Bill Buxton: Computer Animation/Visual Effects Jury Member

Bill Buxton (USA) is a designer and a researcher concerned with human aspects of technology. He is Chief Scientist of Alias|Wavefront - the company that helped create the computer-generated characters in films like Final Fantasy or Men In Black. He has been member of a Prix Ars Electronica Jury several times: in the Musics (1988, 89) and the Interactive Art Juries (1990, 91).

Buxton began his career in music, but his research specialties include technologies, techniques and theories of input to computers, technology mediated human-human collaboration, and ubiquitous computing. He is fascinated by the idea of what he calls 'interactive storytelling'. He envisions a time when viewers could create stories as they watch a film - using the idea of an interactive video game, where your actions force corresponding reactions in the game - to create personalized movies. 'You could choose your own adventure,' he says, but that adventure would meld you, other real actors, the real world, and virtual-reality technology to create a 'mixed reality.' Buxton also works in the field of human/computer interface. Whereas these last years, the discourse about digital media has been dominated by the concept of convergence. Buxton is arguing that from a user perspective the opposite of convergence should prevail: divergence. The concept of convergence has nothing to do with knowledge, information, wisdom or people, other than as a transport mechanism. People are different, have different skills and different needs. He argues that we will have succeeded as designers when we can deliver the right solution to the right person in the right form at the right time in the right place at the right price.

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