Computer Graphics & Animation

Biography

Biography: David Mesple

Abstract

I intend to show a chronology from early attempts to develop successful real-time abstract audiovisual technologies by Oskar Fischinger (1900 – 1967) to present haptic interfaces which do everything he envisioned, and more. Fischinger’s pioneering efforts in image and sound generation led to his development of the Lumigraph, an instrument which could offer audiences a one-of-a-kind audiovisual experience. The immediacy of the aural and visual effects the Lumigraph offered would lead Fischinger away from formal animation and towards his ingeniously simple Lumigraph, making a little-known but monumental statement about the degree of subtlety and expressivity attainable with an analog audiovisual performance device. Fast forward to 1999 and the pioneering work of Golan Levin, explained in his MIT graduate thesis and in his TED Talk “Software as Art”, and we see the complete manifestation of Fischinger’s vision of “Absolute Film” through digital processes. Levin’s advancements completed and expanded Fischinger’s vision to generate sound and imagery, within abstracted processes in real-time, which could create an audiovisual representation via a direct haptic interfaces . expanding opportunities for manifestating sound, image, and physical form via graphic interfaces and output devices including, 2- and 3-D visualization, CNC production, 3-D printing, and other emerging technologies.