SYNAPTIC TIME TUNNEL
A major generative, transmodal, and interactive installation for SIGGRAPH 2023.
Project Description:
This major generative, transmodal, and interactive installation for SIGGRAPH 2023 celebrates the 50th meeting of the world’s premier computer graphics conference.
Why "Synaptic”? By referring to neural nets, artificial intelligence and machine learning, and cognitive neuroscience, the "synaptic” concept connects the last fifty years to the next.
Imagining the past, present, and future of the SIGGRAPH archive as a dense evolving network of artificial neurons, dendrites, and synapses, and likening the spread of ideas to branching neural signals firing across countless synaptic connections, flashing like lightning, this interactive, performative, and data-driven work traverses the landmark developments of an ever-emerging ever-expanding field, tracing the propagation of influences and innovations across time, extrapolating from the past fifty years to the future fifty.
Fusing past (five decades of SIGGRAPH archival materials). present (live interactivity, generativity, and performance). and future (Al/ML extrapolations of the past fifty years into the next fifty), this transmodal project explores synaptic interconnections between pioneering individuals, landmark ideas, technical innovations, breakthrough projects, and visionary artworks that carried the computer graphics revolution from the edge of research through the mainstream of global culture and on into the restless invention of the future.
Perforated Systems: In a gesture toward holistic thought about the environment, a multi-layered structure of "perforated systems" creates a self-balancing ecosystem of sights, sounds, and behaviors, in which the overall environment has equal agency. Many authors have provided many layers, all communicating with one another in a model of open but self-balancing collaboration inspired by the biodiversity of rainforests and coral reefs.
Collaborators:
transLAB, UCSB:
Marcos Novak (Director)
Nefeli Manoudaki
Iason Paterakis
Diarmid Flatley
Ryan Millett
Pau Rosello Diaz
Experimental Visualization Lab, UCSB:
Weihao Qiu
Allosphere Research Group UCSB:
JoAnn Kuchera-Morin (Director)
Kon Hyong Kim
Gustavo Rincon
Alice Lab, York University:
Graham Wakefield
DPXA&Digital Futures, OCAD University:
Haru Ji
Biopac Systems:
Alan Macy
Conference and Exhibition History:
ACM SIGGRAPH 2023 - Time Tunnel Experiences - “Synaptic Time Tunnel”, Los Angeles Convention Center, Los Angeles, California / August 2023
UCSB, Media Arts and Technology Program - End of the Year Show - California NanoSystems Institute, Elings Hall, University of California Santa Barbara / June 2023 (excerpt)
UCSB, Media Arts and Technology Program - End of the Year Show - SBCAST, Santa Barbara, California / June 2023 (excerpt)
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute - Interaction Demonstration - Troy, New York / May 2023 (excerpt)
Media:
Autodesk welcomes worldbuilders and visionaries to explore the future of Design & Make at SIGGRAPH
Documentation courtesy of Iason Paterakis, Nefeli Manoudaki and Weihao Qiu