While many graphics companies are engaged in all manner of legal shuffling with regards to certain texture mapping patents - Real 3D, Nvidia, 3dfx, S3, Intel, SGI have all been involved in some legal tangles in this area - I have come across a young man who has invented a revolutionary image generation technology that makes texture mapping look like the work of a juvenile finger painter. Of course, I am referring to the Kandinsky Transform Engine.

The Kandinsky Transform Engine was developed by a young man I met at a local rehabilitation center for people who don't chew their food properly. I won't give out his name so as not to embarrass him, people who don't chew their food properly are often shunned by fellow diners, and very often ostracized by their mothers. It's quite surprising how we came to get on the subject of computer graphics technology, but I noticed that this young man was sitting in jaw therapy with one hand firmly clasped around a Buzz Lightyear doll with the head removed, and replaced by one bearing a striking similarity to Paul Klee. I couldn't help but lean over and say, "I would have thought Kandinsky would have made a better astronaut, don't you think?"

Well, we both couldn't help but giggle at this bit of wit on my part. After all, it isn't often that one sees a piece of pure commercialism turned into something quite as wonderful as discourse on Switzerland's greatest twentieth century artistic influence.

Nevermind.

Anyhow, the young man and I got to be quite friendly, and I explained to him what I do, and immediately his face lit up.

"You know, I've been working on a set of algorithms to define 3D visualizations in a shape and form that is unencumbered by the necessity to deliver form as the eye sees it, but rather in the shape that one feels it. While many companies state the desire to deliver Toy Story graphics in real time, I want to imbue modern 3D with the sense composition of Wassily Kandinsky, and the musical lilts of the brushwork of Paul Klee, and possibly a bit of the commercial acumen of Picasso, as well as his genius, providing I can get somebody to finance my initial public offering."

It turns out that this young man eschewed the norms of modern 3D graphics, believing that the desire to achieve cinematic, and photorealistic images on a computer screen were anathema to the creation of populist 3D. A dash of impressionism, a hint of surrealism, and an abhorrence of the isometric 3D viewpoint that looks like you're stuck in a spider's web in the corner of a room. Fascinating.

Now, I am not sure if the Kandinsky Transform Engine will ever gain popular appeal. After all, no one has quite figured out how to separate the sheer joy of blowing someone to a million bits, and watching their body parts fly apart on a computer screen, from the visceral impact of blurred shapes in an unconscious expression of external forces acting upon the spirit of the artist. At least, I haven't.