Artworks
Excretia
The Living Book of Senses
SIGGRAPH
Eating Eye
Virtual Dervish
Gromala,
Diane.,
“Immanent Bodies,” University of California
Los Angeles. Invited exhibit.
Gromala, Diane., “Immanent Bodies,”
University of Santa Cruz. Invited exhibit.
Gromala, Diane.,
“Excretia,” The McLuhan Center, University
of Toronto and the University of Catalonia, Barcelona. Invited video screening.
Gromala, Diane; Hodges, Larry; Shaw, Chris; Seay,
Fleming., Interactive exhibit, “The Meditation Chamber,”
SIGGRAPH, Los Angeles
Selected after rigorous adjudication for technological innovation in SIGGRAPH’s
Emerging Technologies
venue. This work combines an immersive virtual environment with
a biofeedback device. It blurs the boundaries among an artwork, an innovative
use of technology, and an experimental, therapeutic modality for users
with stress-related illnesses. Refereed.
Gromala, Diane., “Excretia,” Exhibition of proof-of-concept for “Biomorphic Typography,” a major work-in-progress. The visual character of Biomorphic Typography responds in real-time to a user’s changing physical states. ISEA (International Society for Electronic Arts), Paris. Refereed.
Invited (evening) video screening: “Virtual Bodies”
Invited (evening) video screening: “Virtual Subjectivities”
Gromala, Diane., “Abject Subject,” (as Putch Tu), Yale University, School of Art, New Haven, CT, Invited evening performance.
Invited video screening: “Virtual Bodies”
Seattle Art Museum
Invited video screening: “Virtual Subjectivities”
Concert for New Music
Invited (evening) video screening: “Virtual Dervish”
Museum of Water, Lisbon
Peer-reviewed video screening: “Virtual Dervish”
York University, Toronto, Canada
Conference on Dance and Technology
Peer-reviewed video screening: “Virtual Bodies II”
The Center for Arts & Technology at Connecticut College
The Fifth Biennial Arts + Technology Symposium
Major peer-reviewed dance and theatrical VR performance and exhibition: with Yacov Sharir: “Virtual Bodies”
Fourth International Cyberspace Conference & Art and Virtual Environments Symposium
Major peer-reviewed dance and theatrical VR performance and exhibition, with Yacov Sharir: “Virtual Bodies”
Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey. 1994
Peer-reviewed video screening: “Virtual Dervish”
FISEA (Fourth International Society for Electronic Arts), 1994
Peer-reviewed interactive multimedia exhibit: “Virtual Dervish”
Electronic Theatre
Peer-reviewed Video Screening: “Dancing with the Virtual Dervish: Virtual Bodies”. The Electronic Theatre jury chooses 15 videos to be screened, from over 600 submitted.
Gromala, Diane., Interactive, electronic costume and set design for the Sharir Dance Company’s “Dogs,” Performing Arts Center, Austin, Texas. Invited evening and weekend performances.
Gromala, Diane., Interactive, electronic costume design for the Sharir Dance Company’s “The Egg,” Theatre de la Suidad, Mexico City, Mexico. Invited evening and weekend performances.
Gromala, Diane., Interactive, electronic costume and set design for “The Egg,” Suzanne Dellale International Dance Competition, Tel Aviv, Israel,. Evening and weekend performances. Refereed.
seamus
(The Symposium for Electro-Acoustic Music), Austin,
Texas, Peer-reviewed interactive electronic exhibit: “Virtual
Bodies”
Gromala, Diane., Interactive electronic costume
design for the Sharir Dance Company's
"The Egg," Carver Cultural Center, San
Antonio, Texas, Invited evening and weekend performance.
Gromala, Diane., “Output,” American
Institute of Graphic Arts, Gallery & National Traveling Exhibition.
Created and directed this pioneering project in virtual communities, which
involved several universities abroad. Exhibited in universities and art
museums across the U.S. and Europe. Refereed.
BioMorphic Typography is Gromala's term for a family of fonts that respond, in real-time, to a user's changing physical states, as measured by a biofeedback device. Rather than one typeface, it is a postmodern pastiche of many different fonts that are continually morphing. So, for example, the font "throbs" as the user's/writer's heart beats. In this way, users become aware of their autonomic states. This project is part of a larger initiative, Design for the Senses. The goal is to develop new approaches to experiential design that focus on the senses and the history of the body.
(semi-finalist for Discover's award in technological innovation)
*The Living Book of Senses* is a new media form that extends the traditional book into a radically new sensorially interactive experience.
Users are able to see their physical surroundings while dynamically engaging with three-dimensional mixed realities which appear on their headsets. Users can interact with the book in dynamic ways that go beyond mere clicking and pointing. They can ask the book questions (via voice recognition), and can influence the book through their sensory (bio) feedback. Thus, the book becomes a powerful new sensory experience.
Users wear a headset/head-tracker/color camera system that enables them to see physical reality enhanced with a virtual reality overlay. The camera inputs images/patterns and feeds them back into the ARToolkit software which then displays digital information associated with the physical markers onto the headset. The ARToolkit can calculate camera position and orientation relative to physical markers in real time for video-mediated reality.
Each reader can view AR scenes from their own visual perspective. Users can fly into the immersive world and see each other represented as avatars in the same virtual scene. Readers remaining in the AR scene have a birds'-eye view of other readers as miniature avatars in the virtual scene displayed through their headset. User-controlled dialog with the book elicits responses/answers from the book (expressed in digital data: visual, textual, auditory). As the users simultaneously interact with the book in the physical and virtual realms, the book responds to individual and multiple physical states (via biofeedback) to express resulting changes in narrative. The narrative is a cultural history of the senses.
The Living Book is an enhanced learning tool that enables users to become aware of their sensorial experience and bodily states. Collaborations using this book enable distance learning with multiple user interactions. The living book can be used in any narrative-based media to create dynamic communication between any number of people.
2000
Art Gallery Chair and Curator (selected in competition with eleven leading artists and curators). The Art Gallery exhibition at SIGGRAPH is the most respected venue for electronic art within the converging communities of Computer Science and Electronic Art. It occurs within the context of the ACM’s (Association for Computing Machinery) special interest group on computer graphics and interactive techniques. The millennial Art Gallery exhibition required two years of planning. Responsibilities included:
– Curating the work of 60 internationally-recognized leaders in electronic art and design
– Organizing jury for adjudication of papers and negotiating publication contract with leading journal
– Space planning for the 87,000 square feet exhibition area
– Managing the $92,000 budget
– Organizing extensive donations
– Coordinating media coverage
This millennial exhibition was noteworthy in several respects. First, it was the largest exhibition of interactive electronic art in the thirty year history of SIGGRAPH. Second, talks by artists, along with panels of internationally-recognized artists, theorists, and scholars were carefully organized and integrated with all other SIGGRAPH venues. Third, the Art Gallery was notably expanded by the organization of peer-reviewed essays published in a negotiated, three-year contract with the leading
journal in the field, Leonardo. Finally, extensive coverage by the media included international television coverage, as well as articles in USAToday and a front page article in the Art & Leisure Section of The New York Times.
This curatorial work, distinctive in its emphasis on accessibility and critical analyses, will lead to a co-authored book, with Jay David Bolter (under contract, MIT Press; refer to E. works-in-progress).
Dancing
with the Virtual Dervish : Virtual Bodies
Co-creators and co-producers: Diane Gromala (50%)
and Yacov Sharir (50%)
This landmark artwork in virtual reality (VR) received unprecedented art
funding from the National Department of Communication, Canada, and the
Banff Center for the Arts. It was one of six selected from an international
pool of collaborative groups which includes the foremost media artists
and computer scientists working with virtual and communications technologies.
This artwork was one of the very first in VR.
The scope of the work required four computer scientists and six art technicians
over two years. The computing demands of the new medium necessitated 3
forms of dissemination: major dance/theatrical performances, interactive
exhibitions, and large scale video screenings. As a major dance and theatrical
production, Dancing with the Virtual Dervish: Virtual Bodies premiered
at the Banff Centre for the Arts, with two subsequent peer-reviewed performances
at international art venues.
This work resulted in numerous performances, exhibitions, and screenings,
as well as lectures, peer-reviewed publications, and broadcasts on the
Discovery Channel and the BBC. It is frequently cited in books (art and
computer science), journals, and online sites.