In 1984, NYIT’s Computer Graphics Lab chose to demo reflection mapping with a 14-second scene between a human woman and a shiny CGI robot. The result was, well, a bit uncanny.
A plain sphere would’ve been enough to show it off. But where we’re going, we don’t want just spheres. “I’m going out tonight, so…you don’t have to wait up,” the woman says. You can see her reflection glide across the robot’s surface, even as she walks away. That’s the reflection mapping, and its first use to tell a short story.
But what’s that robot really thinking, you know? Especially when the discordant synth voice kicks in. That’s the story.
Four decades ago, we were already imagining the future of relationships between robots and humans, and what companionship might look like. Has that panned out? I don’t know.
The rest of NYIT’s 1984 SIGGRAPH reel is just as surreal. The whole thing is over on the Internet Archive. Another part features 3DV (DynaDigiDatavac), their proof-of-concept for 3D robot show hosts, along with some of the early work done for NYIT’s unfinished animated 3D film The Works.
