From left to right: Erik Brunvand, Bonnie Mitchell, Dave Kasik, Mary Whitton
As SIGGRAPH looks ahead to celebrating its 50th conference, SIGGRAPH 2023 Conference Chair Erik Brunvand catches up with three SIGGRAPH “historians” — Dave Kasik, Mary Whitton, and Bonnie Mitchell — who each bring a unique perspective about the past 50 years of the conference. Listen in to hear stories of SIGGRAPHs’ past and hear their bold predictions for the future of computer graphics and interactive techniques.
Want to share your own SIGGRAPH memory with the computer graphics and interactive techniques community? Submit it by Friday, 1 October. Find out more information here.
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Look forward to more information about SIGGRAPH 2023 coming soon. Can’t wait to experience what’s next in computer graphics and interactive techniques? There’s still time to register and watch on-demand content in the SIGGRAPH 2022 virtual conference platform. Content is available through 31 October.
Special thank you to SIGGRAPH 2022 Media Partner, postPerspective.
About Our Guests
Dave Kasik retired as Boeing’s senior technical fellow in visualization and interactive techniques in 2016. In this role, he advanced Boeing’s use of digital twin 3D design and digital thread processes. Kasik devoted his first 11 years at Boeing to research and development of computer-aided design software and led to pioneering work in interactive 3D graphics, user interface management systems, and industrial use of non-uniform rational b-spline (NURBS) solids and surfaces. His later projects introduced Boeing to Massive Model Visualization and visual analytics.
Mary Whitton has worked in interactive 3D graphics research since the mid-1970s. She studied at NC State University and was co-founder of Ikonas Graphics Systems (1978) and Trancept Systems (1986). These companies developed high-end, user-programmable graphics processors that are predecessors of today’s GPUs. She joined UNC in 1994 and from then until 2016 she co-led the Effective Virtual Environments research group with Fred Brooks. She received the 2021 IEEE Virtual Reality VGTC Career Award. Whitton was the chair of the ACM SIGGRAPH Executive Committee from 1993 to 1995 and is currently chair of the ACM SIGGRAPH History Committee.
Bonnie Mitchell is a new media artist, online archive developer, and a professor at Bowling Green State University in Digital Arts, in Bowling Green, Ohio. Mitchell is a member of the ISEA International Advisory Committee and ACM SIGGRAPH History and Digital Arts Committee where she focuses on the development of their online archives. Her current creative practice focuses on development of physically immersive data visualization environments that showcase climate change over time. Mitchell’s artworks explore spatial and experiential relationships to our physical, social, cultural, and psychological environment through interaction, abstraction and audio. She often collaborates with Elainie Lillios, a composer, to create abstract visual music installations and animations that have been shown in hundreds of venues world-wide. Mitchell was also an early net-artist producing numerous large-scope international internet art projects that were shown at ISEA, SIGGRAPH and online starting in 1992, garnered an Honorable Mention from ARS Electronica in 1995. Collectively, Mitchell’s presentations and artworks have been included in festivals, exhibitions, conferences, and symposia in six continents and at numerous prestigious events including Ars Electronica, ISEA, SIGGRAPH, Punto y Raya, Visual Music Marathon, Melbourne and London International Animation Festivals, AnimaFest Croatia, iDMAa IDEAS Festival, Society for Electro-acoustic Music, Les Sommets du Cinema d’Animation at the Cinémathèque Québécoise, and many more. She is the SIGGRAPH 2023 History Liaison.
