Artist statement via digitalarchive.siggraph.org:
Dishes is a digitally manipulated photo that reflects the absurdity of our society, which has been flooded by media as people lose human contact with each other. This ironic social statement connects today’s advanced techniques in computer-generated imagery with the craftsmanship of art forms like traditional photography.
Hundreds of satellite dishes infect a skyscraper like a disease. Or is it mankind’s unconscious desire to barricade itself from real life, to slow down social life by consuming endlessly accelerating media input? The dishes are pointing in the direction of a distant satellite, expressing the disconnect between people as social beings.
The image is based on a real photograph of a building that was extended to double its original height in Photoshop. The natural perspective distortion was corrected to give the real photo a constructed and unreal feeling. It is derived from photos of real satellite dishes, which were used as texture maps for 12 different 3D models, then duplicated to form groups of instanced geometry and manually arranged in 3ds Max.