This morning Kris Layng and I got up in front of several thousand people and accepted the award for Best Art Paper at the Siggraph conference. The paper was about CAVE, our shared VR experience for large audiences, first shown at Siggraph 2018 (and thereafter at the Tribeca Film Festival). Our coauthors on this are Sebastian Herscher, Corinne Brenner and Thomas Meduri.
The photo here was taken by Karl Rosenberg, a Ph.D. student in our lab. I really like this picture because it shows the strange relationship between media and reality. Although we look like towering figures up on the big screen, in reality we are those tiny little people you can barely see in the lower left corner.
Also, this award was very gratifying for me personally. My entire long career at Siggraph has been centered on the technical program.
I’ve published lots of technical research papers at Siggraph through the decades, yet the sort of research that goes on in art program has mostly seemed like another world. I think the difference between the two worlds mainly comes down to the sort of research questions one asks.
While I’ve always loved the art program, I am now finally starting to feel that I’m making a direct contribution to that program. I suspect that this has much to do with my current collaborator and co-creator Kris Layng, who, to my great good fortunate, pushes me to ask those different sorts of questions.