WHEN The New Yorker magazine put out its first June issue this year, the made headlines. It was a dreamy, late-night scene of a hotdog stand in New York by artist Jorge Colombo created using, of all things, an iPhone app. Traditionally, computers and artists have made uneasy bedfellows, so why did this image succeed?
The iPhone鈥檚 touch screen is the key, says of the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff, in the UK, as it taps into artists鈥� desire to use their hands to express themselves. 鈥淥ne of the things artists try and do when they make an artwork is communicate a bit of themselves, their emotional content, if you like,鈥� says Treadaway. And hands are a formidable outlet for this. 鈥淥ur hands are a channel into the body and out into the world. That鈥檚 the way we are built, the way we are wired.鈥�
Treadaway鈥檚 own work has shown that traditional computer software and interfaces, such as the mouse and keyboard, hinder artists, as they demand attention to details such as menu items, and involve making micro-movements with the mouse. 鈥淵our thought processes are working in a very different way than if you were crafting by hand,鈥� says Treadaway, who presented her analysis last week at the conference at the University of California, Berkeley.
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Having to focus on computer commands can severely disrupt artists鈥� thought patterns, agrees at the Edinburgh College of Art in the UK. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a real constraint on creativity,鈥� she says. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 why a lot of artists and applied artists [such as jewellery and furniture makers] shun working on a computer.鈥�
But as The New Yorker鈥榮 cover shows, things are changing. The iPhone Brushes app is part of a new breed of technology that allows artists to use software that permits more natural movements to create artwork.
Touch screens aren鈥檛 the only way of doing this. Shillito is leading a team that has developed software that allows artists to receive physical feedback when designing virtual 3D objects.
The team鈥檚 approach uses a haptic device called Falcon, which vibrates and moves to allow users to 鈥渇eel鈥� virtual objects. Originally developed for 3D gaming, Falcon is a cross between a joystick and a mouse. As the user moves the controller in three dimensions, its movements are mirrored by a cursor on the computer screen. When the cursor interacts with objects in its 3D virtual environment, the tiny motors in the device provide resistance and small vibrations to give feedback about various properties of the virtual object being designed, such as its weight, texture and shape. 鈥淲hat we have is the sensation of touch, and because this is so natural to our way of interacting in the real world, it means you can tap into the tacit knowledge we have of 3D objects,鈥� Shillito says.
鈥淎s touch is natural to our way of interacting, physical cues from virtual art will aid creativity鈥�
, a computer scientist at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, who is also an artist, is convinced that technology which allows artists to fully use their physical senses will enhance the creativity of computer-based art. He believes that this is a better approach than the old method of having to carry out programming while creating art in virtual environments. 鈥淲e lose something when we go from the physical world to a virtual world that鈥檚 created only from programming.鈥� However, he isn鈥檛 certain the problem has been cracked yet. 鈥淚 want to be able to create with my hands in a virtual environment, and right now that鈥檚 a real challenge.鈥�
Keefe has been working on a project called , in which the artist works in a 3D virtual environment, holding a haptic device, called the , in one hand and wearing a glove connected to a computer in the other (see photo). The image is created using the 鈥渢ape drawing鈥� technique, commonly used in car design, in which both hands are used to draw lines. One hand indicates the start point of a line, while the other moves to where you want the line to go. The haptic device provides feedback on the hardness of a surface, enabling the artist to feel the same resistance they would if painting on paper, for example.
Even more innovative approaches are being considered to provide artists with physical cues. and his team at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, are working on a device that can be physically manipulated to create 3D artworks, in a similar way to how sculptures can be moulded from clay. Called , the device would consist of a tray containing up to a million particles, each the size of a grain of sand. The artist would be able to control how the particles stick to their neighbours, allowing them to be moulded. The team say that the device will be programmable, allowing the artist to alter the behaviour of the material so the particles behave like, for example, clay or steel.
While sand grain-sized particles are still a long way off, Goldstein鈥檚 team has taken the first step towards them. They have designed cylinders about 1 millimetre in diameter that they say can be controlled to allow them to stick to their neighbours using electrostatic forces. They expect the first cylinders to be manufactured this year. 鈥淚nterfaces like claytronics are going to have quite a transformative effect on how we express ourselves with the computer,鈥� says Goldstein.
Keefe agrees, and says that artists will adopt these techniques mainly because they will be able to do things in virtual environments that are impossible in real life. For example, artists could create 3D objects that can defy gravity. And Goldstein imagines a day when a claytronics interface is used simultaneously by multiple artists to make a collaborative sculpture. 鈥淭hat will be cool,鈥� he says.
