Abstract: A system and method for providing an Application Programming Interface (API) that allows users to write complex graphics and visualization applications with little knowledge of how to parallelize or distribute the application across a graphics cluster. The interface enables users to develop an application program using a common programming paradigm (e.g., scene graph) in a manner that accommodates handling parallel rendering tasks and rendering environments. The visualization applications written by developers take better advantage of the aggregate resources of a cluster. The programming model provided by APT function calls handles scene-graph(s) data in a manner such that the scene and data management are decoupled from the rendering, compositing, and display. As a result, the system and method is not beholden to one particular graphics rendering API (e.g. OpenGL, Direct X, etc.) and provides the ability to switch between these APIs even during runtime.