SIGGraph 2000 Conference
| On the first day we walked to the New Orleans Convention Center in unbearable heat and humidity (despite the fact that it was one of the milder days of the summer.) Once inside, however, the air conditioning gave us the will to fully embrace graphics nirvana. |
|
|
| The first few days were day long courses. Before the first one began, Seth managed to get some fellow students to pose for this photo. |
|
|
| Sun's booth had the dolphin from Johnny Pneumonic (sp?) on display. The previous day, animal rights activists forced the closing of the "danger hamster" display in the emerging technologies section. Strangely enough, nobody complained about the tiny tank. |
|
|
| Tuesday night was animation theater night for us. We stood in line for a half hour outside of a historic New Orleans theater. |
|
|
| One of the areas of the conference was the art section. This was by far the most interesting piece of art -- a "Wooden Mirror." Each 2 in x 2 in wooden square would rotate around a horizontal axis to reflect different amounts of incident light (wood being non-lambertian and all) to reproduce the scene it saw through the camera in the center. It is so close to real-time too that you could wave your arm in front of it and see the reflection wave back. This is a "reflection" of me taking a picture with my arms out from my sides. Unfortunately the flash ruined the overhead lighting effect, so it's much less amazing than it was in person. |
|
|
| HP was auctioning off a "Harley" edition of one of their latest computers with money going to charity. Only 5 in the world. |
|
|
| HP also provided hours of entertainment at their booth, proving once again that we can all have fun without the use of computers. |
|
|
| Another section of the conference was called "Emerging Technologies" which was basically an Engineering Open House for people with lots of funding. Here, in fact, Sony spent hundreds of thousands of dollars developing this sword interface which a UIUC student implemented for his EOH project. Only difference? Sony had a bigger booth. |
|
|
| In this display, laser light went through LCD screens and was reflected and focused into your retinas with a holographic plate. Pretty scary with results that looked more like the Nintendo's red and black VR Boy than a new system for depth perception. |
|
|
| This project was similar to SIGBio's attempted EOH project where a microscope looks at an insect colony on a translation stage controlled remotely. Here there was also an actuator with which to poke the bugs. |
|
|
| One of the less lame emerging technologies -- tie your fingers onto force feedback sensors and manipulate a virtual Rubik's Cube in front of you. Try to put your fingers through the cube and the servos pull the strings back just enough to simulate a solid box. |
|
|
