Contents #
Context #
A "Birds of a Feather" (BoF) session is a mean to bring together people interested in a given topic during the SIGGRAPH conference. As the topic of environmental impact is a raising concern among members of the Computer Graphics community at large, we set up this session to recall basic figures and kick off open discussions about how our community can embrace this question.
Abstract #
This is the description of the session as it was advertised on SIGGRAPH's program.
From climate change to biodiversity loss and resource exhaustion, Earth's limits are impacting human activity and Computer Graphics is no exception. As artists, developers, researchers and more, how can our community adapt to these upcoming disruptions, and instill change to our organizations to have a more positive impact? The aim of this interactive session is to share knowledge and hear your experience on this broad but essential topic.
Slides #
These are the slides that we presented during the session, as an introduction to open discussions.
Outline #
This one hour session was organized around two open discussions: (a) one about the impact of our domain, and (b) one about how what we create and develop in our field can help reducing the impact of other ones.
Discussion #1: Direct and Indirect Impact of Computer Graphics #
The two key steps for addressing the environmental impact of a domain is to measure and reduce.
1. Measure
What do we already measure well? What is hard to measure and why? What do our institutions do and our peers in other institutions do? What types of impact are we overlooking?
2. Reduce
What are the key bottleneck to address? How to do less operations for the same result? How to reduce the impact of a given operation? When should we run what computing task where? What expectations are we ready to reduce or renounce to?
Discussion #2: Using Computer Graphics to mitigate Environmental Issues #
Besides reducing the impact of our field, we can also try to contribute positively to the impact of other domains thanks to our various expertise in techniques and creation.
Heat transfer simulation, Functional and structural plant modeling, Ecosystem and Climate modeling, inspiring storytelling, compelling visualization, etc. What examples do you have of Computer Graphics being used to help addressing environmental issues?
Audience feedback #
This is a consolidation of the audience's reaction and suggestions during the open discussion parts of the session.
There were about 60 attendants during the session, and the audience was in general very eager to react and come to the open mic.
Next steps #
This interactive session was the first of its kind at SIGGRAPH, and its goal was also to suggest possible action points. Here are some suggestions:
- Dare talking about it in your lab/studio/institution/compagny.
- Make it count in review processes and peer recognition.
- Don't ignore this issue when writing work/PhD (pluri)annual plans.
- Question your choice of research/creation/development topic, nothing is neutral.
- Other ideas? Feel free to get in touch with us!
Citation #
Although this is not a formal publication, you may want to cite this session in future work; here is how we suggest to do it (when using BibTeX):
@unpublished{paris24environmental, title = {The Environmental Impact of Computer Graphics}, author = {Paris, Axel and Crespel, Octave and Michel, Élie}, date = {2024-07-29}, howpublished = {SIGGRAPH '24 - Birds of a Feather}, addendum = {SIGGRAPH '24, Denver, CO, USA.} url = {https://s2024.conference-program.org/presentation/?id=bof_176&sess=sess452} }