Guest Editorial

In preparation for this issue, I reflected on the countless artists, scientists, designers, and engineers who, over the last four decades of our shared history, have contributed works and pioneered ways to disseminate their results.

In 1968, Frank Malina founded Leonardo to create a forum for principled writings on art in which science and technology played an important role [1]. In that same year, the Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition made public the exciting relationship between computer research and the arts [2]. In 1982, Copper Giloth issued the first formal SIGGRAPH call for juried digital artworks and held a gallery show at the ninth conference [3]. Since then, the annual SIGGRAPH conference has consistently presented juried artworks, while inconsistently presenting scholarly papers on the relationship between art and digital technology.

In her director’s statement, Rebecca Strzelec amplifies the thought that the conference is committed to furthering contributions to scholarship at the intersection of research, technology, and the arts. In her gallery chair’s statement, Elona Van Gent introduces BioLogic: A Natural History of Digital Life, a juried exhibition of works that combine technology and the natural world.

For SIGGRAPH 2009, the Art Papers jury modeled its review and decision-making procedures on the Technical Papers’ protocols, which the industry widely recognizes as an exemplar of fairness and care in peer review. Within that framework, the jury accepted Art Papers that took a scholarly approach to articulating a clear position. Forty-five manuscripts were submitted, and seven were accepted, for a 15.6% acceptance rate. During the jury’s deliberations, four paper categories emerged: Applications, Monograph, Project, and Survey. Applications papers use computer graphics and interactive techniques on topics of interest to art communities while not necessarily being works of art themselves. Monograph papers address a narrow topic within a defined scope. Project papers describe a new work of art within a context of prior work while providing technical insights and embodying a strong artistic point of view. Survey papers address a broad topic in an analytic and coherent manner.

As the conference moves forward with new art-technology contributions, it also recognizes the achievements of the artists who have brought us to this juncture. I join ACM SIGGRAPH in announcing the first recipients of The Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement in Digital Art: Lynn Hershman Leeson and Roman Verostko.