December 2008 - Infovis

New book on graphical data analysis
by Martin Theus 17 Dec '08

17 Dec '08

Hi everyone, just a brief note regarding a book that might be equally of interest for infovis researchers as well as for infovis users. "Interactive Graphics for Data Analysis: Principles and Examples" is divided into two parts. The first part illustrates general principles how graphical methods are most efficiently used to analyze data. The second part uses nine real world datasets to show the application of these techniques as nine fully worked out case studies. The book uses the Mondrian visualization tool (http://mondrian.theusRus.de) throughout the book, though the techniques and case studies are presented (almost) independently from any specific implementation. A 30 page appendix gives a quick overview and introduction of the Mondrian software. There is more information on the book at http://www.interactivegraphics.org , which also contains some sample chapters for preview. You may also look at the publishers site at: http://www.crcpress.com/shopping_cart/products/product_detail.asp?sku=C5947… --Martin Theus

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Workshop Interacting with Temporal Data @CHI'09
by Jean-Daniel Fekete 11 Dec '08

11 Dec '08

Call for Participation: Interacting with temporal data a workshop at CHI 2009 in Boston, Massachusetts http://temporal.csail.mit.edu/ Is time just another attribute of data? Or is it something more? We are interested in gathering together a diverse group of researchers who deal with time as a fundamental component of interactive systems: sometimes as a resource, sometimes as a problem to be solved. Our goal is to investigate the temporal dimension in user interfaces, across disciplines. Time brings meaning to data, especially data about the real world. Time is also essential for understanding human activity and an essential element of design processes. Sometimes we address time explicitly, sometimes implicitly. It structures how people interact with computers, but is also a measurable effect of that interaction. The goal of this workshop is to explore human-computer interaction from a temporal perspective. This workshop is not a mini-conference but will be highly interactive, participatory and hands-on, with a combination of whole-group focused discussion and small-group brainstorming. We will define problems, generate ideas and share common concerns that arise in our research, including data capture, log management, and visualization of human activity over time. Our goal is to create a community of people interested in these issues and to create a special issue of a journal that explores them in greater depth. Participation We invite researchers and interaction designers who explore the use of time in interactive systems. Our goal is to bring together people with diverse perspectives, practices and problems. Participants should submit a short position paper paper (2-4 pages) that addresses an issue concerning temporal data or time in interactive systems, including: * A particular application domain of interest * The nature of temporal data this domain: structure, frequency, significance. * Principal interaction challenges pertaining to data capture, sharing, or use within this domain. * Particular techniques and approaches that you have personally tried (if any). * One (most important) interaction challenge that that you wish to discuss or solve. Please use the CHI Extended Abstracts Format to temporal-chi09(a)csail.mit.edu and let us know by November 30 if you plan to submit and send the paper by December 31, 2008 Schedule The workshop will consist primarily of hands-on small-group interaction sessions. After a "CHI Madness" series of quick presentations, to give us all a sense of each participant's perspective, we will break into small brainstorming and prototyping groups. The proposed schedule is below. Position paper deadline: December 31, 2008 (let us know by November 30 if you plan to submit) Workshop: Saturday, April 4, 2009. * 09:00 - welcome and introduction (all) * 09:20 – 3-minute madness: short presentations from participants (all) * 10:30 - break * 10:45 - scenario development (small groups) * 12:30 - lunch * 13:30 - video prototyping (small groups) * 15:30 - break * 16:00 - group presentations and discussion (all) * 16:40 - next steps and conclusion * 17:00 - end Post-workshop goals: * to create a cross-disciplinary community of researchers interested in temporal interaction and visualization * to establish a community-moderated blog and repository of resources, and, * to edit a special issue of a journal that incorporates ideas, conclusions and recommendations that result from the workshop. Organizers Wendy Mackay is research director at INRIA Saclay and Vice President of Research in Computer Science at the University of Paris-Sud in France. Her research group, in|situ|, focuses on situated interaction, with four main research themes: interaction paradigms, multi-disciplinary design methods, engineering of interactive systems, and mediated communication. Max Van Kleek is a Ph.D. candidate at MIT CSAIL investigating personal activity capture, user modeling and data mining for personal information management (PIM). Aurélien Tabard is a Ph.D. candidate in the InSitu team at INRIA and Université Paris-Sud. His research concerns the study, design and evaluation of systems supporting a reflection and management of information. Please direct your questions and comments to temporal-chi09(a)csail.mit.edu - and we look forward to your participation! -- Jean-Daniel Fekete Jean-Daniel.Fekete(a)inria.fr AVIZ Team Leader, INRIA www.aviz.fr INRIA Saclay - Île-de-France www.aviz.fr/~fekete Bat 490, Université Paris-Sud tel: +33 1 69156494 F91405 ORSAY Cedex, France fax: +33 1 69154240

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Smartgraphics'09 1st Call for Papers
by Roberto Theron 09 Dec '08

09 Dec '08

9th International Symposium on SMART GRAPHICS http://www.smartgraphics.org/ May 28-30 2009 Salamanca, Spain Submission deadline January 23rd, 2009 Graphics become Smart Graphics when their design and implementation are grounded in an understanding of human abilities, activities, and motivations from design experience and the broad spectrum of cognitive and social sciences. When knowledge from these diverse fields is combined with new methods, tools and techniques in AI, HCI and computer graphics, environments are created that: (1) engage the user and are aesthetically satisfying; (2) participate in human cognition as external or distributed representations; (3) are sensitive to the real-time demands of the interaction in the context of the available informational and computational resources; (4) adapt the form of the output according to a wider set of constraints such as an individual's perceptual, attentive, and motor abilities and the nature of the presentation media and available interaction devices. The International Symposium on Smart Graphics aims at gathering people from the fields of Cognitive Science, Computer Graphics, Artificial Intelligence and Graphics Design to share experiences and experiments in this new and emerging area of study. *** Come and Join the Smart Graphics Experience *** Smart Graphics 2009 welcomes submissions from researchers and practitioners, as well as artists and graphic designers interested in an interdisciplinary approach to the design of smart interactive visual, auditory, and haptic displays. Submission categories are divided into: * Full research papers: these will encompass comprehensive descriptions of original work within the scope of the symposium (limited to 12 pages in Springer LNCS format). * Posters: tentative or preliminary results of research or design work with emphasis on the interdisciplinary evaluation of the ideas (limited to 4 pages in Springer LNCS format). Poster papers will be included in the proceedings. * System demonstrations: short descriptions of research or design work that the authors intend to show and discuss in a demo session at the symposium (limited to 2 pages in Springer LNCS format). System demonstration papers will be included in the proceedings. * Arts track: computer animations, interactive art, digital music, hybrid art, etc. A two-three page proposal outlining the concept and technique of the artwork. An international jury of renowned scientists and artists will select the submissions that best represent the idea of <<Smart Graphics Arts>>. Selected works will be exhibited during the Smart Graphics symposium, within the framework of the 5th International Arts Festival of Castilla y León. A report of the art track including all the selected works will be included in the proceedings. The best piece will be awarded and its author will be invited to the sysmposium. Smartgraphics specially encourages young researchers to submit their ideas and results. As in previous conferences, proceedings will be published in the Springer Lecture Note in Computer Science (LNCS) series. Topics of interest include (but are not restricted to): * information visualization * visual analytics * graphical abstraction * multimodal information presentation * non-desktop interfaces * user interaction * sketch-based interfaces * interaction science * scene perception * cognitive sciences * user studies * computer graphics * artificial intelligence * virtual and mixed reality * graphics design * technological art This year, we propose a specific emphasis on visual analytics as well as all kinds of transversal research that harnesses the power of humans and technological artefacts in order to convey, understand and deal with complex scientific and social processes. Smart Graphics, beyond a conventional conference, will be intertwined with the 5th International Arts Festival of Castilla y León (http://www.festivalcyl.com/ ), and we invite artists, technologists and scholars from all disciplines to convene in Salamanca, May 28-30, 2009. Both during the Smart Graphics Symposium and during the Festival (May 29-June 15) workshops, system demonstrations, exhibitions, performances, panels and open discussions related to how information technology is provided to the society and how art is evolving and taking advantage of technological artefacts in its quest of new artistic forms, will become part of the unique streets and buildings of UNESCO?s World Heritage city of Salamanca. IMPORTANT DATES: January 23rd 2009 (submission deadline) February 23rd, 2009 (notification of results) March 7th, 2009 (camera ready copy due) May 28-30, 2009 (Symposium in Salamanca, Spain) ORGANIZERS: Andreas Butz (University of Munich, Germany) Marc Christie (IRISA/INRIA Rennes, France) Brian Fisher (Simon Fraser University, Canada) Antonio Krueger (University of Muenster, Germany) Patrick Olivier (University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK) Roberto Therón (University of Salamanca, Spain) COMMITEE (tentative): * Elisabeth Andre (University of Augsburg) * William Bares (Millsaps College) * Luca Chittaro (University of Udine) * Sarah Diamond (Ontario College of Art and Design) * Steven Feiner (Columbia University) * David S. Ebert (Purdue University) * Knut Hartmann (Flensburg University of Applied Science) * Hiroshi Hosobe (Tokyo National Institute of Informatics) * Christian Jacquemin (LIMSI?CNRS) * Tsvi Kuflik (University of Haifa) * Rainer Malaka (European Media Lab) * Shigeru Owada (Sony CSL) * W. Bradford Paley (Digital Image Design) * Bernhard Preim (University of Magdeburg) * Thomas Rist (University of Applied Sciences, Augsburg) * Mateu Sbert (University of Girona) * Shigeo Takahashi (University of Tokyo) * Lucia Terrenghi (University of Munich) * Massimo Zancanaro (ITC-irst Trento) For a full description of the scope of the Symposium, and details of previous events, see the website: http://www.smartgraphics.org For any queries, please use the contact address: (theron at usal.es) --- We apologize for any cross postings.

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job announcement: visual and algorithmic analysis of movement and event data
by Andrienko 03 Dec '08

03 Dec '08

Dear colleagues, Please find below a job announcement within our new project on analysis of movement data funded by DFG - German Research Foundation - a cooperation project with Univ. Bonn (Prof. S.Wrobel) and Univ. Constance (Prof. D.Keim) If you are interested in the position, but need any further clarifications, please do not hesitate to contact me. I would appreciate if you could also, please, forward this message on to other colleagues in the geovisualisation and visual analytics communities or your students who might be interested in joining our group here in Bonn / Sankt Augustin. Thanks in advance. Best regards, Dr. Gennady Andrienko ____________________________________________________________ Fraunhofer Institute IAIS: http://www.iais.fraunhofer.de ICA GeoVisualization Commission: http://geoanalytics.net/ica Andrienko's homepage: http://geoanalytics.net/and ____________________________________________________________ The Computer Science Department (Informatik III) of the University of Bonn, Germany, invites applications for the following position Researcher (Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter) - visual and algorithmic analysis of movement and event data – The position is part of the Knowledge Discovery and Machine Learning research group, which focuses on the subfields of computer science known as knowledge discovery in databases (KDD, sometimes referred to simply as data mining) and machine learning (ML). For us, these fields include on the one hand the automated and visually explorative analysis of large data sets including intelligent algorithms that are capable of extracting from the collected data hidden knowledge in order to produce models that can be used for prediction and decision making. On the other hand, they also include algorithms and methods that are capable of learning from experience and adapting to their environment or their users. The candidate would specifically elaborate and develop scalable visual and algorithmic methods for the analysis of spatiotemporal data, which involve a high complexity of geographical space, time, and multidimensional non-spatial attributes. The candidate has completed a Diplom or Master degree in Computer Science, Mathematics or Geoinformatics and has proven capabilities in Software Engineering and mathematical modelling. Knowledge of Data Mining, Information Visualization, Geographical Information Systems and practical handling of spatiotemporal data is an advantage. The candidate should be fluent in English and have good writing skills. For non-German speakers learning of the German language should be considered. The position is available for a period of 3 years with the possibility of extension depending on funding. Anticipated start date is early 2009. Salary is according to EG 13, TV-L. The University of Bonn is an equal opportunities employer. Preference will be given to suitably qualified women or handicapped people, all other conditions being equal. Applicants are expected to submit a cover letter, CV, and certificates of high school and university diploma. Applications should be sent to: Professor Dr. Stefan Wrobel Knowledge Discovery and Machine Learning Research Group Computer Science Department Römerstraße164 53117 Bonn ____________________________________________________________

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