Member Profile: Gregory Bennett
1. What do you do, and how long have you been doing it?
I am currently a senior lecturer and Associate Head of School – Research at the School of Art & Design, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand / Aotearoa, where I have worked for 20 years. I teach in the Animation, Visual Effects and Game Design Department, specialising in motion capture, virtual production and XR. I am also a digital artist with an art practice that explores 3D animation in screen-based and projection work that is shown at art galleries, public sites, online, and at film and media festivals.
2. What was your first job?
My first professional job was as an assistant sound editor working on television documentaries with the then relatively new Pro Tools software in the early 1990s.
3. Where did you complete your formal education?
I competed a Bachelor and then a Master of Fine Arts at The Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland, New Zealand / Aotearoa.
4. How did you first get involved with ACM SIGGRAPH?
My first involvement with ACM SIGGRAPH was presenting a paper on teaching Motion Capture at the Education Forum at SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 in Yokohama.
5. What is your favorite memory of a SIGGRAPH conference?
I have many great memories of past SIGGRAPH conferences, in particular the many terrific talks and presentations. One standout for me was a talk at SIGGRAPH 2015 in Los Angeles about the making of Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar with theoretical physicist Kip Thorne and VFX supervisor Paul Franklin about the challenges of accurately visualising a black hole.
6. Describe a project that you would like to share with the ACM SIGGRAPH community.
A music video I created in 2024 for New Zealand band Vor-stellen, Folding of the Time , and a VR heritage project that was released on Steam in 2020 that allows you to virtually tour an historic Antarctic scientific hut, established by New Zealand explorer Sir Edmund Hillary in the 1950s. This was a collaboration between my university, the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust, and New Zealand-based VR company Staples VR. Scientist colleagues were able to gather lidar scans of the hut while visiting Antarctica, and a team of my students used these scans to recreate a photoreal interactive 3D exterior and interior of the hut in Unreal Engine.
7. If you could have dinner with one living or non-living person, who would it be and why?
Genius pioneer American multimedia artist and musician Laurie Anderson – I love her avid and innovative exploration and adoption of new technologies throughout her career, and I think she would be a great conversationalist over dinner.
8. What is something most people don’t know about you?
I love Italian opera.
9. From which single individual have you learned the most in your life? What did they teach you?
No single individual really – all of my encounters with friends, family, teachers, students and colleagues over the years have taught me valuable lessons about how live a meaningful and productive creative life.
10. Is there someone in particular who has influenced your decision to work with ACM SIGGRAPH?
June Kim who generously invited me to co-chair the Education Forum for SIGGRAPH Asia 2023 in Sydney.
11. What can you point to in your career as your proudest moment?
Wining an Honorable Mention at the SIGGRAPH 2019 XR Awards with Liz Canner for our VR project ‘Lost City of Mer Virtual Reality Experience’.