The ACM SIGGRAPH Digital Arts Community is proud to continue the 3rd Digital Arts Student Competition – Speculative Futures, inviting students to imagine, question, and critically shape worlds that might yet come.
Resonating with the themes of the SIGGRAPH 2026 Art Gallery and Art Papers, this competition considers creation as a generative and translational process that unfolds between technology and humanity, between material and perception, and between individual experience and collective structures. Creative work can construct new forms of understanding and dialogue within these in-between spaces.
Speculative Futures treats creative practice as a means to explore possible worlds by building scenarios, crafting experiential prototypes and artifacts, and articulating alternative trajectories for life, society, and the environment. Digital artworks may envision a world saturated with technological wonders, expose fragile infrastructures and potential pitfalls, or propose subtle shifts in everyday experience.
Exhibition Details:
Selected works will be showcased digitally at SIGGRAPH 2026 in the ACM SIGGRAPH Village in Los Angeles, US, as well as on the ACM SIGGRAPH Digital Arts Community website.
Awards:
The first-place winners in each category received a full conference registration for SIGGRAPH 2026.
Scottie Chih-Chieh Huang is an artist, designer, and educator whose work develops nature-inspired generative systems, using rule-based morphogenesis to explore aesthetic abstraction, structural form-finding, and responsive, agency-like behavior through kinetic and interactive installations. His work has been presented at ZKM, ACM SIGGRAPH, CHI, Ars Electronica (Expanded), IEEE VISAP, ISEA, ALIFE, and Bridges, and featured in Domus, ELLE Decor Italia, FRAME, Leonardo (MIT Press), and Peter Weibel’s Enzyklopädie der Medien (Hatje Cantz). He is an Associate Professor at National Tsing Hua University (Taiwan) and currently a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Syracuse University.
Rebecca Ruige Xu currently teaches computer art and animation at Syracuse University. Her artwork and research interests include experimental animation, visual music, artistic data visualization, interactive installations, digital performance, and virtual reality. Her recent work has been shown at: ISEA; Ars Electronica; SIGGRAPH Art Gallery; IEEE VIS Arts Program, Museum of Contemporary Art, Italy; Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, USA; FILE– Electronic Language International Festival, Brazil; International Digital Art Exhibition, China; Boston Cyberarts Festival, USA. Xu is the co-founder of the ChinaVIS Arts Program, Co-Chair of the IEEE VIS 2023 and 2024 Arts Program, and currently serves as Chair of the ACM SIGGRAPH Digital Arts Committee.
Sanglim Han is a media artist and assistant professor at Chung-Ang University. Her work investigates how emerging technologies reshape aesthetics and production in contemporary media, with a focus on computational image-making and real-time systems. She examines the cultural and artistic implications of algorithmic processes within creative practice. Han has presented her work and research internationally at venues including Ars Electronica, ISEA, and the Biennial Symposium for Arts and Technology. She received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Mona Kasra is a media artist, interdisciplinary researcher, and Associate Professor of Digital Media Design at the University of Virginia. Her work examines the political and theoretical implications of visual media technologies within our culture and cross culturally. She frequently collaborates with musicians, choreographers, and theater-makers to explore new media and performance, enhancing narrative and audience immersion. Kasra’s artwork has been exhibited in galleries and film festivals worldwide, and she has contributed as a curator, programmer, and reviewer for major exhibitions, film festivals, and conferences. She was an elected member of the ACM SIGGRAPH Executive Committee (2019–2025), SIGGRAPH 2016 Conference Chair, and SIGGRAPH 2011 Art Gallery Chair. She is currently a board member of the New Media Caucus.
June-Hao Hou received a Doctor and Masters of Design degree from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. He also has a Master of Arts from National Chiao Tung University.
Scottie Chih-Chieh Huang is an artist, designer, and educator whose work develops nature-inspired generative systems, using rule-based morphogenesis to explore aesthetic abstraction, structural form-finding, and responsive, agency-like behavior through kinetic and interactive installations. His work has been presented at ZKM, ACM SIGGRAPH, CHI, Ars Electronica (Expanded), IEEE VISAP, ISEA, ALIFE, and Bridges, and featured in Domus, ELLE Decor Italia, FRAME, Leonardo (MIT Press), and Peter Weibel’s Enzyklopädie der Medien (Hatje Cantz). He is an Associate Professor at National Tsing Hua University (Taiwan) and currently a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Syracuse University.
Rebecca Ruige Xu currently teaches computer art and animation at Syracuse University. Her artwork and research interests include experimental animation, visual music, artistic data visualization, interactive installations, digital performance, and virtual reality. Her recent work has been shown at: ISEA; Ars Electronica; SIGGRAPH Art Gallery; IEEE VIS Arts Program, Museum of Contemporary Art, Italy; Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, USA; FILE– Electronic Language International Festival, Brazil; International Digital Art Exhibition, China; Boston Cyberarts Festival, USA. Xu is the co-founder of the ChinaVIS Arts Program, Co-Chair of the IEEE VIS 2023 and 2024 Arts Program, and currently serves as Chair of the ACM SIGGRAPH Digital Arts Committee.