SIGGRAPH 2009- TAICHI NAKAMURA

....The Journey 2009 SIGGRAPH Asia 2009- an account by TAICHI NAKAMURA

[IMAGE 1- SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 Visual art movies cutting, collaging and moving neon signs in Japan]

At the end of the year 2009, I had a fantastic opportunity to work as part of the support staff of SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 through an internship program with other university students across the world.
SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group on Graphics and Interactive Techniques) is an annual international conference attended by thousands of computer professionals and scholars. It is a large-scale annual event held originally in the United States and the recently started Asian version was held in Yokohama, Japan, for the first time in December 2009.

[IMAGE 2- Pacifico Yokohama and the beautiful view of Yokohama]

The presentations were given from the people in the industries with advanced usage of Information Technologies and scholars from Universities specializing in computer graphics and interactivity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIGGRAPH). It was most definitely a great opportunity to see and experience how those people utilizes the computer technology today and to receive further insight to where the technology is heading towards the future. 

[IMAGE 3- SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 Great graphic artist]

[IMAGE 4- SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 3D Animation is the core feature of the conference]

Japan, is well known to be one of the countries for its advanced technologies and their unique electrical products. Since 10 years ago, their mobile phones had web browsing and emailing capability as its standard features and today it is quite likely that mobile phones have digital TV, GPS and media viewer functions builded in. Coffee vending machines provides you with entertainment while you wait for the coffee to come out by playing you a nice music and showing you what is happening inside the machine through a LCD monitor while the coffee is getting carried across to get grained, filtered and mixed with milk and sugar through a tiny CCD camera. Bathtub can be filled automatically and speaks and advises you to take the bath when the temperature is just right.

[IMAGE 5- Coffee vending machine that plays music while you wait]

Yokohama is a huge city that has 3.6 million people living in its own, which is located only a 30 minutes train ride from the most populated metropolitan prefecture Tokyo. Yokohama historically grew large by opening its harbor to foreign merchants 150 years ago, which until then was prohibited countrywide. SIGGRAPH was held in an arched shaped landmark called Pacifico Yokohama, located right next to the centres and the port of Yokohama. They had two huge halls for its exhibition space and few floors worth of conference rooms.

[IMAGE 6- Pacifico Yokohama]

SIGGRAPH was full of interesting presentations and many papers were provided from international and domestic lecturers, including our AUT lecturers, Andrew Denton and Greg Bennett.

Various companies also came to present their latest technologies. NVDIA for example showed how fast their recent Graphics cards were. OptiTrack had a lady dancing with markers on her all day to show how the Motion capture application worked. Also, there were many presentation of iPhone apps created to control other hardware devices including robots playing soccer and a four man band using four open real old school cassette players controlled by four iPhones.
They also displayed robots that were actually being used in Japan for purposes such as assisting people to find their way in public arenas. Asian lady robot "RP-4C" (AKA Hatsume Miku) was one of the extreme examples of how they have become close to human today and showed how she could change facial descriptions and entertained the audience by singing.

[IMAGE 7- SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 Motions capture demonstration by OptiTrack]

[IMAGE 8-  SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 Display of robots currently used in Japan]

[IMAGE 9-  SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 Human like robot RP-4C at your service]

Wearing a red vest identifying that we were a part of the staff, the interns were spread across the building and I was assigned to look after the exhibition hall. While standing in the entrance to check if the people coming in had the right pass, I was asked if I could help some presentations using my bilingual ability to speak English as well as Japanese.
That was when I was introduced to Keynes, Howie and Hung-Jung who came from Taiwan who came for their presentation.
I introduced myself to the whole team and we became instantly friends and soon got introduced to how they would like to have the presentation done.
Keynes and Howie seemed quite exhausted. After being up all night to set up their presentation equipments. They had just arrived the previous day and needing to setup a complicated system in a precise manner was imaginable how difficult it could have been. But they also seemed very happy and excited and with the fact that things were glad to come to SIGGRAPH and that the equipments were satisfactory working and little relaxed.

The presentation they brought was branded with the name "MemoIcon". The concept of their work was to use daily surrounding objects to increase productivity by binding virtual information to everyday real object with an interactive method based on pattern recognition and multi-touch technologies (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa8QnozK7oE&feature=related). MemoIcon has an easy to use graphic user interface using fingers that get read from an infrared camera under the desk and virtual keyboard and buttons showing when it is needed. They used this new interaction technique to bridge the virtual and physical worlds through everyday objects keeping in mind of the upcoming future when table-surface interaction becomes ubiquitous.

[IMAGE 10- SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 MemoIcon]

MemoIcon was not only unique and seemed useful in people’s daily life but it was beautiful and fun to use. They were using a Mac Book Pro to control the system and to bind the components that made the MemoIcon function. In fact, it suppressed me that almost all presentations except one in the Art and Technical Exhibition Hall used Macintosh laptops. It seemed like this was because the applications that the presenters required were more available in Macintosh platforms and since OSX is a Unix-based OS, many open source codes are easily applicable and scripts could be easily made. Also, another interesting trend that I found was that Adobe Flash seemed to be very popular among the artists and presenters. This seemed to be because it was light and scripts could be embedded and its intractability which ideal for creating original graphic user interfaces. 

[IMAGE 11- SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 MemoIcon presentation booth]

I enjoyed the opportunity to communicate with many people while supporting the MemoIcon presentation. Receiving the chance to talk with the audience through presenting MemoIcon, I interacted with students and lecturers from all over the world, Japanese IT related people in various industries, artists who came for a presentation at SIGGRAPH and manufacturers seeking for new technologies to be implemented in their future products.

I had limited knowledge of how MemoIcon worked, and MemoIcon was a rather complex combinations of systems assembled together. So instead of explaining, I demonstrated what it can do to the audience providing them the chance to touch and experience the system, playing tunes and selecting the tracks and controlling the volume by twisting a bottle, showing photographs and magnifying them to fill the entire table with two fingers, opening and showing many movies simultaneously, tweeting at the same time and storing each application and data into a bottle and my wallet. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRri6ofLaFQ)
But since I was personally curious how the system worked and kept asking Keynes many questions and got quite familiar with the system and became able to answer many questions that people asked by the end of the conference.
Also, the fact I had a IT Support professional background and I was a certified Apple Support Professional helped to explain questions through technical terms and to troubleshoot the delicate system time to time to keep the system running while the presenters were away.

[IMAGE 12-  SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 With the MemoIcon Crew and the T-shirt gift]

When the time came for SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 to come to an end, I felt quite passionate reflecting back to all exciting experiences that I had during the conference.
I was grateful to be able to interact with the audience on behalf of Keynes, Howie, Hung-Jung and the reset of the crew and became good friends. I had many photos taken with the MemoIcon team and received a SIGGRAPH T-shirt with messages written on it as a memorial gift and it was one of those moments that I was sure that I would never forget throughout my life.

[IMAGE 13- SIGGRAPH Interns celebrating the finale]

It was also a moment that all interns got very excited that they had accomplished their mission finally and felt extremely happy that they had attended the conference.
As a result of the conference, I found something much more precious than what I originally aimed for.  I did achieve my goal and felt successful with the mission to understand where technology is heading. I also received good information and gained connections with the people who are creating the future of technology in cooperative industries. I also became good friends with many undergraduate and postgraduate students throughout Japan and other countries who were making the algorithm and codes for the future of 3D graphics.

[IMAGE 14- SIGGRAPH Interns released after the event drivkng sake and showing mobile phones all having TVs]

[IMAGE 15- SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 party Full of entertainment with interesting artists that use Mac to play music]

[IMAGE 16- SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 party A man playing a fluorescent light bulb]

But further to this result, the experience of attending SIGGRAPH also made me remember how exciting it was to see the Star Wars characters move in the screen when I saw it for the first time. Since those days, computer technology had improved rapidly and CG and 3D technologies has become something unimaginable from back then. But that was only possible with the people working towards it to make it happen. Being there in SIGGRAPH with the people who is creating the next algorithm and technologies to create the future technology was very honourable. Although I am one small piece of the picture, I was happy to be there to accomplish something together.
Moreover, the internship program was a good chance for me to reflect upon myself and to be reminded that I am doing what I like and what I liked during childhood. It made me remember when I was a child hoping someday that I will touch and interact with robots and other unique technologies that only existed in Sci-Fi films. But made me realise that in reality such technology already exists and interacting with objects and people in virtual reality ubiquitously is right there in the close future.

[IMAGE  17- Christmas decoration and celebration everywhere]

I stayed until the New Year in Japan and it felt as if Japan was celebrating me for accomplishment in SIGGRAPH, with the beautiful Christmas decorations shining everywhere and the New Years day with people going to traditional shrines and temples to worship wellbeing.

[IMAGE 18- New Years people pray for future wellbeing  at the temples and shrines]

[IMAGE 19- Cold winter in Japan with Frost every morning]

Although it was getting extremely cold each day and I did miss the warm lovely summer in New Zealand while I was there, the journey to Japan and the internship at SIGGRAPH was definitely a fascinating experience and well worth it.
I would like to thank Colab for all the support that they provided and my colleagues who went together and the people that I met during the visit to make the experience so special. It was something far beyond what I expected in its importance to my future academic research, carrier and life and hope to see all of you again some time some where on this planet again.

Thank you


Taichi Nakamura
Postgraduate student: Master of Philosophy in Social Science at AUT University
Research topic: Cyber Space Community


Related links:
http://www.siggraph.org/asia2009/
http://www.siggraph.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIGGRAPH
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-TxXbAazZQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRri6ofLaFQ&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa8QnozK7oE&feature=related
http://graphics.im.ntu.edu.tw/~robin/docs/chi10.pdf
http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/1670000/1665197/p78-chen.pdf?key1=1665197&key2=5353081721&coll=GUIDE&dl=GUIDE&CFID=85184360&CFTOKEN=31119695

All images courtesy of Taichi Nakamura