Skip to content

Campbell River will be on display at North American conference

Campbell River will host pieces from a Vancouver digital art exhibition in September – the only other community to do so.

Campbell River will host pieces from a Vancouver digital art exhibition in September – the only other community to do so.

Six of the 15 installations that will be showcased at the five-day SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques) conference will be displayed at the Museum Sept. 1-22.

Campbell River Creative Industries Council campaigned to get the pieces and received the good news last week.

Its goal is to expand opportunities for digital industry development in the city.

“For Campbell River to host such an exhibit sends a clear signal that our community is creatively engaged with the cultural dialogue of the world,” said Ken Blackburn, digital art exhibition guest curator.

“The selection of pieces for Campbell River will provide a broad overview of the SIGGRAPH exhibition.”

Campbell River will also have its own booth at the SIGGRAPH conference Aug. 7-11, which up until this year has always been held in the United States.

The artworks that will be on display use both digital and analog technologies to convey the different concepts of home in the 21st century.

Campbell River’s booth, which will be manned by Creative Industries, is an interactive booth that will include a live broadcast between the booth in Vancouver and back at home in Campbell River.

Cheryl O’Connell, Creative Industries president, said it also plans to have wood carvers in Campbell River linked to the booth so people walking through the displays can interact with the carvers back in Campbell River.

Art prints by Curtis Wilson will be given to all registered booth visitors in return for tweeting about the booth experience.

The booth, which was designed by First Nations artist Richard Krentz, features four plasma screens and will ignite the senses.

“We’ll be giving people a sensory taste of Campbell River with the fragrance of cedar shavings and morsels of smoked salmon,” Miller said.

“We’ll look forward to seeing what people have to say in their tweets about their experience at our booth, and, of course, we hope they’ll be intrigued about our community and visit soon.

“The SIGGRAPH conference is the largest event Vancouver has held outside of the Olympics, so it’s a great way to profile the community.”

Campbell River’s SIGGRAPH involvement has reached $65,000 so far, including an Electronic Arts Canada in-kind donation valued at $25,000 for scanning and modelling First Nations artwork into a 3D format for display.

The City of Campbell River, North Island College and the Laich-Kwil-Tach Treaty Society have also made a contribution.