The keynote and preceding SIGGRAPH awards ceremony are a central part of the conference programme each year. The three honours are the Computer Graphics Achievement Award, Significant New Researcher Award and ACM SIGGRAPH Outstanding Service Award.
The first two went to researchers recognised for developments in computing. Thomas W. Sederberg of Brigham Young University received the Computer Graphics Achievement Award, while Takeo Igarashi of the University of Tokyo received the Significant New Researcher Award.
John M. Fujii of HP accepted the Outstanding Service Award for his contributions to organising SIGGRAPH.
After the awards, an explanation of ACM SIGGRAPH’s structure and numerous acknowledgements, the microphone passed to Joe Rohde. Unlike previous keynote speakers, Rohde did not come from the computer-graphics industry. He was vice president and executive designer at Walt Disney Imagineering, the Disney company responsible for developing and building theme parks.
#Joe
Rohde began by warning that he was not particularly involved with computers and instead worked physically with real materials. Storytelling was the connection between his work and the audience.
He illustrated the point with Animal Kingdom, a theme park in Florida whose themed world had been in preparation and development for 20 years. The team visited several remote regions to make the story presented to visitors authentic, consistent and credible.
The essential requirement, Rohde argued, is a central idea against which every decision is tested. A story needs detail to be believable, but not every idea that fits the subject also fits the overall concept.
Different people associate very different ideas with the same subject. Combining every participant’s suggestions produces no harmonious, coherent whole. The key question when deciding whether to include an idea is why that detail should be there.
An unsuitable detail can break the illusion immediately, much as a microphone appearing unexpectedly in a film does. The same applies to a stylistically or thematically misplaced detail in a theme park.
Rohde drew several parallels between his work and computer graphics. His message was that story comes first: a film or theme park succeeds only when it is coherent down to the last detail and free of unnecessary embellishment. The comparisons won over an audience that had initially seemed sceptical of the unconventional keynote choice.
