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Umbilici Bracelets, the SIGGRAPH Fellows Award
by Alyn Rockwood

“And the primal became two”  – I Ching.

The two bracelets, emblems of Art and Technology, are duals.  Art is an organic shape with a heart-shaped cross-section. It undulates and breathes. The sleeker Technology has a triangular cross-section.  Linked together, the two bracelets represent the bond between these two human endeavors.  They also gear one another;  rolling one bracelet will turn the other.

Art and Technology are one geometrical object in four-dimensional space. We comprehend them differently only because of the view point chosen to project them into three dimensions.  

In mathematics, an umbilic is the set of points where an object  curves equally in all principal directions.  The bracelets’ primal in 4D is the umbilic of an object which discriminates (cubic bivariate) polynomials. The cusps are intricately linked as well. Art has a single cusp that rotates three times before repeating. Technology’s three cusps rotate one-third time before starting over.

In physics, the cusps of the objects are strings of energy formed by the collision of nuclear particles.  In other words, they are the form that atomic particles create to radiate energy upon interacting, the fundamental exchange in the universe.

The bracelets are two manifestations of the same creative force.

Designing Knowledge is a 2018 ACM SIGGRAPH Digital Arts Community online exhibition. The exhibition seeks to showcase online digital repositories, archives and applications that make use of new media, art and design, and computer graphics to enable the creation, dissemination and preservation of new knowledge in areas such as archaeology, anthropology, art history, cultural heritage, all areas of geography, cartography, information and library studies, history, literary studies and museology. The twelve artefacts shown have been realized by artists, designers and scientists from five different countries in Asia, Europe and North America.

The exhibition can be visited at: https://designing-knowledge.siggraph.org/wp/

For more information contact: designing.knowledge@gmail.com

SIGGRAPH Doctoral Consortium

• Submissions due: June 18th, 2018 5pm PDT
• Acceptance notification: July 9th, 2018
• Doctoral Consortium date: Sat August 11, 2018 (8am-6pm PDT)
• Doctoral Consortium dinner: Sat August 11, 2018 (7pm-9pm PDT))

The SIGGRAPH Doctoral Consortium is a forum for Ph.D. students to meet and discuss their work with each other and a panel of experienced SIGGRAPH researchers in an informal and interactive setting. We welcome applications from current Ph.D. students studying within the full range of disciplines and approaches that contribute to the SIGGRAPH community. Ideal applicants will be within a year of completing their Ph.D. and well into their dissertation research. Accepted students will receive a complimentary registration to the full SIGGRAPH 2018 conference.

Each applicant should provide a short written paper (no more than four pages (including references) in the official SIGGRAPH  publication format, as described in the author's guide. Note that a doctoral consortium submission, unlike a paper submission, is not anonymous; doctoral consortium submissions should be single-authored, where the student applying is the sole author. This paper should describe ongoing work and might summarize the full dissertation work, or highlight a particular aspect of the work in depth.

The doctoral consortium committee will select approximately eight students to participate. Participants will be selected based on their anticipated contributions to the breadth and depth of the intellectual discussions at the meeting.

Each student will be expected to give a short presentation of their work (20-25 min), which will be followed by extensive discussion with the panel and the other student participants. The consortium will be held at the SIGGRAPH 2018 venue from 8 a.m. until 6 p.m. on Saturday, August 11th, 2018 and will be followed by a dinner that evening.

Each participating student will also be asked to prepare a poster describing his or her work for presentation in the SIGGRAPH posters program.

Doctoral consortium 4 page papers should be submitted electronically through the EasyChair website.

The doctoral consortium committee consists of:

• Maneesh Agrawala, Stanford University (chair)
• Kavita Bala, Cornell University
• Keenan Crane, Carnegie Mellon University
• Karen Liu, Georgia Institute of Technology
• Gordon Wetzstein, Stanford University

Looking for New Zealand's Best Young Animator Through Light & Dark

4 April 2018:  Aspiring artists from around New Zealand sharpen your pencils and hone your Photoshop skills: the Light and Dark Secondary School Character Competition is now underway and students have until June 5 to submit their entries.

Now in its fifth year, Light and Dark is the country’s largest character design competition for Year 11, 12 and 13 students. Presented by Animation College in conjunction with Yoobee School of Design, entrants must use their artistic talents to create a character portraying two opposite emotions – excitement and fear, happiness and sadness, love and despair, or serenity and rage. Judged by some of the country’s top creatives, contestants will be marked on expression, character pose, and wow factor.

“It’s not so important that characters are perfectly rendered – the ability to breathe life into the characters is what we are really looking for,” says Adam Berry, CEO of New Education Group’s Creative and Technology Cluster which includes Animation College and Yoobee School of Design.

Students can use traditional tools such as pencils and paint, digital programmes like Adobe Photoshop, or they can submit 3D modelled characters.

“We really just want them to use their imagination and go for it. It’s a really exciting opportunity for students to showcase their animation skills and potentially pathway into further studies and a career in this fast-growing industry.”

One student who has done exactly that is 2016 Light and Dark third place getter Grace Kim, who has just moved from Mt Maunganui to Auckland, to start a Bachelor of Animation at Animation College.

“It came as such a shock to me when I found out I placed third. It really gave me a confidence boost that a panel of artistic judges liked my work,” says Grace. “All those hours of drawing felt like they had finally paid off!”

Students receive online support through the Light and Dark Facebook Group and for Grace this proved invaluable.

“This competition is such a great way to learn from other aspiring artists. The feedback group was so helpful – I don’t think I would have placed without their support and critique. It enabled me to see my art from a different perspective. Even if you’re not confident that you will place or win, Light and Dark is such a good competition to gain experience, build skills and learn from others.”

It’s also a great way to pick up a stash of prizes. The winner of 2018 Light and Dark will receive a scholarship for the Bachelor of Animation degree programme, which can be undertaken at Animation College’s Auckland Central campus or Yoobee School of Design’s Wellington campus. They’ll also win loads of vouchers, subscriptions and prize packs from competition sponsors. Second and third place winners will walk away with a bunch of cool prizes too, courtesy of Light and Dark’s primary sponsors – Adobe, Wacom, Gordon Harris, Playtech and Arkham City Comics.

Competition winners will be announced on July 10.

To find out more go to: www.lightanddark.nz

About Animation College

Founded by the legendary ex-Disney animator John Ewing, we are the only college in New Zealand to offer degrees and diplomas in 2D, 3D character animation and storytelling.  We deliver cutting edge training at our Auckland, Manukau and Rotorua campuses.

About Yoobee School of Design

As part of the New Education Group, Yoobee is New Zealand’s largest specialised digital design school delivering practical, innovative training for careers in graphic design, filmmaking, animation and 3D graphics, game art and development, and web development. We keep students plugged into industry advances and at the top of their game, at our state-of-the-art campuses in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and online.

For further information please contact:

Evonne Geluk, Communications Advisor
Email: evonne.geluk@acgedu.com
Mobile: 021 538 984