Three years into the pandemic, Zoom fatigue has really set in.
Attendance of, and (frankly also our) enthusiasm for virtual events has
dwindled. Therefore we have decided to put our virtual events, including
BYOA, on hold for now. The Board of Directors of NYC ACM SIGGRAPH is
working on returning to in-person events. We are monitoring the COVID
situation as we want to run our events as safe as possible. Please stay
tuned for updates.
Image generated with the help of Stable Diffusion AI
NYC ACM SIGGRAPH is proud to announce that the premiere screening of MetroCAF 2022 will take place on Thursday, November 3 at 7:30PM Eastern
The show will stream here: https://metrocaf.org/metrocaf/2022/show/
The Board of Directors of NYC ACM SIGGRAPH is saddened to learn of the recent passing of Bruce Wands and we wish to share our deepest condolences with Bruce’s family and friends. Bruce was a very committed member of the NYC ACM SIGGRAPH Board during the 1980s and 90’s, and received The NYC ACM SIGGRAPH Rick Barry Outstanding Service Award in 2017. Bruce’s bio from that award follows below. We will post further information regarding Bruce as it becomes available.
Bruce Wands joined the NYC ACM SIGGRAPH Board of Directors in the late 1980s and continued in that role for ten years. From 1993-1995, he was the Curator of the New York Digital Salon, an annual digital art exhibition established by the board that premiered at the Art Directors Club. Bruce was also involved in organizing panel discussions and conferences related to digital art and education. These included the NYC ACM SIGGRAPH Educator’s Conference and Multimedia Integration in 1996, Careers for the 21st Century Conference in 1997, and Cybercasting: The TV of the 21st Century? in 1999. Along with Rick Barry, Bruce co-organized the Binary Biker Project, a collaboration between NYC ACM SIGGRAPH and the 1998 SIGGRAPH Conference Outreach Program. Bruce and Rick took their motorcycles from New York City to Orlando, Florida, documenting the journey with a blog and taking digital images every two minutes from a support van with cameras and a Mac computer. In a 2003 interview, Rick singled out the Binary Biker Project as one of his favorite experiences with NYC ACM SIGGRAPH.
In addition to his experience with NYC ACM SIGGRAPH, Bruce continued to be involved with the SIGGRAPH Conference and published and presented talks on The Importance of Creativity in Computer Graphics Education at SIGGRAPH 2002, The Digital Becomes Contemporary in the SIGGRAPH 2003 Art Gallery Catalog, Thoughts on Hesse, Digital Art and Visual Music in SIGGRAPH 2004, and from 2011-2014, Bruce was Chair of the SIGGRAPH Art Awards Committee.After 34 years at the School of Visual Arts, Bruce was named Chair Emeritus of the MFA Computer Arts Department, where he was Chair for 18 years. He began teaching at SVA in1984, became the Director of Computer Education in 1992 and founded the BFA Computer Art Department in 1994 and was Chair from 1994-1998. He has been working in digital media and music for more than forty years as an artist, writer, musician, educator and curator, and has lectured, performed, and exhibited his creative work in the United States and internationally. His books are Art of the Digital Age, published by Thames & Hudson in 2006 and Digital Creativity by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. in 2002. Time Out New York named Bruce as one of the “99 People to Watch in 1999.” His websites are www.brucewands.com and www.artofthedigitalage.com.
The deadline for MetroCAF 2022 has been extended to July 20, 2022.
If you are a student in the NYC Metropolitan Area and created an animation with the help of computer technology, or have an amazing VFX or VR work to share, please consider entering our festival! You have to be a student and the work can not be more than a year old. For details, visit the MetrCAF website:
NYC ACM SIGGRAPH is run by volunteers. The NYC ACM SIGGRAPH Board of Directors provides direction and oversight for the organization.
It is time for Elections for 2022 – 2024. We are seeking nominees for President, Treasurer, and five At Large Board of Director positions. All nominees must be current members of NYC ACM SIGGRAPH who have been a member for at least one year; members with less than one year membership who have been a primary organizer on an event or presented at an event are eligible to run for the Board. (Nominees for Officer positions must be current members of the Board of Directors.) Experience with the organization as a volunteer is also strongly encouraged, but not required.
If you are interested in running for the Board or would like to nominate someone, let us know. You can nominate yourself using this Google form [link].
If you wish to nominate somebody else, contact the Elections Chair
For the upcoming elections, nominations must be made no later than 11:59PM EDT on Friday, June 15, 2022.
Nominations must be accompanied by the nominee’s name, address, telephone number, and email address. It should also include a brief bio (maximum of 100 words) and a statement explaining why the nominee would like to run for the Board. This statement should be no more than 250 words and address the following items:
Of course, being a BOD member also carries certain responsibilities
Submissions are now being accepted for the special 20th Anniversary edition of MetroCAF! Check out MetroCAF.org for more details
Please join me in congratulation with their unanimous re-election: Scott Lang (vice-president), Mark Reynolds (Secretary) and Danesh Taraporevala (Director at Large)
Three people were written in for a Director at Large position, we will contact them to see whether they are willing and able to serve.
Zoom fatigue has set it, and we all need to get out more. The chapter will be taking the summer off. We will be back in Fall, with our September BYOA and MetroCAF 2021. If you are a student: there is still time to submit to our festival! All current members can expect a ballot for this year’s board election in the mail shortly
Image by Phil Roeder (Flickr)
If you are a member of NYC ACM SIGGRAPH you can expect a ballot for this years elections in your mailbox shortly. Here are the candidates you will find on the ballot:
Candidate for Vice President
I have been involved with NYC ACM SIGGRAPH since I first volunteered over thirty years and I continue to volunteer because I appreciate the opportunity to give back to a community that means a great deal to me. During my time as Vice-Chair I have been able to meet and work with a wide variety of people from all areas of the computer graphics and interactive techniques fields. Providing others with a platform to share and discuss their views, ideas, successes and failures is essential to the mission of NYC ACM SIGGRAPH. Allowing our members the chance to interact with those they might not otherwise come in contact helps lead to greater connections, larger networks, and more exchanges within the NYC-area digital media community.
We have had great success with a number of our existing events – BYOA, Industry Spotlight, MetroCAF – so those are terrific vehicles for us to build upon. I’d also like to see us expand the scope of our events to include more specialized areas such as visualization and virtual reality. Our partnerships with other groups have been very positive so we’ll continue to grow those. The pandemic has also shown us that remote events are viable activities that may allow us to feature speakers (and attract attendees) from all around the world so scheduling remote events in the future may be an option. Another possibility is a regularly scheduled panel held each month, featuring 3 – 4 speakers from different focus areas, which would allow for greater discussion amongst the panelists and our members. We are also working to bring back our very popular Member-Only Site Visits.
With your support, I look forward to serving as Vice-Chair for another two years. Thank you.
I have served as NYC ACM SIGGRAPH Vice-Chair for the last ten years. My main responsibility in this role is to organize the chapter’s events calendar. I also co-chaired MetroCAF twice during this time. I have also been Executive Producer for the ACM SIGGRAPH SCOOP Team and for the ACM SIGGRAPH YouTube channel. When not volunteering for ACM SIGGRAPH, I work as the Video Production / Interactive Design Instructor at the Bergen County Academies, a magnet high school in northern New Jersey.
Candidate for Secretary
The first NYC ACM SIGGRAPH event I attended was 2014’s Industry Spotlight, and I knew immediately I wanted to be involved with this organization that brought together area practitioners of the mystical arts of computer graphics. Through the chapter’s events over the years I have been able to meet and talk shop many industry professionals and animation hobbyists, not to mention get a good look at the cutting edge of CG thanks to our many panels and presentations featuring local industry luminaries. By continuing to serve NYC ACM SIGGRAPH as Secretary I would be able to help realize more local events covering a wide range of interests while continuing to develop our chapter’s mainstay events, such as Industry Spotlight and Bring Your Own Animation, and hopefully introducing them to wider audiences, growing our community.
Mark Reynolds is a New York City-based animator and visual effects artist who has created work for screens large, small, virtual, and live-projected. In addition to his freelance work, he teaches Maya and After Effects at the New York Film Academy. He has served as a member of the NYC ACM SIGGRAPH Board of Directors since 2014, and as Secretary since 2016. During his tenure with the chapter he has co-chaired two editions of MetroCAF and continues to assist with the organization and realization of various panels and events, including the monthly Bring Your Own Animation.
Candidate for Director at Large
I have been an active member of SIGGRAPH for the past 8 years and have always volunteered my time for SIGGRAPH events. I do this purely out of love for the VFX and animation community of New York. I co chaired the MetroCAF 2020 event and we figured out how to get students work across during the pandemic in our virtual event. If elected I would do the same and put in more energy into our events and activities as we steer clear of the shutdown and begin opening up.
My Name is Danesh Taraporevala and I have been working as a 3D artist for the past 10 years in New York City. I have had the pleasure of working with some of the top studios in the city like Afterparty VFX, Hornet, Alkemy-X, Los York, Brand New School, Vayner Media, Transistor Studios, Method, Artjail, Ntropic, The Molecule, R/GA, Sid Lee, Psyop, Charlex, Gravity (Formerly Rhino FX), The Napoleon Group, Tag Creative, Fake Love, Framestore, Suspect, TBWA to name a few.
I have been serving as a board member since the past 4 years and had the pleasure of co chairing MetroCAF 2020.
The MetroCAF 2021 website is now live and accepting submissions. Next to all kind of computer animated short movies, we love to receive works exploring different applications of computer animation, including Visual Effects and Virtual Reality.
Find out more at MetroCAF.org/2021
