12th August 2011

We Made It Home To SIGGRAPH 2011

Orby Is At SIGGRAPHI will be writing up our own summary of our experiences at SIGGRAPH 2011 – there is much to digest and process from the week. In addition, I have over 1000 photos to go through and we have video footage to edit (thank you to all who participated in the Hot Seat Elevator Interviews). In the meantime, here is the official press release wrap from the SIGGRAPH Organization – with a few injections from our experiences.

SIGGRAPH 2011 is now over, but while it was here the conference welcomed 15,872 artists, research scientists, gaming experts and developers, filmmakers, students, and academics from 74 countries around the globe to Vancouver this week—breaking the city’s previous conference attendance records. In addition, 156 industry organizations exhibited at SIGGRAPH 2011—representing 17 countries with approximately half from outside the United States.

Content was once again king at SIGGRAPH with approximately 825 speakers participating in the conference through a variety of talks, sessions, panels, papers, presentations, and screenings. We would have liked to have seen a lot more of the panels and talks, and the one panel we really wanted to get into was standing room only Expo Floor Entranceright out the door, so we didn’t get to hear about opening a remote studio in Vancouver.

“It was both an inspirational and incredibly fulfilling week,” said Peter Braccio, SIGGRAPH 2011 Conference Chair from Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. “Vancouver was an awesome home for SIGGRAPH and people are leaving with a renewed sense of passion and motivation both in their professional and personal lives. Vancouver delivered on its reputation as a world-class city.”

New to SIGGRAPH this year was the SIGGRAPH Symposium: The Business Think Tank, which was held on Sunday. The objective of the event was to help shape the future direction of the computer graphics industry. A sold out event, we kept hearing comments during the week about what a great event the Think Tank was. We were busy setting up our booth, so were unable to get over to the East Building to check it out.

The conference keynote was presented by science fiction author, blogger and activist Cory Doctorow. As he has done at other events around the globe, Mr. Doctorow presented his views on the state of copyright laws in the digital age, which are vastly different from our own. As we watched the presentation, we found ourselves in disagreement with many of Mr. Doctorow’s statements and conjectures. This was somewhat disappointing, as we feel it could potentially undo much of the excellent work that has been done thus far on copyright reform in Canada. In our opinion, SIGGRAPH could have had a keynote presentation that spoke more to the growth and successes Canada is experiencing in the technology and digital media industry sectors instead of an opinionated keynote that was not entirely accurate.

The SIGGRAPH 2011 Computer Animation Festival presented the world’s most innovative, accomplished, and amazing creators of digital gaming, film, and video. A total of 77 films were shown during the Festival. In addition to film screenings, the Festival included interactive sessions and exclusive learning opportunities to gain industry secrets and advice from some of the most successful professionals in the field.

SIGGRAPH 2011 Computer Animation Festival award winners include:

  • Best in Show Award: The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore
    Directed by William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg, Moonbot Studios
  • Jury Award: Paths of Hate
    Directed by Damian Nenow, Platige Image
  • Best Student Project Prize: Flamingo Pride
    Directed by Tomer Eshed, The Konrad Wolf Potsdam-Babelsberg Film and Television University

Technical Papers, the premier global forum for presenting groundbreaking research from today’s leading experts. The SIGGRAPH 2011 Technical Papers program featured 82 Technical Papers, selected among 432 submissions. In addition to core topics of modeling, animation, rendering, imaging, and human-computer interaction, the Technical Papers program encouraged submissions from areas related to computer graphics, including: computer games, design, vision, scientific and information visualization, audio, and robotics.

SIGGRAPH 2011 Art Gallery: Tracing Home explored issues related to the concept of home in the networked age. From more than 300 submissions, the Art Gallery jury selected 16 pieces to be featured, including 2D images, audio, video, and data-driven and mixed-media installations. All pieces explored “home” as both a conceptual category and a physical reality, often blurring the boundaries between the two.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 12th, 2011 at 8:50 am and is filed under Events, National News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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