SIGGRAPH 2005: From the eyes of a newbie

By Shylo Smith

Vancouver, August 24, 2005 — After considerable amounts of thought, writing, rewriting and trying to figure out what I was going to write about, I came to a realization: I am such a newbie at this. The SIGGRAPH 2005 conference was the first conference (of any kind!) that I have ever been to. As such, pre-conference many people felt the needed to inform me of all that I should do, see, and try to do while there. The result — I was beginning to feel overwhelmed and I had not even left yet.

I decided the best way to approach this was to take everyone’s opinions, and my own thoughts and personality, and just go. No planning, no expectations. There were meetings and booth duty that I was obligated to partake in, but aside from that I had my days to plan as I saw fit.

Arriving in Los Angeles, I felt calm and collected. My plan was simple — not to have one. This approach relieved any feeling of stress over rushing to do something, or making and missing plans. I had the power of ignorance backing me, since I did not know what awaited me. Upon arrival, I was immediately amazed at the scope of the venue and amount of events going on. If it was not for the great people at Pathfinders, I would have had a much harder time navigating the conference on my own. They were a fountain of information with regards to informing me of what events in my field of interest were happening (as well as the where and when). They even helped me create a tailored schedule for my time.

I knew I was going to spend a lot of time on the exhibit floor, so while the panels and papers were happening I went to view some of the other venues. I checked out the Guerilla Studio, Emerging Technologies, posters, the Art gallery, the Job Fair, and just wandered around meeting people and seeing as much as I could.

The Guerilla Studio was amazing. The amount of hands on hardware and software they had available for use would have any artist drooling (that’s before even seeing the Cyber Fashion Show). From workstations (where I watched attendees working on portfolios or just messing around), to a motion capture studio and even a traditional drawing station, attendees had at their disposal top of the line equipment with top of the line volunteers to provide assistance and explanations. Before the doors opened for the Guerilla Studio, I had the opportunity to speak briefly with Peter Braccio (Chair of this year’s Guerilla Studio). He was busy ensuring everything was in working order, but still took a few minutes of his precious time to quickly show me around. Was it not for my social butterfly tendencies, I could have easily spent all my days in the Guerilla Studio playing with the toys (such as the digital printer that paints your nails) and learning about different technologies.

Guerilla Studio: Hands-on music workshop

Emerging Technologies (ETech) was also something that I was excited to get to see. I am a fanatic of new things that push the limits of technology and human innovation. That said, I was definitely not left disappointed by what I saw at Emerging Technologies. The level of realism in the virtual hand gliding and kayaking simulations (something which was truly amazing to me, since I have a serious fear of water) may be nothing new to the industry, but showed major improvements on previous attempts at similar simulations.

From interactive fog screens, to clothing that communicated and interacted with other clothing via Bluetooth technology, to (what conference would be complete without it) interactive robots, ETech had much to offer. My personal two favorite projects were The Living Room and Kobito: Virtual Brownies. The technology used for Virtual Brownies is something that I can foresee being used in the gaming industry at some point. Here, characters in the computer, ‘brownies’, pushed a 3D cube around on screen. At the same time, a cube (or ‘the caddy’ as they called it) moved similarly in physical space, as if being pushed by the ‘brownies’. This meant that if you moved the caddy, you would feel the resistance of brownies pushing on it. This mixture of the physical and CG-world is one that is just starting to really open up. We saw… or rather, felt, this with the hand gliding and kayaking virtual worlds exhibits. As for The Living Room, it was possibly the only team related game at this year’s event. Here, three players had to move monitors mounted on wheels, over pictures on the floor. In this 21st century version of Clue, a murder has taken place and the players must work together to place the monitors over each clue piece to advance the game. If all three monitors are placed over the correct clues, the monitors play the next portion of the story. Participants are then asked a question and need to move the monitors over the next clues in order to get the answer. Each monitor is part of the room, so the monitors have a specific orientation. As such, watching the entire scene sometimes requires walking around and looking at the monitors (usually causing participants and viewers to move their heads back and forth between monitors — in order to catch the clues in the movie). It was a very innovative project, although I do not think it would ever become a widespread form of home entertainment (due to its current space requirements).

Emerging Technologies: The Living Room — Interactive Art by Victoria Fang

As for the Art Gallery, it was interesting, to say the least. I doubt I can do justice to the artwork I saw, by attempting to describe any of them in words. However, I was glad to have been able to spend the time and view them all. I am glad this venue exists and I hope it continues to have a showing at all future SIGGRAPHs.

The Keynote Address was cool for the simple reason that it allowed us to hear George Lucas speak about the past, present and future of the digital medium. I attempted to get up front to speak with George or any of the people up at the front. The closest I came was being able to see that he is shorter than I would have thought him to be. However, it was still very cool to get to hear him speak and see him in person.

SIGGRAPH 2005 keynote session George Lucas: A Keynote Q & A With the Father of Digital Cinema

My favorite thing (aside from wandering around the exhibit floor) was the Electronic Theater. Samuel (Sammy for those who know him) Black did an amazing job at putting this together. I had the pleasure of meeting Sammy at a party and later at the convention centre itself. He is a friendly, funny man, and someone who is highly respected and admired. I can say from personal experience that he is all of those things and it was a pleasure to get to speak with him.

The Electronic Theater started with a real-time live graphic performance by J. Walt Adamczyk. He used a joystick to manipulate and travel through his 3D environment and used a graphics tablet to add mountains, trees, flowers and life to it. It was something that creators of the Beatles “Yellow Submarine” would have envied! For more about his show, visit his website. The rest of the Electronic Theater was just as good as the pre-show. It showcased everything from the strange and disturbing, to the political and even plain silliness.

As a newbie who has completed his first SIGGRAPH conference, I can proudly say that I met a great many people, saw things that I would not have seen anywhere else, and overall I loved every moment of the experience. Next year will be even better… and I will definitely try to be there. I have even talked my company into getting into the Exhibition for 2006.

See you all in Boston!