Presentations by the Ars Electronica Futurelab at the SIGGRAPH 2000 international computer graphics trade show.

SIGGRAPH 2000 attracted 319 exhibitors from five continents and 25,986 visitors—a get-together of thousands of artists, technicians, scientists, researchers, software developers, special effects and computer animation specialists, Web developers and others doing creative work with computer graphics and virtual worlds.

HAME, Laura Beloff’s art project produced under the auspices of the Ars Electronica Research & Residence Program and the Pépinières Artists Exchange Program, was presented in the SIGGRAPH Art Gallery. The HAME installation thematicizes extreme forms of behavior like hysteria and boredom, and consists of two (plastic) objects set up in a space. Sounds (designed by Markus Decker) are audible on the objects as well as around them. Users can interact with the work by wearing one of three different jackets. In the context of the installation, each individual jacket—“Forward Jacket,” “Rewind Jacket” and “Repeat Jacket”—has a different function An attack of hysteria, for instance, could result in someone imagining things in reverse order or substituting certain objects/events with other objects/events. Boredom is caused by a static and repetitive state of existence. Based on these considerations, the projected video clip depicts animated, repetitive gestures.

The Ars Electronica Futurelab’s “TeleZone” project was presented under the heading “Emerging Technologies.” The “TeleZone” installation is a unique blend of virtual and real space at the interface of architecture, appropriate social behavior in the Internet, art and technology. A robot set up in the Ars Electronica Center and conceived as an extension of the data sphere makes it possible for an open community of users to collaboratively plan and build a city. “TeleZone” is the crystallization point for the emergence of the first virtual community whose discourses and activities are reflected and manifested not only digitally; rather, they also assume an immediate, physical form in the development of the installation.