Interview: Kurt Akeley, Rays vs. Rasters Panelist

By Tai-San Choo
25 July 2002

Do you have any favorite CG mentors?
Certainly Jim Clark is the obvious one. I learned the fundamentals of graphics from Jim, and, to a lesser but important degree, the guys that started SGI. Working with Pat Hanrahan is an inspiration now so even at this point in my life I’ve got mentors.

What was the first time you contributed to SIGGRAPH?
The first time I did a papers presentation was 1988 in Atlanta, decribing the GT graphics system. I also was also contributing to what SGI was doing and presenting things on the show floor at SIGGRAPH. I’ve also been reviewing papers for SIGGRAPH since 1980 or so, when Jim Clark was on the committe. In a sense, that was a minor contribution. I’ve actually been reviewing the papers for over twenty years.

What year/city was your first SIGGRAPH? Which was the most intense? Why?
The first time I attended SIGGRAPH was in 1984 in Minneapolis, and I’ve been to every SIGGRAPH since except for the 1998 conference when my son was born.

The one conference that we had the greatest focus on was actually introducing the GT graphics. The paper was in 1988, but we actually did a whisper suite in 1987 in Anaheim. There was a huge effort to get that machine ready in time for the conference. We showed it in a quiet way to thousands of people in this whisper suite and I think we were doing back-to-back presentations every half hour for the whole time we were there. Maybe that was the most intense one, but it was also the most fun.

What contributions to SIGGRAPH are you most proud of?
I guess that would be chairing the papers program in 2000. It’s both a privilege and a responsibility to take that job. Part of the responsibility is to not do things that leave it in worse shape then we found it, so you want to be conservative about changes you make, but you also want to leave it in better shape. Like an engineering project if you are too aggressive you risk doing damage but if you don’t do anything you didn’t really contribute. I put a lot of effort into sort of formalizing the mechanisms and policy and trying to leave a clear record of a bunch of procedural things. I think I put more effort myself into the process and perception and I counted on committee member to put in the specific efforts identifying the best contributions in terms of the papers. My job was to facilitate them and provide a process to make it all work well and I felt like I was successful doing that.

What’s your favorite thing at this year or last year’s SIGGRAPH?
I think my favorite my favorite thing about all SIGGRAPH’s just meeting and interacting with friends and other folks doing graphics. I enjoy sitting in on the courses. This year I learned more so far in the courses then I have in the papers and that’s kind of new for me.
I think I haven’t focused so much in the past. But still the truth is my very favorite thing is running into old acquaintances and people I don’t see very often and getting a chance to catch up.

What near/intermediate developments in CG do you look forward to?
I really look forward to 3D graphics somehow finding its way into our non-computer related lives. I want it to be more of the real world and have some augmented reality. I see that happening, I really don’t know when but I think that that’s going to be an inflection point when graphics takes on a really new significance in our lives relative to a guess a lot of people are excited about what’s going to happen with the web, and I’m sure that’s exciting but I still feel like having graphics be something that I do is not as interesting as having graphics be something that is just with me as I do other things.