ACM SIGGRAPH Digital Arts Community presents Designing Knowledge

ACM SIGGRAPH Digital Arts Community presents Designing Knowledge

Designing Knowledge is a 2018 ACM SIGGRAPH Digital Arts Community online exhibition. The exhibition seeks to showcase online digital repositories, archives and applications that make use of new media, art and design, and computer graphics to enable the creation, dissemination and preservation of new knowledge in areas such as archaeology, anthropology, art history, cultural heritage, all areas of geography, cartography, information and library studies, history, literary studies and museology. The twelve artefacts shown have been realized by artists, designers and scientists from five different countries in Asia, Europe and North America.

The exhibition can be visited at: https://designing-knowledge.siggraph.org/wp/

For more information contact: designing.knowledge@gmail.com

 

Special Election for ACM SIGGRAPH Bylaw Amendment

The first major change is that all elected positions will be director positions and ACM SIGGRAPH’s officers will no longer be elected to specific positions through member elections. Every year, after the new EC takes office, it will select new officers from within the EC to serve one-year terms. The officers will be the Chair, Chair-Elect, Treasurer, and Treasurer-Elect. The Chair-Elect will become the Chair and the Treasurer-Elect will become the Treasurer after the next election.

The second major change is to allow the EC to appoint up to three voting members to its rank. This change will allow the EC to increase representation from core constituencies as needed, and to allow key volunteers — such as the Conference Advisory Group Chair — full participation on the EC to better reflect their role in the organization.

The third major change is to elect the directors to specific positions. For example, if three director positions are open in a given election, the voters would be presented with at least two candidates for position A, another two for position B, etc. This change will allow the nominating committee to achieve increased diversity in skillset, area of expertise, and geography.

The other minor changes to the bylaws are changing current titles, for example, renaming “President,” to the new title of “Chair”, and changes that bring us into compliance with ACM or current practice for SIGGRAPH (e.g., the timing of the election).

The ACM SIGGRAPH Executive Committee believes that, taken together, these changes will allow for a more agile SIGGRAPH organization, better able to focus and act on the strategic issues concerning the field of computer graphics and interactive techniques.

Please see a copy of the proposed ACM SIGGRAPH Bylaws here.

SIGGRAPH Doctoral Consortium

SIGGRAPH Doctoral Consortium

SIGGRAPH Doctoral Consortium

  • Submissions due: June 18th, 2018 5pm PDT
  • Acceptance notification: July 9th, 2018
  • Doctoral Consortium date: Sat August 11, 2018 (8am-6pm PDT)
  • Doctoral Consortium dinner: Sat August 11, 2018 (7pm-9pm PDT))

The SIGGRAPH Doctoral Consortium is a forum for Ph.D. students to meet and discuss their work with each other and a panel of experienced SIGGRAPH researchers in an informal and interactive setting. We welcome applications from current Ph.D. students studying within the full range of disciplines and approaches that contribute to the SIGGRAPH community. Ideal applicants will be within a year of completing their Ph.D. and well into their dissertation research. Accepted students will receive a complimentary registration to the full SIGGRAPH 2018 conference.

Each applicant should provide a short written paper (no more than four pages (including references) in the official SIGGRAPH  publication format, as described in the author's guide. Note that a doctoral consortium submission, unlike a paper submission, is not anonymous; doctoral consortium submissions should be single-authored, where the student applying is the sole author. This paper should describe ongoing work and might summarize the full dissertation work, or highlight a particular aspect of the work in depth.

The doctoral consortium committee will select approximately eight students to participate. Participants will be selected based on their anticipated contributions to the breadth and depth of the intellectual discussions at the meeting.

Each student will be expected to give a short presentation of their work (20-25 min), which will be followed by extensive discussion with the panel and the other student participants. The consortium will be held at the SIGGRAPH 2018 venue from 8 a.m. until 6 p.m. on Saturday, August 11th, 2018 and will be followed by a dinner that evening.

Each participating student will also be asked to prepare a poster describing his or her work for presentation in the SIGGRAPH posters program.

Doctoral consortium 4 page papers should be submitted electronically through the EasyChair website.

The doctoral consortium committee consists of:

  • Maneesh Agrawala, Stanford University (chair)
  • Kavita Bala, Cornell University
  • Keenan Crane, Carnegie Mellon University
  • Karen Liu, Georgia Institute of Technology
  • Gordon Wetzstein, Stanford University


 

Laval Virtual Hits 20-Year Milestone Spotlighting the VR-AR Space

Laval Virtual Hits 20-Year Milestone Spotlighting the VR-AR Space

Story by Melanie Farmer

For the past 20 years, Laval Virtual has been keeping it real with virtual reality, emerging as the prominent platform and exhibition space for everything related to VR and its future. And, at this year’s annual multi-day conference—expected to draw 20,000 attendees—Laval Virtual continues to serve as the destination for those in the industry, or curious about the industry, to get a firsthand look at the innovation and promise of one of the fastest growing mediums in technology.

Laval Virtual, which will be held April 4 to 8 in Laval, France, is set to welcome more than 300 exhibitors, representing a diverse range of industries, including film, entertainment, art, health and science. As in previous years, Laval Virtual is spotlighting every corner of innovation and creativity relevant to the expanding landscape of VR and augmented reality (AR).

Keynote speakers at the event’s VR International Conferences, a global forum for researchers and engineers co-sponsored by ACM SIGGRAPH, will include industry and academic experts from NAIST, Google, University of Southern California and Walt Disney Imagineering. Laval Virtual cofounder Simon Richir, a pioneer in French VR research and its applications, and Marc Pallot, senior research associate at Arts et Metiers Laval Virtual Institute, are scheduled to deliver a joint talk on day one on how immersive technologies are set to change the world around us.

In addition to a series of talks and forums geared for industry researchers and professionals, a good portion of the event is devoted to pure innovation in the space of VR/AR via the conference’s competitions and awards program; seven competitions in total.

Of the 159 submissions received for the Laval Virtual Awards category this year, 12 winners will be honored at the conference and will showcase their award-winning projects. In the ReVolution award category, an international competition that rewards the most innovative projects in VR/AR, scientific yet playful submissions are being considered. One selection involves VR swimming with dolphins and another is focused on VR training for piloting paragliders. Ten startups will vie for best startup award, and a student competition also will be held, bringing attention to 12 young finalists who will demo their work in the VR/AR space.

The general public, as in previous years, will get a more popular overview of VR and new technologies. Among the major themes to be addressed in the public program are VR in the treatment of phobias; blockchain and cryptocurrency; and the future of games and entertainment. New, in honor of its 20th anniversary milestone, Laval Virtual also intends to set up an art and technology gallery, showcasing work by artists who use virtual and mixed technology as an artistic medium.

Indeed, from upstarts to tech giants and seasoned experts to young, emerging talent, virtually every inch of the advancements in VR/AR will be covered at this year’s annual event. Happy anniversary, Laval Virtual!

Call for Participation: ACM SIGGRAPH / Eurographics Symposium on Computer Animation in Paris, France

Call for Participation: ACM SIGGRAPH / Eurographics Symposium on Computer Animation in Paris, France

ACM SIGGRAPH / Eurographics Symposium on Computer Animation

Final Call for Papers

The papers deadline is appraching fast! You can submit your papers by April 9, 2018 – 23:59 UTC. We also want to highlight again that all accepted submissions will be published at the CGF journal this year. As a consequence, there will be a strict 10-page limit for content (plus references). Authors will be notified of acceptance by May 18. 

Posters Program

We also invite submissions to the poster and demo session, which has traditionally been an integral part of the SCA program. The poster session will follow a posters fast-forward session during which all presenters will have the opportunity to give a one-to-two minute description of their work. Additionally, a best paper award will be given to the top poster!

Posters will be included in the ACM and EG digital libraries. Note however that as usual, a SCA poster does not preclure subsequent publication of a complete paper on the same topic by the same authors (however, a SCA poster by other authors is considered prior art and should be cited as such).

We encourage any of the following types of poster submissions:

  •     Up and coming computer animation research
  •     Technically novel production work
  •     Lab overviews which present a snapshot of the ongoing animation-related research at a given institution
  •     Half-baked ideas and negative results
  •     Work done outside of SCA that would be of interest to the computer animation community. This includes animation-related works recently accepted to other conferences such as I3D or NPAR.


Poster Submissions

  • Submission website (https://srmv2.eg.org/COMFy/Conference/SCA_2018)
  • SCA will be using the Eurographics / Computer Graphics Forum template style (https://srmv2.eg.org/COMFy/Conference/SCA_2018/GetConferenceFile?fileID=8640)
  • Submission deadline: May 28, 2018 – 23:59 UTC 


Submission Instructions
Poster submissions must be camera-ready, with author names and affiliations listed. The review process will be single blind. Poster abstracts should consist of a PDF formatted paper according to the Eurographics / Computer Graphics Forum publication style given above. As last year, poster abstracts are permitted to be up to two pages in length. Posters should be written and presented in English. Supplementary material such as videos may also be submitted electronically and will be made available to reviewers. Finally, we also encourage the authors to submit a draft of the poster of size A0 in PDF as supplementary material.

Poster abstracts will be included in the ACM and EG Digital Libraries, thus providing a better and longstanding referencing to such works.

Fast Forward Slide
Authors of accepted posters will be required to provide a short video describing their work for the Poster Fast Forward session. Video guidelines will be provided to presenters.

Oral Presentation
For the final presentation, videos and interactive demonstrations are highly encouraged. We will provide electrical outlets and tables so that authors can display such demonstrations using their own equipment.

About SCA

The 17th annual Symposium on Computer Animation (SCA) will be held in Paris in France, July 11-13, and the symposium will be hosted at the "Maison des Mines" in the center of Paris. 
 
SCA is the premier forum for innovations in the software and technology of computer animation. It unites researchers and practitioners working on all aspects of time-based phenomena. Our focused, intimate gathering, with single track program and emphasis on community interaction, makes SCA the best venue to exchange research results, get inspired, and set up collaborations. 

Organizers
 
Conference Chairs

  • Maud Marchal, IRISA-INSA
  • Damien Rohmer, Ecole Polytechnique

Program Chairs

  • Thabo Beeler, Disney Research Zurich
  • Nils Thuerey, Technical University of Munich

Posters Chair

  • Melina Skouras, Inria