SIGGRAPH 2023, August 6 to 10, Los Angeles
At SIGGRAPH 2023, the world’s largest conference for computer graphics and interactive techniques, Nicolas Henchoz, director of the EPFL+ECAL Lab, will chair the Art Papers. For this 50th edition, he aims to highlight how culture plays a major role in giving meaning to emerging technologies and enabling them to contribute to key issues such as the environment, health, virtual identity and confidence in the age of artificial intelligence.
“The 50th edition of SIGGRAPH offers new perspectives to the digital industry by placing the interests of the society, the individual and the planet at the centre of the debates. The challenges met by the Metavers, NFT and immersive environments demonstrate that innovation has to integrate human perception, meaning and impact to be successful, both for the citizen and for business,” says Nicolas Henchoz. The director of the EPFL+ECAL Lab responds to this challenge with the cultural dimension, by creating a dedicated programme – a workshop “Building Trust With Computer Graphics and AI: The Role of Tech, Art or Policy?”, followed by four sessions of academic artistic contributions – and brings the dimension of human perception to the design debate.
This major role entrusted to Nicolas Henchoz at this world conference, which brings together academics, artists, leading digital companies and the film and special effects industry, rewards fifteen years of research and innovation at the EPFL+ECAL Lab.
As part of SIGGRAPH’s Art Papers programme, Nicolas Henchoz, in collaboration with curator Winka Angelrath has invited a number of world-renowned artists such as Refik Anadol, Theo Jansen, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Lynn Hershman Leeson to share their perspectives in short interviews. They raise profound questions about the role of culture and the meaning of innovation.
The academic artistic contributions, selected by the jury, presents a number of concrete applications, such as the capture and analysis of movement to help paraplegics, the creation of avatars capable of representing our individuality in virtual universes, or an unprecedented insight in the impact of global warming on the Great Barrier Reef, using artificial intelligence.
The workshop on trust in relation with artificial intelligence brings together leading figures such as Brandie Nonnecke, the influential founder and director of the CITRIS Policy Lab at UC Berkeley and co-director of the Centre for Law and Technology; Benjamin Larsen, in charge of artificial intelligence at the World Economic Forum; Mike Seymour, internationally renowned for his work on special effects, co-founder of fxguide and now a researcher in the credibility of avatars; and June Kim, Conference Chair of SIGGRAPH Asia.
