Aimee McCammon of Park Road.

AnimfxNZ 2008 began with a song.

A contingent of Maori gathered to perform a 'powhiri', or New Zealand traditional welcome. The foreign visitors and speakers lined up so the kaumatua could determine if they were friends or foes. Thankfully, there were no enemies among them, and the conference was able to proceed.

Hai capito? Visual culture panelists (l to r) Phil Stenton, Will Wright, Glen Entis and Michael Rubin get some auditory input.

Friday, the final day of the VIEW Conference, and a time for summing up. Let’s make a list:

• That luscious gianduia chocolate.

• On the technical side, the computer graphics folks such as Paul Topolos of Pixar, Lucia Modesto of PDI-DreamWorks, and Jack Grahm of Double Negative seemed to revel in showing off what they have been able to do with their new toys and techniques.

Pervasive computing gets the upper hand.

Well, I’m torn. Shall I go to the presentation on “Hair shells and bi-quad transition rig on Shrek the Halls and Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa” or to the “Humanizing virtual agents: the role of speech technology in effective human-machine interaction?” All of this requires a certain mind-set. Maybe if they made a rule that titles had to be short, like “Beards and boundaries” and “Talk to me, Mac,” I would feel less anxiety about making these choices.

VIEW Conference visitors The Hive filmmaking collective presents their credentials and contemplates transformation

The autumn haze in Turin is downright metaphorical. The precursor of another grey Po Valley winter, a haze that creeps into the bones and causes a ridiculously high percentage of arthritis in these parts. Sunny Italy my foot.