Media Fabrics: Phe problem of time in personal media making

Storytelling is an activity of intelligent play generated by humans for the benefit of humans. Qualities of intelligent play reflect the intentions, processes and tools that are available to humans for the purpose of story construction. Personal media collections speak to intention and can serve as a tool to help us better communicate who we are and who we would like to become. Augmented by computer readable meta-data, computers can help us navigate these collections. However, if computers are to become collaborators and provocateurs, they need to better “understand” story mechanisms. In particular, the computer needs a model that allows it to reconfigure the temporality of the narrative. In this paper we focus on mental models used by the observational filmmaker in image capture and editing, and propose an approach to temporal representation of media segments that could serve future interactions with the media fabric.

The Semantic Grid: Myth Busting and Bridge Building

27/8
11.00-12.00

The Semantic Grid is an extension of the current Grid in which information and services are given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation. The full richness of the Grid ambition depends upon realizing the Semantic Grid, but it is still, to many, a mysterious hybrid of the Semantic Web and the Grid, both of which are subject to myths and misunderstandings. In this paper we explain the changing landscape of the Grid, and describe the bridge-building and myth busting needed to achieve the Semantic Grid.

Spatial Cognition - An AI Perspective

24/8
16.30-17.30

After a decade of temporal reasoning in Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the 1980s and 1990s, spatial reasoning and spatial cognition have moved into the focus of interest in concentrated research enterprises since the mid 1990s. This paper describes the interdisciplinary research area of spatial cognition from an artificial intelligence perspective and motivates the interest in the field and the challenges from a cognitive perspec­tive. It argues that all themes of cognitive science surface in spatial cognition and that spatial cognition is particularly suitable to investigate these themes. The particular significance of spatial structures for knowledge acquisition and knowledge processing by cognitive agents is described; it is shown why spatial structures are instrumental in making sense of physical environments and abstract worlds. Basic approaches to computationally process spatial knowledge are sketched out; the role of qualitative reasoning in AI is compared to the role of qualitative approaches in other disciplines. The relative merits of intrinsically spatial and of more abstract, non-spatial ways of dealing with spatial knowledge are discussed. The role of schematic representation of spatial knowledge is addressed.

Adding intelligence to virtual reality

26/8
11.00-12.00

Virtual reality systems have reached a certain level of maturity in terms of visual and aural quality, but the sense of presence also requires believably behaving environment. A new field of adding intelligence into virtual environments is emerging. We describe shortly the field of virtual reality, and how AI can be applied there. We outline the possibilities of using AI to enhance existing applications, like a training environment for astronauts.