Guest Editorial

It is with great pride that we present this special issue featuring selections from the 40th International Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques (SIGGRAPH 2013). This issue is the result of an ongoing collaboration between Leonardo/ISAST and ACM SIGGRAPH to showcase the community of artists, designers, and scholars working with computer graphics and interactive technologies.

This issue presents selections from the 2013 SIGGRAPH Art Gallery, whose jury was chaired this year by Victoria Szabo. In her introduction, Szabo discusses the Gallery and this year’s theme, “XYZN: Scale.” We also recognize 2013 SIGGRAPH Lifetime Achievement Award in Digital Art recipient Manfred Mohr for his pioneering efforts in algorithmic art.

Finally, we are pleased to present the 2013 SIGGRAPH Art Papers selections. The Art Papers track was established in 2009 as a venue for serious scholarship on digital and interactive arts, with a strong emphasis on artistic practice. Art Papers explore the changing roles of artists and the methods of art-making in our increasingly networked and computationally mediated world. They are intended to inform artistic disciplines, set standards, and stimulate future trends.

Art Papers may take various forms, but they typically fall into one or more of the following categories:

1. 1. Project Description: A description of creative work, with particular emphasis on its significance and historical and/or theoretical context.

2. 2. Theory/Criticism: An exposition of a significant issue for contemporary interactive art and design practice.

3. 3. Methods: A description of a novel technique for creative practice.

4. 4. History: A discussion of significant but little-known or under-theorized ntecedents to contemporary practice. In celebration of the SIGGRAPH conference’s 40th anniversary, a special emphasis was placed this year on submissions about the early history of electronic and interactive art.

Art Papers are subject to a rigorous selection process. Each submission is evaluated by members of the Art Papers Advisory Board, the Art Papers Committee, and external reviewers, all of whom are recognized experts in their field. Each paper receives a minimum of four detailed reviews. The committee then meets to deliberate the final outcome of each paper at the Art Papers Jury Meeting. If there is not a clear consensus among the original reviewers, additional reviews are solicited. This year, the jury accepted seven papers from a pool of 49 submitted manuscripts (14% acceptance rate).

I would like to extend my sincere thanks to the Art Papers Committee, the Art Papers Advisory Board, SIGGRAPH contractors, and our colleagues at Leonardo for their hard work and dedication. And, of course, I offer my deepest gratitude to the reviewers (nearly 60 of them!) and the authors, without whom the fifth edition of Art Papers would not have been possible.