One of the really smart people who presented a 60 second synopsis of their research to an audience filled with people like me, who are not smart and who had no possibility of understanding what was being said.

By Dan Sarto

Yesterday evening, I sat through the SIGGRAPH Technical Papers Fast Forward presentation. The official program description is as follows: 

The Fast Forward is an entertaining, illuminating summary of SIGGRAPH Asia 2011 Technical Papers in one exciting, fun-filled hour! Authors are allowed a little less than a minute to wow the crowd with their results and entice attendees to hear their complete paper presentations later in the week. 

 What the official description should really say is:

We are smart – you are not.  Get over it.

This was not your typical gathering of wily-old geezer scientists in smocks and meerschaum pipes, ruefully rubbing their beards while thoughtfully using 10 sentences to explain things where one sentence would completely suffice. This tech paper presentation, for the most part, was a gathering of kids (I learned this form of categorization from my dad, who at age 90 would call 80 year olds “Junior”), certainly few older than I, all dedicated academics, researchers, scientists and scholars, doing research in areas of computer graphics and visualization I can’t even pronounce, let alone understand.

There was no way I could comprehend anything being said.  And I was OK with that.

Tasty, fatty, sticky sweet char siu, or BBQ roast pork. I can't describe how perfect this moment was nor how fantastic it tasted.

By Dan Sarto

18 hours in planes, 8 hours in airports, 2 hours in shuttles, all in the quest for a chance to meet some of Asia’s brightest computer graphic technologists and to once again eat roast pork overlooking the majestic Hong Kong harbor.  A worthy goal, I must say.  My trip from Los Angeles was excruciatingly long and uncomfortable.  My bag of honey roasted peanuts had to go through x-ray twice.  For 15 panicked seconds I thought I lost my wedding ring.  The kid sitting next to me on the flight from Japan knocked his tea all over my lap. The hour I spent in Hong Kong customs was made slightly more bearable by the entertaining antics of a big huge German man who screamed at the top of his lungs for 30 straight minutes, swearing non-stop at the phalanx of pint-sized policemen who tried in vain to calm him down.  They finally handcuffed him and tried to sit him down quietly on a bench, but he would have none of that, continuing to yell four-letter invectives at everyone in range.  I’m not sure if he was drunk or just off his meds but his rage enveloped the entire hall.  I fully expected him to start swatting around cops like some mythical beast from a Harryhausen film; he was so much bigger than the assembled authorities and so completely crazed. Guess he didn’t like the food on United either.

I finally made it to the hotel at 2 am, only to find that I had no room reservation and the hotel was full.  Sweet.  Channeling my inner Adam from Mythbusters, I told the young man behind the desk “I reject your reality and substitute my own. Indeed you do have a room in this hotel for me so why don’t you call whom you need to call, confer a bit, type something into your computer and then hand me my key.”   Needless to say, “a bit” became 30 minutes but he did eventually hand me a key and off I went to sleep.

Eggy Robo was a favorite at the SIGGRAPH Art Gallery. All images courtesy of SIGGRAPH Asia 2008.

I spoke with the Computer Animation Festival (CAF) Chair Jinny Choo about her ideas and vision for CAF. Being the curator and manager of SICAF Seoul, Jinny’s aim was to bring a similar festival feeling to SIGGRAPH Asia and sees it as an opportunity to taste other styles in a global festival. So for the animation fan there were a plethora of programs to choose from. The Electronic Theater, screening the best of the best, was, as usual, the main event, with additional submissions selected for the Animation Theatre I and II and the Special Programme I and II. An addition was the Invited Screenings, showing previous Best of SIGGRAPH Award Winners; Gobelins, K’ARTS and Supinfocom selections; an Australian and India Focus and a Studio AKA Special; complemented by Festival Talks and Panels on Productions.

Rob Cook.

Rob Cook’s featured speaker keynote took us on a journey behind the scenes of a Pixar production. Interestingly, Rob is the Vice President of Advanced Technology at Pixar Animation Studios, yet he hardly spoke about technology. He talked about story, story, story, and art. It might just be that he is so humble to rather highlight other folk’s contributions to Pixar’s final products, but it surely is connected with Pixar’s secret recipe to success – their stories.

For everyone used to the grandeur and immense scale of the U.S. SIGGRAPH, it is important to explain that the inaugural SIGGRAPH Asia in Singapore is planned to be much smaller. ACM has taken a big risk in bringing the conference abroad, no one could be certain if it would work. With the last conference day still ahead of us I would already like to call the show a success. From what I see and hear, everybody seems happy at SIGGRAPH Asia in Singapore. The exhibition floor is busy; the quality of talks is as high as we are used to, the Electronic Theater has been praised for its quality selection, and whether speaking with SIGGRAPH Committee members or attendees, everyone notes the intimate feeling, “stars” of the community become more approachable and there is a family flair in the air.

Don Greenberg. Courtesy of SIGGRAPH ASIA 2008.

The inaugural SIGGRAPH Asia 2008 was formally opened on Tuesday, Dec 11, in true Singaporean style: with festive opening speeches by the Conference Chair YT Lee and by distinguished government representatives.

Highlight of the opening ceremony was featured speaker of the day Don Greenberg, Computer Graphics Pioneer and Director of Cornell University. Coming from an architecture background and using some of the earliest computer science to generate his first visualizations, Don was basically marking out the new territory of computer graphics. Yes, they did use punch cards back then to feed XYZ coordinates into the computer! Courage to try out new approaches and techniques, and find new fields to apply this technology, were the driving factors for him and his peers back then in the early days of computer graphics. Don noted that large parts of the new computer science research in the SIGGRAPH community are focused in animation, games and entertainment. While the quality increases, research topics have narrowed down to a few fields. Don calls us to have courage not to be risk adverse and venture into new areas of research and interdisciplinary practice, citing examples of applications in medical technology, earthquake and tectonic research, to ornithology where he researched the potential existence of an extinct bird species.