[ISEA2022] Institutional Presentation: Bonnie Mitchell & Jan Searleman — ACM SIGGRAPH History Archives: Expanding the Vision through Teamwork

Institutional Presentation Statement

Second Summit on New Media Art Archiving
June 10, MACBA – Convent dels Àngels. Invited presentation

Keywords: SIGGRAPH, online archive, computer graphics, interactive techniques, electronic art

The ACM SIGGRAPH History Archives (both physical and online) is a team effort involving students, interns, volunteers, and computer graphic pioneers. These archives include information about presentations, exhibitions, screenings and events at the annual conference as well as information about SIGGRAPH computer graphics and interactive techniques communities and committees.

The ACM SIGGRAPH History Archives is a team effort involving students, interns, volunteers, and computer graphic pioneers. In 2022, it expanded from an online archive to include a physical archive of SIGGRAPH publications and artifacts. These archives include information about presentations, exhibitions, screenings and events at the annual conference as well as information about SIGGRAPH communities and committees. With such a vast array of information, developing a robust infrastructure was essential. Team members researched, digitized and entered tens of thousands of entries and programmed innovative features that enable users easy access to this valuable resource. The SIGGRAPH History archive team is also preparing the archive to be part of the world-wide distributed network of new media art archives. https://history.siggraph.org

  • Bonnie Mitchell is a digital artist, animator, archivist as well as a professor at Bowling Green State University in Digital Arts, Ohio, USA. Mitchell’s artworks explore spatial and experiential relationships to our physical, social, cultural and psychological environment through interaction and physical immersion. Her creative work includes interactive installation art, environmental data visualization art, experimental visual music animation, net-art, and new media art archive development. Mitchell is the co-director of the SIGGRAPH History and ISEA Symposium online Archives and also a member of the organizing team of the Summit on New Media Art Archiving (first held in 2021 online and again in 2022 in Barcelona). She is also a member of the ISEA International Advisory Committee, the ACM SIGGRAPH History and Digital Arts Committees and is the SIGGRAPH 2023 History Chair in charge of the 50th conference celebration.
  • Jan Searleman (California, USA) 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. A senior member of the ACM, Jan is also on both the ACM SIGGRAPH Digital Art Committee (DAC) and the ACM SIGGRAPH History Committee. Jan and Bonnie Mitchell coordinated the DAC Online Exhibition “The Earth, Our Home: Art, Technology and Critical Action”. She co-moderated SPARKS talks (Short Presentations of Artworks and Research for the Kindred Spirit) for DAC on “Robotics, Electronics, and Artificial Intelligence” with Hye Yeon Nam, and “Data: Visual Perception, Interpretation and Truth” with Everardo Reyes. Jan co-directs, along with Bonnie Mitchell, the ACM SIGGRAPH History Archive. She also co-directs the ISEA Symposium Archive with Bonnie Mitchell, Wim van der Plas and Terry C.W. Wong.