May 28 Inaugural Seattle SIGGRAPH Review -- Ken Greenebaum

The turnout Tuesday night was a very pleasant surprise, especially after the long holiday weekend. I counted over 50 people in attendance. 47 people signed the petition sheet for establishing an official ACM SIGGRAPH chapter. This puts us well over the 10 needed! Folks in attendance included many from Microsoft, Boeing, University of Washington, SGI, Adobe, and other affiliations.

Steve started the meeting off by describing the ideas we have regarding organizing the chapter. These included:

• Meetings open to all; Seattle SIGGRAPH members, guests, etc.
• Seattle SIGGRAPH and ACM Membership voluntary but suggested.
• Membership will include a voluntary membership fee used to help support the chapter. (more on this later)
• We will keep expenses very low by emailing announcements and publishing online, instead of mailing expensive newsletters.
• Volunteer participation is highly encouraged. Once again we plan to keep the load and responsibilities low for everybody.
• We plan to schedule monthly talks provided speakers (we have some folks lined up, but if anyone could suggest potential speakers, or would like to volunteer, please let us know!
• Microsoft has provided us use of the SanJuan room where we met tonight. However since it may not be available on a given night, and it would be fun/convenient for others to use other facilities, we would love to have alternate sites. Anybody is welcome to propose suggestions for alternate sites!

Questions from the audience included:

• Q: Is ACM membership a requirement?

  A: No. But it is suggested. We will organize signups in the future.

• Q: Will the talks be Highly Technical, or Artistic?

  A: Talks will be highly varied, and geared to a wide audience. Some talks will be more technical than others. We encourage participation from Artists, philosophers, etc. as well as hard-core technologists! This is YOUR SIGGRAPH chapter. Please let us know what kinds of talks you would like/volunteer for!

Jim's talk: "The Future of Computer Graphics" was a wonderful way to kick off our first meeting. Putting Computer Graphics into perspective both technically and philosophically.

First Jim provided us with a brief introduction to his career. Next he posed the Question: "What is Computer Graphics". He explained that many related fields: Image Processing, Data Plotting, SCI Vis., simulation, User Interface, are actually not Computer graphics. Then explained that most Computer Science augment human capability (Robotics->Muscle, Database->Memory, Simulation->Modeling, prediction, etc.)

What then is the purpose of Computer Graphics he asks? The provocative answer is CG augments human imagination! Jim continues with some interesting predictions: CRTs will soon be supplanted by other technologies with imersive experiences becoming the norm, Computational resources will continue to grow leaving CG as one of the few fields with the ability to soak up infinite resources, animation using intelligent actors, and the death of modeling by polygons and patches (to be supplanted by volumetric techniques and meta-models).

With all this said, Jim tells us we missed the point. The significant point is that Computer Graphics is poised to become a medium. This is a very significant possibility; new media are rarely created, and adoption of a new medium is responsible for fundamental changes in culture and politics. The age of literature may be ending in favor of the visual media.

To fulfill the promise 3D Graphics will have to be available to all, and animations will have to be simple to produce. If these criteria are not met. Computer Graphics may only become a minor Media similar to Television or Film where large crews of highly paid experts are needed to produce works which only reflect the content of interest to the broadest audience. Computer Graphics must be able to mediate non-verbal information the channel where social interactions are communicated.