Emeritus Faculty Receives Lifetime Achievement Recognition


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Charles Csuri, CSE Professor Emeritus and a founder of the Advanced Center for Computing Art and Design, will receive the Award for Lifetime Achievement in Digital Art from ACM SIGGRAPH, the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, for his "visionary and creative merging of art and technology." This is a highly prestigious award presented annually to an artist who has created a substantial and important body of work that significantly advances aesthetic content in the field of digital art. Professor Csuri will receive this award in person in Vancouver, BC during SIGGRAPH 2011 on August 8th. ACM SIGGRAPH Art Award Chair Cynthia Beth Rubin noted, "Decades ago, he embraced the aesthetic potential of early computer imaging, and since then he has unfailingly worked in both teaching and aesthetic production, keeping us growing, discussing, and moving forward."

Often called the Father of Digital Art, 'Chuck' Csuri's work is internationally recognized for its excellence, appearing in many museum collections including the Museum of Modern in Art in New York, the Zagreb Museum of Contemporary Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe. He began his career as a painter, but in 1964 he began using keystrokes to translate his brush strokes. Very soon, he was winning awards and notoriety as he also began working with animation in the cyber realm. Owing to his heightened aesthetic, he was uniquely qualified to open doors and introduce the worlds of art and computers to one another and find an exciting new field.

While a professor in the Arts at The Ohio State University, he proposed the creation of a new and very special group, the Computer Graphics Research Group (CGRG). This group would include faculty and graduate students from Art, Industrial Design, Photography and Cinema, Computer and Information Science (now CSE), and Mathematics and would teach and research practical applications of computer animation.

Dr. Csuri is one of the rare non-science oriented researchers to receive grants from the National Science Foundation. Indeed, with support from NSF, the US Navy and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Csuri directed research on computer graphics for over 22 years at CGRG and then later ACCAD. The results of these studies have been applied to flight simulators, computer-aided design, architecture, magnetic resonance imaging, visualization of scientific phenomena and special effects for TV and film.

Dr. Csuri is also an OSU alumnus having received both a BA and an MFA.