Additional Speakers: Madelyn Jager, Camille Leber, Jenna Mauch, Kai Yabis, Saul Reyna
The ACM SIGGRAPH History Archive is an initiative created by individuals that believe in free exchange of information as a means of improving society. Knowledge is only possible when information is obtainable. The SIGGRAPH community gathers together each year at the annual conference to share knowledge, network with people, and learn from each other. The work included in the SIGGRAPH History online Archive is a testament to the fact that open access to information fuels innovation, creativity, and achievement. This session focuses on major improvements to the archive that have happened over the past year, including adding 12,000 new entries, programming new features, developing new pipelines, optimization of the infrastructure, adding new design features, and scanning hundreds of documents. The large team of volunteers and interns work daily to research and enter new entries and fix bugs and add new functionality.
The physical archive is currently housed at Bowling Green State University (home of the 2nd SIGGRAPH conference) and will be expanding its footprint. Recent acquisition of the Jim Blinn collection of SIGGRAPH artifacts necessitated a redesign of the space. The SIGGRAPH Archive is also involved in a major consortium of new media art archives from around the world and helps lead an initiative to globally connect archives. This session also will solicit audience input regarding the future of the SIGGRAPH History Archive, possible enhancements, integration of new technologies, and its long-term sustainability.
SIGGRAPH 2025 Website: https://s2025.conference-schedule.org/presentation/?id=thea_107&sess=sess339
Bonnie Mitchell is a new media artist and Professor at Bowling Green State University in Digital Arts, in Bowling Green, Ohio, USA. Mitchell is a member of the ACM SIGGRAPH History and Digital Arts Committee where she focuses on the development of the SIGGRAPH archives and coordination of the SPARKS lecture series. Mitchell’s artworks explore spatial and experiential relationships to our physical, social, cultural, and psychological environment through interaction, abstraction and audio. Her current creative practice focuses on development of physically immersive environments using interaction via electronics and special FX to reveal change over time. Her work has been exhibited internationally at numerous venues.
Jan Searleman taught Computer Science at Clarkson University for 37 years, retired in 2015, and since retirement has been an Adjunct Research Professor at Clarkson. Her research areas are Virtual Environments, Human-Computer Interaction, and Artificial Intelligence. In 1979, Jan, along with colleague James Lynch, established a major in Computer Science. She was also instrumental in creating Clarkson’s MS and PhD in Computer Science. Jan created and taught a variety of CS courses, including Artificial Intelligence in 1979, and Computer Graphics in 1980 (in the days of a green dot on a black screen). In the 1990s, she created a student lab in Virtual Reality, and introduced a course on Virtual Environments. A senior member of the ACM since 1976, and of SIGGRAPH since 1978, Jan established Clarkson’s ACM student chapter in 1980. She also created Clarkson’s ACM SIGGRAPH student chapter. She advised both chapters until her retirement.