MFA Students Win Top Spots Six Years Running at SIGGRAPH

Perhaps SIGGRAPH should consider bestowing AAU’s WNM Graduate Department with an honorary award? For the sixth year in a row, MFA students have scored top spots in the SpaceTime Interactive Works Student Competition.

This week at SIGGRAPH, the premier international event on computer graphics and interactive techniques, MFA students Pete Infelise and June Hung were awarded with second and third place, respectively.

Pete Infelise's "Illinois 66 Road Trip"

Pete’s “Illinois 66 Road Trip” also won this year’s MFA Best of Show at AAU’s annual Spring Show. We already featured this amazing site on the blog, so if you haven’t checked it out, you must.

June’s winning entry is her interactive thesis “Nature Remix,” a music creating application that features sound samples derived from nature.

“I didn’t choose real drums, or any other musical instruments, because I think the sounds of nature are more organic and varied,” says June on her the project’s website. “I want people to enjoy the experience of creating music with the scenes and sounds of nature.”

June Hung's "Nature Remix"

The user selects sounds while exploring a nature scene, creates their own music using the online mixer, and can submit them to the gallery for anyone’s listening pleasure.

25,000 attendees have the opportunity to view Pete and June’s winning work at the SIGGRAPH conference in New Orleans this week. The pieces will also tour nationally and internationally for approximately one year with the SpaceTime Traveling Student Exhibition conducted by the ACM SIGGRAPH Education Committee.

And thanks to the wonder of the Internet, we can explore them anytime.