ranjit@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Ranjit Bhatnagar) (10/16/87)
Last Thursday through Sunday I was at the Symposium of the Small Computers in the Arts Network here in Philadelphia. These are some observations that may be of interest to Amiga users. This is a small symposium, with 25 or so sessions, an art show, about 10 exhibitors, and 300 attendees, so it doesn't make a big splash, but it may offer insights in the world of computer art. Take my observations and generalizations with a _pinch_ of salt... * Musicians like Amiga, but use Macintosh. This was fairly universal. Laurie Speigel, composer and author of "Music Mouse," especially had good words for the Amiga after having ported "Music Mouse," an interactive music-improviser, from the Mac. But at a concert, she used the Mac. The reason seems to be primarily the availability of excellent sequencers for the Mac. There was an occasional Commodore-64, but not an Atari ST to be seen. * Visual artists like and use Amiga. For example, Rob Fisher, Famous Sculptor, described how he used Deluxe Paint to prepare a proposal for a large sculpture in a very short time, including digitizing blueprints of the building and cleaning them up. Judy Kracke used digitized photo- graphs of sites and sculpture models to choose the placement of sculptures. One of the art-show exhibits was a 1000 displaying an animated sequence with music, political in nature, that seemed to be at least 5 minutes long. * Timothy Leary loves the Amiga. I don't know what this implies. He also showed the work of several artists who used the Amiga as the medium; some of it was very impressive. * Commodore was there! At least they had a banner up in the exhibit hall, and a representative who was supposed to help Dr. Leary but in fact had trouble operating Deluxe Paint. (In this context, a slide-show program would have done better anyway.) The program for a joint concert of the Small Computers in the Arts Network and the New Music America Festival thanked Commodore for their support, though there was no obvious Commodore hardware visible on stage. My general impression, Amiga-wise, was that the Amiga is the most attractive micro to computer-naive artists once they get a chance to play with it. Questions or comments? Go ahead... By the way: the University of Pennsylvania (where I am, despite the posting-site) had a small computer fair yesterday, showing off products that would be of interest to college students and faculty. Guess which major producer of low-cost, high-power microcomputers wasn't there? Hint: "Apple" is the wrong answer. Ranjit .......(o o)....... ranjit@cory.berkeley.edu ---vvv---U---vvv--- ucbvax!cory!ranjit