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Scott "Spot" Draves
interviewed 10 August 2004 by Shyam Sunder
Spot Draves is an award-winning artist whose work is exhibited all over the world.
His installation, Electric Sheep, is on exhibit at the SIGGRAPH 2004 Art Gallery.
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| What
first drew you to computer graphics? |
"Their ability to make pictures. Or more precisely my
ability to make pictures with them." |
| Do you have any
computer graphics mentors? |
Karl Sims, Andy van Dam. |
| What was the first
time you contributed to SIGGRAPH? |
I was in the art show in 1994. |
| What year/city was your first SIGGRAPH? Which was most intense? Why? |
I went a couple of times in 88-92 but haven't been back.I'm looking forward to a good run now though. |
| What contribution to graphics are you most proud of? |
"Haven't made them yet."
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| Could you explain a bit more about "Electric Sheep"? |
It is based on genetic algorithm. Each 150 length genetic code produces a 4 second MPEG-2 video file. On a single computer, it would take 10 hours to render a single 4.5 MB animation. Currently it is server based but the next verion will use BitTorrent. |
| When did you start working on the project? |
The Electric Sheep project has been going on since 1999. I has around 5000 users per week. |
| Do you have problems with parasites? |
Not really. So far hacking incidents have been rare. There were instances where people tried to upload bad frames but those can be easily detected. |
| How does the screensaver work? |
When the screensaver is activated, it downloads the current video from the server. Then it starts rendering a single frame of the next video. Once the frame is rendered (using the Fractal Flame algorithm), it is fed back to the server which sequences it into a complete video. |
| What pays your bills right now? |
I am a VJ in Frisco. I sell my animations on DVD. I've already sold out the first production run of my DVD. |
| What near/intermediate developments in CG do you look forward to? |
More programmable hardware. |
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