Jacob Gaboury

A virtual talk by Jacob Gaboury

From the big screen to the device in your pocket, computer graphics define our engagement with digital - but how did we get here and what part did a teapot play?

Find out with Jacob Gaboury as he goes back to a time before graphics were immersive, before they were even popular - to the prehistory of computer graphics.

In this virtual talk, Jacob travels from Utah to the UK. He goes back to the University of Utah Computer Science Department’s Graphics Lab where modern graphics was born and whose graduates include co-founders of Pixar, Adobe Systems and Silicon Graphics.

He will explore the impact of Martin Newell, the British researcher who - inspired by a teapot - defined realistic 3D rendering and is honoured by animators, illustrators, and User Interface and design practitioners to this day.

He will also:

• Tell the history of Newell's famous teapot simulation and its connection to modern computer graphics.

• Develop a prehistory of computer graphics that looks beyond MIT and Silicon Valley to global connections in the US and UK

• Examines connections between US research centres for computer graphics and British CAD and simulator firms in the 1970s and 1980s.

Jacob is author of the newly released Image Objects: An Archaeology of Computer Graphics that traces the early history of computer graphics through a set of five objects. He is also associate professor of film and media at the University of California at Berkeley.

PLEASE NOTE: Participants will be sent the link to the virtual talk no later than two days before the event.