Siggraph Spirit

This year, Siggraph comes to Boston, and the East Coasters get a break from flying for five hours knees to chin, subsisting on two 4oz. cups of water and snack boxes packed with corn syrup and hydrogenated fat — all available to buy if you have exact change.

Still, for those on the far coast, it will be worth the trip. Siggraph is one of the few remaining tradeshows that is a labor of love, and it shows. Still put together largely by volunteers, it is far bigger and more commercial than it was back in the day — but then so is the industry. Yet Siggraph retains a spirit of discovery, and, like Sundance (which is also awash in commercial byproducts), it also retains one very important subplot that changes everything: People bring their dreams here.

Sounds corny, I know, but how else to explain Siggraph's Computer Animation Festival (CAF), the Papers Program, or the Emerging Technologies? The animators, scientists, inventors, and entrepreneurs represented in those aspects of the conference don't know — or care — that we've all been there, done that. They may know about the pioneers who preceded them, toiling into the wee hours to give us particle systems and many hard-won innovations that people take for granted. They may know their own innovations are destined to be taken for granted, probably within their lifetimes. They may even wish to earn a decent living at their art or science (imagine that). But I also know — because I have to talk to lots of them — that they speak with the kind of vigor, awe, and self-confidence that has swirled around Siggraph for the decade and a half I've been attending, and no doubt before.

What's different now, and interesting, is that the mysteries of CG are so much more accessible than they were even five years ago. There are entries in the CAF that people made at home alongside those made at Weta Digital. There are tools on the show floor that everyone can afford. There are all kinds of artists — some of them rooted in oil paint, some in video editing, some in shooting DV — who have picked up the virtual paintbrush that is CG and had at it. This brings new points of view and further enlivens the show floor, if not the parties, which probably just seemed more fun 15 years ago.

For what it's worth, here's how I get into the Siggraph spirit: I go to the Fast Track Papers session where the madmen and women who write these things have one minute to explain their life's work. And this year, if you remember Wavefront, follow up immediately with a toast to Bill Kovacs, who died too soon, still in love with CG.

Check out our blog from the show floor at blog.digitalcontentproducer.com/siggraph starting Aug. 2; and go now to digitalcontentproducer.com/podcasts/video/siggraph_2006_pod to see the trailers for the CAF, Emerging Technologies, Papers, and Art Galleries. And pack some food for the plane.