BD: Tell us more about the Sandbox Symposium.

RB: The Sandbox Symposium has actually been going on for several years as a separate co-located event. It started in 2006 to provide a forum for presentation of work by academics and developers on all aspects of gaming, from technology to critical theory. It was created in cooperation with ACM SIGGRAPH and IGDA (the International Game Developers Assn.) as an incubator for a community and academic focus. After several successful years, the leaders of Sandbox and of SIGGRAPH agreed that the two communities would mutually benefit from joining together.

So, for 2009, Sandbox is being fully integrated into SIGGRAPH -- its organizers joining the SIGGRAPH organizing committee and its peer-reviewed papers (published in special symposium proceedings), as well as panel discussions and courses, included as part of the regular conference content. Plus, we'll continue to have a space known as "The Sandbox," an interactive play area that will host an exhibit of innovative independent games, the works selected for the Real-Time Rendering part of the animation festival, and workshops for game design.

The winners of last year's FJORG! is Team Grojf: (l-r) Jacob Patrick, John Nguyen and Kevin Rucker.

BD: And there's still the FJORG! animation competition along with GameJam!, a new videogame challenge?

RB: FJORG! was a great success from the moment it launched, and is going full steam ahead for its third year now... As part of our integration of the gaming community into SIGGRAPH, we saw a perfect opportunity to complement FJORG! by holding what's known in the gaming community as a game jam. Or, in our case, GameJam! Just like FJORG!, teams of participants will compete in an all-night marathon session to produce a videogame.

FJORG! and GameJam! will play well together. They'll have some common integrated themes, and they'll share the same space and resources. They'll run back-to-back: FJORG! all night Monday, and Game Jam! All night Tuesday. And they'll have a combined final judging and awards session.

BD: And what are the Research Challenge and SpeedLab?

RB: SpeedLab was introduced in SIGGRAPH 2008, and was a wonderful success, so we're doing it again this year. It's an event for researchers that celebrates creative brainstorming and encourages having fun and connecting with people. In a session at the start of the conference, participants are grouped into teams (mixing old-timers with newbies and those in between), where a research problem statement is announced. During conference week, each team meets to brainstorm and kick around approaches. The goal isn't to fully solve the problem, but to come up with innovative, creative, promising ideas. In the final judging ceremony (open to attendees) each team presents their solution to a panel of celebrity judges, who will evaluate them for creativity, practicality, and just plain coolness.

The Research Challenge was started for SIGGRAPH 2009. Unlike SpeedLab, which is about quick impromptu brainstorming, the Research Challenge gives the opportunity for teams to really work on a problem and show off their creativity, design and execution skills to get real results. The problem was announced last October ("Choose a specific animal, or a specific animal's sense, and develop a system that will enable a person to experience the physical or social world as that animal does"), and submissions of solutions are due in May. Selected finalists will present their projects in a special session (open to attendees) to a panel of distinguished judges.

BD: And what about this year's Generative Fabrication theme for the curated Design & Computational Gallery?

RB: Generative fabrication explores the use of non-linear processes in the creation of form and objects in areas such as computational architecture, algorithmic design and fabrication. It's one of the ways that computer technology and computer modeling have allowed designers to create works that would previously have been impossible. The show is still being put together, but the glimpses that I've seen lead me to anticipate a really beautiful collection. The Design & Computation gallery was introduced last year to help highlight the importance of the field of design to the SIGGRAPH community.

BD: And the Art Gallery theme, BioLogic Art?

RB: The juried art gallery will showcase works that engage the interaction of natural and technological forces. That is, nature provides us with plants and animals (its own examples and subjects of study) and technology provides us with devices that enhance our ability to interact with the natural world. This year's theme calls for artists who find inspiration from both sides to create expressions of life that integrate nature and technology. The gallery will be a very focused and distilled collection of works from a small number of artists; and, as I mentioned earlier, this year will inaugurate documenting the gallery in a special issue of Leonardo... alongside scholarly peer-reviewed art papers.

BD: SIGGRAPH, of course, is always about the technology. What new advancements and trends intrigue you right now? And what do you think of stereoscopic 3-D?

RB: One area of particular interest of mine has long been physically-based modeling (of rigid bodies, cloth, water, smoke, etc.), and how it could be made available for use by artists and animators rather than created as simulations run by engineers. The advance word that I've received is that we're seeing more new tools to put physical behavior directly in the hands of artists -- that's something I'm personally very eager to learn more about.

As for stereoscopic 3-D, I'm really curious as to where it's heading. It's easy to say that it'll be just a fad such as it was back in the '50s. However, the quality of 3-D technology in recent years has far surpassed what's come before. Furthermore, in the hands of a skilled director and cinematographer, it has the potential not to be a gimmick, but an integral part of the experience and an important aspect of the artistic design (as per Catherine Owens' keynote talk about the U2 3D movie at SIGGRAPH 2008).

As your audience probably knows, it took traditional filmmaking many decades to develop a common cinematographic "language" of camera and lighting techniques that was understood by the audience and gave filmmakers a toolbox so that each director didn't need to innovate for every single shot. So I believe the key question is whether the novel aspect of 3-D will hold audiences long enough for directors and cinematographers to develop and learn a new language for 3-D cinematography.

Adding stereoscopic 3-D computer animation opens things up more. For all that computer animation until now has used 3D models, ultimately that has been in the service of creating 2-D imagery -- and so computer graphics has long drawn from 2-D cel animation for the staging, acting, and emotion of the character animation (as per John Lasseter's 1987 SIGGRAPH Paper "Principles of Traditional Animation Applied To Computer Animation"). And computer animation movies starting with Toy Story have drawn from traditional live-action movies for the camera movement and cinematography.

But once we move to creating animation specifically for stereoscopic 3-D, some of the borrowed tricks of 2-D staging and animation will no longer apply; and live-action filmmakers haven't yet fully developed 3-D cinematography so there aren't many tricks available to borrow. Thus, I believe stereoscopic 3-D computer animation will need to innovate and forge new ground on its own in order to discover and exploit the artistic capabilities of the medium. So, yes, I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what the industry leaders have come up with for 3-D character animation -- and looking forward to them sharing that with the community at SIGGRAPH 2009!

Bill Desowitz is senior editor of AWN and VFXWorld.