changes the routing and filter values, continually producing new sounds and musical arrangements.
