Tek wrote:

> 
> 
> The premise of your argument seems to be that you want to expand the range 
> of people interested in entering this contest. I have to disagree with that 
> principal. One of the main reasons I have found the IRTC so rewarding is the 
> very technical focus of most entrants and judges. If it loses that focus, if 
> people start commenting on my povray images talking about shaders and 
> polygons, I'm going to lose interest.
> 

I don't think reexamining the rules will change that.

I think the thrust of Michael's question is actually more in line with 
your sentiments than you seem to realize.  I think he is trying to 
discuss how, for instance, some of the very exciting new techniques that 
have shown up on the ng's lately, involving the use of forward 
raytracing together with distribution of workload over multiple cores, 
but which requires the recompositing of images, might be recognized and 
explored.  Surely these innovations are all about the technical side. 
And what if such innovations turn out to facilitate the use of such 
brilliant and POV-centric techniques like isosurfaces?  All he is saying 
is that these surprising innovations can lead to perhaps even more 
surprises.  And the driving force here is still very, very techical.

The fact is that cg is still in a technical phase.  The day when 
conceptual plays on process, when its aesthetic artifice will be 
deconstructed etc. is mostly still in the future.  And the form that 
will take still largely unknown.

The IRTC will still attract the same people.  This is not the place 
where the guy or gal with strong figurative ability morphing comic book 
mosnsters in a professional piece of software will want to make his/her 
mark.  The taste for exquisite lighting, subtle reflections, quirky 
scene-building, and the atom-cracking collision of classical math with 
the chaos of grunge, is what reigns here.  But we don't need to limit 
the technical means to get at that.  Rather we need to encourage such 
innovation.

This could be the place, (doubtful but possible,) in some distant time, 
when the artist doing some cg equivalent of Sherrie Levine 
re-photographing Walker Evans, might be shown and understood.

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