Computational Culture

It has been more than twenty years since desktop publishing reinvented design, and it’s clear that there is a growing need for designers and artists to learn programming skills to fill the widening gap between their ideas and the capability of their purchased software. This book is an introduction to the concepts of computer programming within the context of the visual arts. It offers a comprehensive reference and text for Processing (www.processing.org), an open-source programming language that can be used by students, artists, designers, architects, researchers, and anyone who wants to program images, animation, and interactivity.

via Networked_Perfomance, MIT Press

Multimedia information has always been part of the Semantic Web paradigm, but, in general, has been discussed very simplistically by the Semantic Web community. We believe that, rather than trying to discover a media object’s hidden meaning, one should formulate ways of managing media objects so as to help people make more intelligent use of them. The relationship between users and media objects should be studied. Media objects should be interpreted relative to the particular goal or point-of-view of a particular user at a particular time.

Content-based descriptors are necessary to this process. Recently, a major European wireless service provider managed to have all its digital media content providers supply metadata in RDF, and saw their revenues increase by 20% in three months. Major search engines are in the process of rolling out A/V search capabilities. At the same time, such descriptions are definitely not sufficient. Context is also important, and should be managed. The area of emergent multimedia semantics has been initiated to study the measured interactions between users and media objects, with the ultimate goal of trying to satisfy the user community by providing them with the media objects they require, based on their individual previous media interactions.

Website and CfP.

The Video Vortex Conference is organized by the Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam. This 2-day event will happen on November 30 and December 1 this year. Some snippets about the conference:

In response to the increasing potential for video to become a significant form of personal media on the Internet, this conference examines the key issues that are emerging around the independent production and distribution of online video content. What are artists and activists responses to the popularity of ‘user-generated content’ websites? Is corporate backlash eminent?

After years of talk about digital conversions and crossmedia platforms we are now witnessing the merger of the Internet and television at a pace that no one predicted. For the baby boom generation, that currently forms the film and television establishment, the media organisations and conglomerates, this unfolds as a complete nightmare. Not only because of copyright issues but increasingly due to the shift of audience to vlogging and video-sharing websites as part of the development of a broader participatory culture.

via Institute of Network Cultures.

My new office has still a big white wall. I tagged it. These are the most important 9 activities I take care of a the moment. You can try to decode the lousy image quality. For your convenience here the short list in full text:

- Lyrics and Paul Lamere

- Amplog followup with Jan Schmidt

- FP7 museum tagging with Thomas and ZKM

- BluetunA CHI07 demo with N80s

- Talk at Re:publica

- BotOrAlive game and EA questionnaire

- Mediated Identity diploma thesis

- Music Video Retrieval and MFCC

- SNA in TriplePlay

If you want to sponsor our research at C4 or if you have ideas how to go into interesting fundings please let me know!