The Inaugural Speculative Futures Digital Arts Student Competition represents a new collaboration between the ACM SIGGRAPH Digital Arts Committee and the International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA 2024). In line with ISEA’s theme, “EveryWhen,” this competition challenges and expands our understanding of the creative and research processes that shape our perceptions of ourselves and the world. It highlights digital artwork as a crucial medium for addressing urgent social, political, and environmental issues, showcasing art’s ability to illuminate the consequences of current trends and provoke thoughtful engagement with the future.
In this session, we will celebrate the achievements of our talented students, share insights into the competition, and hear from selected winners as they discuss their projects. We will also unveil our exciting plans for the next competition.
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.
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.
Rewa Wright has been working with augmented (AR) and mixed reality (MR) since 2012, and has 20 years of experience in various aspects of photographic, moving, and virtual image creation. Wright weaves together theory and practice in philosophy, cyberfeminism, interaction design, technoculture, camera-less photography, and artificial vision technologies with living plants and custom built software to examine the conditions of our relationship to computation, ecology and the body. Rewa is Māori from Ngati Taweke/Te Rarawa/Te Uri o Hau hapu of Aotearoa/New Zealand. Indigenous practices are emergent in their mixed reality performances that incorporate and adapt gestures from traditional dance, and permeate an investigation of plant-data-body ecologies.