CHCI Members Participate in SIGGRAPH 2019
CHCI members Nicholas Polys and Daniel Pillis participated in the 46th International Conference on Computer Graphics & Interactive Techniques (SIGGRAPH) held in Los Angeles, (July 28th to August 1st). Co-located with SIGGRAPH was the 24th International ACM Conference on 3D Web Technology (Web3D) which ACM SIGGRAPH co-sponsored.
CHCI projects showcased innovations in several contexts, including: Immersive Visualization Workshop, Cartographic Visualization birds of a feather session (CartoBOF), and Web3D Publishing BOF.
Nicholas Polys, CHCI member and Director of Visual Computing for VT Advanced Research Computing, served as Conference Co-chair for Web3D, as well as Chair of the Working Group on Cultural Heritage and Co-chair of the Medical Working Group. He presented research in the Immersive Visualization workshop which focused on Immersive (Hybrid) Analytics, a science of analytical reasoning` facilitated by interactive visual interfaces deployed through multi-modal XR systems. Immersive visualization allows scientists to graphically illustrate and spatially interact with massive datasets and complex simulations. This human-in-the-loop arrangement combines machine learning, high performance graphics, and human intuition that enables meaningful insights and enhances decision making in diverse contexts.
Nicholas presented research in a SIGGRAPH session on Cartographic visualization which explores how viewpoints and techniques from the computer graphics community can be effectively applied to cartographic and spatial data sets. He also participated in a birds-of-a-feather session on Publishing 3D Graphics on the Web. Web3D open standards puts 3D models in web pages. The session participants and partners showed how interactive visualization can unlock industry domains for authors and end users: glTF/WebGL, Unity3D/Blender/Meshlab, Geo3D, 3Dprinting/scanning, AR/VR.
Daniel Pillis, CHCI member and Research Assistant Professor in Immersive Environments at the Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology (ICAT) worked with SIGGRAPH organizers to develop and plan a summit on Diversity & Inclusivity in Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, held on the first day of the conference. They organized and moderated a panel entitled ‘Rendering Gender: Identity, Representation, and Sexuality in 3D Design, Interactive Media, and Animation’. This panel featured scholars who discuss computer graphics and interactive technology through the perspective of queer theory, including Jacob Gaboury, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Film and Media at the University of California, Berkeley, and Bonnie Ruberg, Ph.D. assistant professor in the Department of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine. Bringing together voices from the computer graphics industry and cultural theory, the panel addressed how the gender spectrum is represented graphically in video games, how characters in animation challenge or confirm gender stereotypes, and how LGBTQ communities adapt or reconfigure characters and images from animation to speak to their cultural experiences.
If you are interested in being more involved in the SIGGRAPH conference, or any of the many projects and research groups that collaborate across the disciplines of computer graphics, interactive techniques and human computer interaction, please feel free to reach out to the faculty listed above for further information. SIGGRAPH 2020 will be held in Washington, DC.