International Journal of Arts and Technology (IJART)

Call For papers, special issue on: “Tangible and Embedded Interaction”

Guest Editors:
Eva Hornecker. The Open University, UK
Albrecht Schmidt, University of Duisburg, Germany
Brygg Ullmer, Louisiana State University, USA

With technological advances, computing has progressively moved beyond the desktop into new physical and social contexts. As physical artifacts gain new computational behaviours, they become reprogrammable, customisable, repurposable, and interoperable in rich ecologies and diverse contexts. They also become more complex, and require intense design effort in order to be functional, usable, and enjoyable. Designing such systems requires interdisciplinary thinking. Their creation must not only encompass software, electronics, and mechanics, but also the system’s physical form and behaviour, its social and physical milieu, aesthetics, and beyond.

The new conference series “Tangible and Embedded Interaction” (TEI, www.tei-conf.org), which first took place in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 2007, and 2008 in Bonn, Germany, demonstrates the international interest and the many dimensions of the work in this area. It has had a multidisciplinary audience with artists, designers, technology builders, ethnographers and HCI specialists, even touching upon robotics and interactive buildings.

We invite short (statements / works in progress / design sketches: 1000 words, plus figures, max. 2 pages) and long submissions on tangible and embedded interaction. Work addressing related HCI issues, design, use contexts, tools and technologies, and interactive art are all welcome. We particularly welcome interdisciplinary submissions across these themes.

Subject Coverage

Suitable topics include but are not limited to:

• Case studies and evaluations of deployments
• Analysis of key challenges, proposals of research agenda
• Relation of tangible and embedded interaction to other paradigms
• Programming tools, toolkits, software architectures
• Novel interactive uses of sensors+actuators, electronics+mechatronics
• Design guidelines, methods, and processes
• Novel application areas, innovative solutions/systems
• Theoretical foundations, frameworks, and concepts
• Philosophical, ethical and social implications
• Interactive theatre and cinema
• Interfaces specific to particular cultures
• Usability and enjoyment, aesthetics
• Advantages and weaknesses of these kinds of systems
• Learning from the role of physicality in everyday environments
• Embodied interaction, movement, and choreography of interaction
• Role of physicality for human perception, cognition and experience
• Teaching tangible/embedded interaction design, and best practices

Submissions can either contain new original work, or be revised versions of previously published papers. Revised versions need to contain at least 30% new content, providing (e.g.) more details or extensions with follow-up research. Authors should provide access to an online version of the previously published version (to ease work for reviewers) and explicate how the new version differs. Each submission should be written in a way that is accessible to the multidisciplinary audience of the journal.

Notes for Prospective Authors

Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere

All papers are refereed through a peer review process. A guide for authors, sample copies and other relevant information for submitting papers are available on the Author Guidelines page

Important Dates

• Abstract (optional): 2 April, 2008
• Paper submission: 21 April, 2008
• Acceptance notification: 11 June, 2008
• Camera ready papers due: 9 July, 2008

Editors and Notes

You may send one copy in the form of an MS Word file attached to an e-mail (details in Author Guidelines) to the following:
Guest Editors

• E-mail: ijart2008@hcilab.org

with a copy to:
IEL Editorial Office

• E-mail: ijart@inderscience.com

May 1, 2008 is the submission due date for papers on aspects of “Pervasive User-Generated Content”, a special issue of IEEE Pervasive Computing Magazine. We are looking for papers that discuss the collection, processing, presentation, and evaluation of data collected by regular users with pervasive technology. Example topics include:

• Networked data-gathering from large populations
• Data mining and machine learning from distributed sources
• Tracking multitudes of everyday objects
• Mashups and overlays of user data with other artifacts such as maps
• Contributions from mobile users
• Aggregating and filtering pervasive ratings and reviews
• Users as computing platforms and intelligent data sources
• Games and other schemes for gathering data from large populations
• Persuading individuals to contribute
• Usability aspects for efficient data contribution
• Visualizing user contributions
• Applications and displays of pervasively generated content
• Techniques for determining authenticity of contributed data
• Evaluations of pervasively generated content

All submitted papers will be peer-reviewed, and the issue’s editors will decide which ones are published.

Detailed call for papers: http://www.computer.org/portal/site/pervasive/menuitem.e7bfeea1f36bd84da84840898bcd45f3/index.jsp?&pName=pervasive_level1&path=pervasive/content&file=cfp4.xml&xsl=article.xsl&

PDF version: http://research.microsoft.com/users/jckrumm/UserGeneratedCfP.pdf

IEEE Pervasive Computing Magazine: http://www.computer.org/portal/site/pervasive/

Guest Editors
John Krumm, Microsoft Research
Chandra Narayanaswami, IBM Research
Nigel Davies, Lancaster University

5th International IEEE Workshop on Management of Ubiquitous Communications and Services (www.mucs2008.org)

April 11 2008, Salvador, Brazil (In conjunction with IEEE/IFIP NOMS 2008)

Smart space applications, present significant management challenges for successful delivery of highly adaptive services across heterogeneous networks, mobile networks, ad-hoc networks, middleware, applications and devices. Such challenges include: managing user centric services and context services, extreme distribution and scalability, extensive system & network &  semantic heterogeneity, ad hoc formation and disassociation of systems and services, intelligent support for user centric applications.

Since 2003, the MUCS workshop (both independently and aligned with major conferences) has provided a very successful forum for researchers and practitioners to explore the theoretic, technological and organizational challenges, and to present advances in management techniques and technologies, for pervasive computing and smart space applications.

The workshop provides a single-track scientific programme containing a blend of keynote presentations from leaders in research in this area, peer-reviewed papers and a small selection of invited presentations.

IMPORTANT DEADLINES

• Submission: January 25th  2008
• Notification of acceptance: February 15th 2008
• Camera ready: Feb 22nd 2008
• Workshop: April 11th 2008

TOPICS

– Context Aware Management and Configuration
– Security, Privacy, and Trust Management in Pervasive Computing/Smart Spaces
– Adaptive technologies and techniques for Services and Management
– Knowledge Representation Techniques and Semantics for Management
– Management and Control of Mobile Ad-hoc and Wireless Sensor Networks
– Distributed Management & Collaborative Governance
– Context Identification, Retrieval, Prediction and Management
– Provisioning and Maintenance of Quality of Service in ubiquitous computing environments
– User Interaction with Management of UbiComp and Pervasive Systems
– Managing Collaborative pervasive computing and smart space applications

Management of Smart Spaces and Applications
– Policy Based Management
– Autonomic Management of Services and Communications
– Communication & Systems Management
– Wireless and Fixed Network Integrated Management
– Adaptive Service and Network Management
– Content Oriented Network & Service Management
– Service and Network Management for Optimised Personalisation
– Knowledge Representation Techniques and Ontologies for Management Services
– Bio-inspired management approach

PAPER SUBMISSION
Paper submissions must present original, unpublished research or experiences. Late-breaking advances and work-in-progress reports from ongoing research are also encouraged  to be submitted to IEEE MUCS 2008. Authors are requested to submit either long papers (up to 10 pages) or short papers (work-in-progress reports, up to 4 pages in length), in 10 point following IEEE conference style.

PROCEEDINGS

The proceedings of IEEE MUCS 2008 will be published and is intended to be made available via IEEE Explorer (confirmation pending).

LOCATION

This year’s IEEE MUCS is collocated with the 10th IFIP/IEEE Symposium on Network Operations and Management Symposium, NOMS 2008 in Brazil.

Videos are an effective tool to showcase research results, to inspire other researchers, and to educate the general public about the latest developments in Pervasive Computing.

With the category of Research Videos, Pervasive 2008 seeks research contributions, future visions, project descriptions, and concepts of pervasive computing technologies, systems and applications. The conference particularly values practical experience with design, deployment and use of pervasive systems and applications, and investigation of exciting and inspiring ideas and technologies.

To be accepted, a video must be of an appropriate length for the content. It must contain no material subject to copyright (i.e., that the authors cannot grant Pervasive 2008 the right to redistribute freely), and must be easily comprehensible to English speakers. Finally, an accepted video must be standalone, i.e., the video itself (with audio soundtrack) must describe the work sufficiently, without requiring the viewer to read the abstract. Videos will be judged primarily on their communication of interesting research content (assuming appropriate technical quality).

Each research video must be accompanied by a short paper describing the key research contribution. The paper should be written in a way that it can be understood by readers who have not or will not see the video.

Accepted videos will be shown in a special video session at Pervasive 2008. We also plan to have video proceedings on CD-ROM. The accompanying short paper will be published in the adjunct proceedings of Pervasive 2008 which will be available in printed form as well as electronically on the conference web-site.

Submission and Review Process

Authors MUST submit a URL to the video and a PDF of the accompanying short paper. Videos need to be submited in mpeg (MPEG1/2) or AVI (MPEG-4) as PAL or NTSC (The final camera-ready version must be submitted as PAL). The accompaying paper must be no longer than 4 pages in OCG Format.

Please send submissions to pervasive.2008.videos@gmail.com. Only submit a link to the video file, not the video.

Important Dates

• March 1, 2008: Videos: Submission deadline
• March 15, 2008: Videos: Acceptance notification

If authors have any queries regarding potential submissions, including copyright, please contact the co-chairs.

Video Co-Chairs

Andrew Vande Moere, University of Sydney, Australia
Email: andrew(at)arch.usyd.edu.au

Gerd Kortuem, Lancaster University, UK
Email: kortuem(at)comp.lancs.ac.uk

Research Demonstrators offer a unique opportunity to showcase research prototypes, and to discuss them with an international audience of experts in pervasive computing. To promote this, Pervasive 2008 is seeking interesting and engaging demonstrations of pervasive computing technologies. Proposers are invited to submit Research Demonstrations under the general topics of the conference.

Relevant topics include (but are not limited to) the following:

• New technologies and devices for pervasive computing
• New applications of pervasive computing technologies
• New interfaces and modes of interactions between people and pervasive computing devices, applications or environments
• New models, tools, infrastructures, architectures and techniques for designing, implementing & deploying pervasive computing applications
• Evaluations and evaluation methods, for assessing the impact of pervasive computing devices, applications or environments
• Privacy, security, trust & social issues and implications of pervasive computing

We encourage combining a research demonstration with a short paper that describes the contribution and as an anchor point for future reference. Submissions must be in Adobe PDF format, up to 4 pages in length and conform to the OCG Format (http://www.ocg.at/publikationen/books/files/richtlinien_engl_07_04.rtf).

All demonstration submissions should be sent to the demonstration chairs via e-mail (c.f. below)

The authors should also provide a brief sketch of the planned demonstration on an additional page. Specific requirements concerning space, power, network, and security should be stated. It is planned that wireless internet access will be provided. Accepted contributions will be published in the adjunct proceedings of 2008 with the Austrian Computer Society (OCG) series and online. The demonstrations will be introduced during a plenary session of the conference, and there will also be a reception dedicated to the presentation of posters and demonstrators.

Important Dates

• March 1, 2008: Demonstations: Submission deadline
• March 15, 2008: Demonstrations: Acceptance notification

Demonstration chairs

Sebastien Ardon – NICTA, Australia.
Email: sebastien.ardon(at)nicta.com.au

Enrico Rukzio – Lancaster University, UK.
Email: Enrico Rukzio rukzio(at)comp.lancs.ac.uk

RAVE-08 — Feb 27th 2008, Barcelona
[via http://www.peachbit.org/]

First of an Annual Workshop Series: This is the first of a workshop series focusing on the whys and hows of realistic action in virtual environments.

Abstracts and Registration due: 2008-01-18.

Why do people smile at an avatar that is smiling at them, when they know full well that no one is there, and no one can see their smile? Why do they become anxious when standing in front of a deep virtual hole in the ground, when they know for sure that there is no hole there? Since the advent of virtual reality in the 1980s it has been well known that not only do people have a feeling of being transported to the place depicted by a virtual environment, but they also tend to act as if they were really there.

We are interested in how people act, how they respond, and why. Our focus is clear: people tend to respond realistically to virtually generated sensory data. We want to measure it objectively and quantitatively to understand how and why it happens scientifically, and what we can do also as engineers to make it even better. We do not a priori put limits on what we regard as a “virtual reality” system – we include in this term augmented reality, single screen-displays, head mounted displays, Cave systems, and so on.

This research has profound ramifications across many dimensions. Science – what is it about the way the brain processes sensory signals that makes it possible for relatively poor simulations of reality to spark such a high degree of realistic activity? How can we use this understanding to take designed better environments? Even the very notion of the human body and our relationship to our own bodies can be transformed. This has very deep implications for the scientific study of body processing and consciousness. Computer Science and Engineering – How can we build systems that maximise the chance that people will rave in them? There are fundamental challenges for the construction of new systems, and their emergence out of the laboratory into businesses and homes. Applications – to the extent that people show such realistic responses, whole new fields of endeavour open up that can be approached in novel ways: psychotherapy, neurorehabilitation, quality of life technologies, ergonomics, mission training, industrial prototyping and education to name but a few. When we add the capability for such virtual environments to be shared by many people, we also add a vast range of additional applications, such as remote negotiations and meetings, virtual travel, virtual conferences, and so on. Philosophy – what are the implications for our notion of reality and self? Is what we have thought of as reality simply one amongst many parallel realities that we now inhabit? Entertainment – there are profound new possibilities for entertainment – for example, a person could lead multiple parallel lives – working in the office all day answering emails in “this life”, a private detective in the other “parallel life” within a shared virtual reality.

We invite contributions to the first RAVE workshop. Contributions must be at a high scientific level, and typically would describe, attempt to understand, or engineer RAVE phenomena. RAVE-08 is only the kick-off one day conference of what we plan as the first of an annual series, so the number of contributions that can be accepted is small.

Applications should be sent as one page Abstracts to rave08(at)peachbit.org by Jan 14th 2008 and cover the following points (see abstract template attached below):

1. One or two sentences providing a basic introduction to the issue at stake in the research.
2. A clear statement of the problem specifically covered by the study, and the current state of the art.
3. A section beginning with “Here we show” giving the main result, explaining what new knowledge has been generated.
4. A section explaining what the main result reveals in direct comparison to what was thought to be the case previously, or how the main result adds to previous knowledge.
5. A section putting the results into a more general context, and the implications for further research.

Important Dates:

1. 1-2 page Abstract and Registration form due: 2008-01-18 (see template)
2. Abstract Responses by: 2008-01-28
3. Workshop: 2008-02-27

More at http://rave08.peachbit.org/

Call for Submissions: Pervasive 2008 Doctoral Colloquium

• Submission Deadline: 12th February 2008, 18:00 EST
• Notification of acceptance: 15th March 2008
• Camera-ready paper deadline: 29th March 2008
• Doctoral Colloquium: 19th May 2008

We invite PhD students and candidates to present their work-in-progress or preliminary results and gain feedback from an international and renowned audience of researchers and developers in the pervasive computing field.

Doctoral students who have progressed far enough in their research to have an idea paper and structured proposal, but will not be defending their dissertation in the next 6 months are invited to submit a thesis position paper. This 6-month stipulation is set in place because so that students have time to incorporate the DC advice and suggestions into their thesis research.

Submissions will be reviewed by international experts and based on these reviews, candidates for the doctoral colloquium will be selected. Accepted DC submissions will be published in the adjunct proceedings of Pervasive 2007, also available at the website.
Submissions MUST follow the template

• http://www.cs.usyd.edu.au/~judy/PervasiveDC/pdc-template.doc

Submissions must follow OCG format:

• http://www.ocg.at/publikationen/books/paper.html

5th International Mobile Music Workshop 2008
13-15 May 2008, Vienna, Austria

Call for Submissions: Deadline 10 February 2008
Visit the 2007 website here: http://www.mobilemusicworkshop.org/07/index.html

The Mobile Music Workshop 2008 is the 5th in a series of annual international gatherings that explore the creative, critical and commercial potential of mobile music. They are inspired by the ever-changing social, geographic, ecological, emotional context of using mobile technology for creative ends. We are looking for new ideas and ground-breaking projects on sound in mobile contexts. What new forms of interaction with music and audio lie ahead as locative media, ubiquitous networks, and music access merge into new forms of experiences that shape the everyday? Can they change the way we think about our mobile devices and about walking through the city?

The emerging field of Mobile Music sits at the intersection of ubiquitous computing, portable audio technology and New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME). It goes beyond today’s personal music players to include creative practices of mobile music making, sharing and mixing. The mobile setting challenges existing notions of interfaces and interaction, stretching music to new creative limits. The workshop has been at the forefront of this innovative area since 2004. Past editions of the event have taken place in Amsterdam, Brighton, Vancouver and Göteborg in collaboration with the Viktoria Institute, STEIM, Waag Society, Futuresonic, NIME and others.

The 2008 edition of the workshop will be held in Vienna, one of the hotspots in the European for laptop, glitch, and electronic music. Hosted by the University of Applied Arts, it will feature three evenings of performances and installations, an exhibition in the heart of the city, invited speakers, paper presentations, posters and demo sessions as well as hands-on tutorials. Besides the workshop proceedings, we will publish a catalogue that will gather key contributions from the last 5 years. We invite artists, designers, academic researchers, hackers, industry professionals and practitioners from all areas, including music, technology development, new media, sound-art, music distribution, cultural/media studies and locative media and more to present and discuss projects, prototypes, applications, devices, performances, installations, theoretical and historical considerations.

IMPORTANT DEADLINES
Submission deadline: 10 February 2008
Notification of acceptance: 14 March 2008
Submission deadline for final papers: 14 April 2008
Registration deadline: 14 April 2008

PARTICIPATE
Please upload your submission in any of the three following categories at http://ocs.waag.org/. Submissions will be peer-reviewed by a committee of international specialists in the field.

ORGANISERS & INFORMATION
The 2008 edition is hosted and co-organised by the University of Applied Arts, Vienna, Austria (Nicolaj Kirisits). The Steering Committee is formed by Lalya Gaye (Dånk! Collective and IT-University of Göteborg, Sweden), Atau Tanaka (Culture Lab Newcastle, UK), Frauke Behrendt (University of Sussex, UK), Kristina Andersen (STEIM, The Netherlands).
Contact: info [at] mobilemusicworkshop.org
More information: http://www.mobilemusicworkshop.org

Futuresonic brings 500 opinion formers, futurologists, artists, technologists and scientists from the digital culture, music and art communities to Manchester for four days of seminars, workshops and events.

At the heart of the Futuresonic festival is the internationally-acclaimed Futuresonic conference, and its focal point the Social Technologies Summit, which looks at how technologies can create an extension of social space or support group interaction, and asks how we can make technology more social.

Submissions are now invited to the Futuresonic conference and the Social Technologies Summit. Proposals for talks, presentations and workshops plus also session themes are invited. Submissions of innovative formats for social interaction are encouraged.

Online, Mobile and Unplugged Social Networking

The Futuresonic conference is a place where important international discussions take place. The conference will bring together leading figures to unpick the hype around the latest technological zeitgeist, broaden the debate, and propose and explore a critical understanding of social technologies.

The 2008 conference will explore the theme of The Social – Online, Mobile and Unplugged Social Networking. Submissions are invited that explore the new social spaces and the social implications of technologies for the many different kinds of people who make, use and are affected by them.

Computers have become social interfaces for sharing digital media and collaborating to build online communities and folksonomies. Social technologies create an extension of social space, and new ways for people to find the stuff that interests them, link up with others, and share. They include tools and applications that enable people to connect, share and interact, such as blogs, instant messenger, social software such as Flickr, FaceBook and Jaiku, and even the internet itself. ‘Social technologies’ can also refer to technologies created and maintained by social networks, such as communities of developers and users working collaboratively with open source tools.

What distinguishes social technologies is that they are bottom up and many-to-many instead of one-to-one or one-to-many. They can be seen as a part of a major cultural and social shift. And yet at the same time we also see how electronic communication can isolate us, as more and more people drown in a deluge of email that generates stress, even reducing IQ – puncturing the rose-tinted view that life is ‘more social.’ Additionally, ‘online communities’ are based upon an artificial equivalence between ‘users’ which obscures power relationships and issues of ownership.

Deadline: 5pm, Tuesday 18 December 2007.

http://www.futuresonic.com/

Keho, the ezine of the Peach project is now online and ready to download here: http://www.starlab.info/peach/?q=node/6

Keho is an online magazine for Peach, the project aimed at supporting the Presence research community.

Keho is looking for input from people working in the field of Presence. Do you have news about an interesting project or an event to share, an opinion about the direction Presence research is, or should be, taking, or perhaps an idea for a feature on Presence research in action? We would welcome your suggestions for articles for Keho.

Contact us at keho [at] peachbit.org or have a look at the Peach website: www.peachbit.org, where you can participate in forum discussions, under the OUTREACH heading. Perhaps you have an idea for a theme for a future issue of Keho.

If you would like to be notified when the next issue of Keho is available please subscribe to the mailing list at keho [at] peachbit.org

Peach is an EU-funded, Sixth Framework Programme Coordination Action on Presence, which aims to promote and support the networking and coordination of research and innovation activities. Its objective is to stimulate structure and support the Presence research community, with special attention to the challenges associated to the interdisciplinary character of the field. Secondly, because Presence research is set to produce disruptive technologies which can cause profound social impact and raise serious ethical issues, Peach will study the relationship between Presence technologies and society, looking at areas such as trends, ethics and legal aspects. Peach is also working to foster contact between researchers and the market, and enhance the public understanding of Presence research and technology.