At the SIGGRAPH conference this July in Denver, audience members at the Virtual Reality Theater sat down at their kiosks to experience any of the 12 immersive stories on offer. They first entered a virtual lobby created by students from Ringling College of Art and Design.
For the second year in a row, Ringling students were chosen to devise, design, and build the lobby for the SIGGRAPH VR Theater. The theater drew over 1,000 audience members from the 14,000-plus conference attendees. Virtual Reality Development students Eli McBride ’26, Hyesoo Koh ’26, Yuxuan “Linda” He ’25, Nick Whittle ’26, Vida Villanueva ’26, and Wuji “Jimmy” Tong ’26 all worked on the virtual lobby project.
A nonprofit branch of the Association for Computing Machinery, SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques) annually highlights the latest in computer animation and interactive technology at conferences in North America and Asia. These conferences are considered the largest and most influential in the industry.
This year, in addition to the lobby by Ringling Virtual Reality Development students, the SIGGRAPH experiential learning project included Motion Design students, who created a video loop playing in the VR Theater’s physical space, and Entertainment Design students, who helped design some of the area’s scenography. Students were also asked to create a behind-the-scenes video to demonstrate the work that went into the lobby project.
Beyond the VR Theater, three Ringling alumni were featured in the prestigious SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival’s Electric Theater, a qualifier for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Allison Fraidenburg, Kaylee Tan, and Chloe Merwin (all ’23, Computer Animation) all had their senior thesis projects included among the conference’s animated shorts. Fraidenburg’s Beyond the Farm was even featured in the 2024 Electronic Theater trailer.
This was SIGGRAPH’s 51st annual conference, which rotates through North American cities like Los Angeles and Vancouver. Ringling faculty and students have been attending the event for more than 30 years.
