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(Rev.) IMAGERY IN THE 21st CENTURY, GRAU Ed.,
by Image Science 03 May '12

03 May '12

IMAGERY IN THE 21st CENTURY by Oliver Grau, Editor; with Thomas Veigl The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2011 424 pp. illus. 132 b/w. Trade, $40 ISBN-10: 0262015722. With contributions by Sean CUBITT, Martin SCHULZ, Eduardo KAC, Thomas VEIGL, Stefan HEIDENREICH, Olaf BREIDBACH, Dolores & David STEINMAN, James ELKINS, Wendy CHUNG, Christa SOMMERER & Laurent MIGNONNEAU, Marie Luise ANGERER, Peter WEIBEL, Adrian CHEOK, Tim Otto ROTH, Harald KRÄMER, Lev MANOVICH, Martin WARNKE, Oliver GRAU and Martin KEMP Reviewed by Amy Ione Director, The Diatrope Institute Berkeley, CA 94704 USA ione(a)diatrope.com As I began this review I began to think that the refrain “we are surrounded by images today” has lost its impact (despite my being among the guilty users of it). On the one hand, it seems that many of us notice the imagery. Yet, on the other hand, as we increasingly engage with our visual culture certain norms for our critical investigations are also developing. I’m not sure where this leaves us. To be sure, the nature and complexity of our image-abundant culture is extraordinary. Images are no longer sparse and highly treasured. Rather, we have visual social media, scientific imaging tools, and even static objects like paintings populate the ever-changing screens of our mobile and desktop devices. Even those among us who have resisted some of the broad spectrum of electronic options (think Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, thousands of television channels, digital games, and virtual worlds) cannot escape this new world. Posters and window displays offer smartcodes that invite us to connect with the Internet and learn more about whatever the sign is promoting. Always on, complete with sound, are television screens in airports, restaurants and the array of imaging devices that bring us news, sports, entertainment, whatever. Given the state of the “image” today, critical examination of channels of media and communication are needed. Imagery in the 21st Century, edited by Oliver Grau with Thomas Veigl, presents a number of perspectives on this theme, highlighting the inroads of media into art and science. It is a valuable contribution to the topic. Overall, the book offers systematic and interdisciplinary reflections on expanding and novel forms of images and visualization. Drawing on a number of experts, the twenty chapters highlight new efforts to visualize complex ideas, structures, and systems. In today’s information explosion the question of where what digital images represent and where they fit in the scheme of things becomes quite prismatic. As a whole, the chapters are quite strong; they do not suffer from the unevenness so common in collections of conference papers, which this book is. Of particular value is the breadth of the essays. Researchers from the natural sciences and the humanities explore the wealth of diverse functionality that images have evolved to offer to our lives, that includes lab applications, social commentary, humanistic questions, and experimental art projects. The spectrum of topics include: database economy (Sean Cubitt), telepresent images (Martin Schulz), ethical boundaries (Eduardo Kac), the emergence of a future web-based video aesthetic (Thomas Veigl), brain research (Olaf Breidbach), medical illustration (Dolores and David Steinman), interdisciplinary practices (James Elkins), the role of source code (Wendy Hui Kyong Chun), the interface (Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau), the museum (Peter Weibel), cellular automata (Tim Otto Roth and Andreas Deutsch ), cultural analytics (Lev Manovich and Jeremy Douglass) and a digital version of the Warburg Image Atlas (Martin Warnke). Even this abbreviated list offers a glimpse into the diversity of efforts to expand visual competence through providing cross-disciplinary exchanges among the arts, humanities, and natural sciences. While this range makes the volume a valuable tool for examining this subject across disciplines, the title, Imagery in the 21st Century, is likely to seem a rash overstatement in a few decades, given that the century has hardly begun. Chapters focusing on applications and innovations offer the most of substantive value, in my view. “Toward New Conventions for Visualizing blood Flow in the Era of Fascination with Visibility and Imagery” by Dolores Steinman and David Steinman falls into this category. Well written and comprehensive, these authors set the stage by pointing out that medical images (drawings, woodcuts, engravings) have always played a key role in educating practitioners and knowledge development. They then follow with case studies that illustrate their efforts to represent blood flow in the context of the living body and conclude with some commentary on medical imagery as art and in popular culture. James Elkins’ chapter, “Visual Practices across the University: A Report,” also stood out. Elkins presents a brief summary of a book called Visual Practices across the University that was published in German in 2007 and is little known outside of the German-speaking world. The essay summarizes an exhibition project that was initiated by sending email to faculty in the sixty-odd departments at University College, Cork asking for exhibition proposals from anyone who uses images in their work. What stood out in his commentary is how differently scientists, humanists and artists think about images and imagery. In this case, he found that while most visual work in the university is done outside of the humanities, most of this work is invisible because the routine image making and image interpretation is not considered as important to the goals as what the images represent and the science that they make possible. Oliver Grau, the editor, is a Professor for Image Science and Dean of the Department for Cultural Studies at Danube University, the author of Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion (2003) [1] and the editor of MediaArtHistories. His collaborator, Thomas Veigl, is on the scientific staff of the Department for Image Science at the Danube--University Krems. Their opening chapter, Introduction: Imagery in the 21st Century, sets the stage well and is available at http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/chapters/0262015722chap1.pdf . Grau’s concluding section on “Media Art’s Challenge in Our Societies” offers an overview of image studies today. Parts of the chapter are useful but, because some sections in it are so focused on his professional efforts to meet today’s challenges rather than the challenges overall, the text read like an infomercial at times. Throughout the book it is clear that there are the endless options for image manipulation and that while new media presents us with both interactive opportunities it also raises challenging questions (about human autonomy, entertainment, interaction, etc.). The editors note: “Images increasingly define our world and our everyday life: in advertising, entertainment, politics, and even in science, images are pushing themselves in front of language. The mass media, in particular, engulf our senses on a daily basis. It would appear that images have won the contest with words: Will the image have the last word?” (p. 6) Perhaps images will have the last word. On March 12th of this year (2012) the Encyclopaedia Britannica announced “it will cease publication of the 32-volume printed edition of its flagship encyclopedia, continuing with the digital versions that have become popular with knowledge seekers in recent decades.” The press release also noted that “[The Encyclopedia Britannica] was originally published in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1768 and has been in print continuously ever since [2]. When I grew up, like many of my generation, this book was like browsing the web. I used to love to turn the pages, looking at the images and reading the articles that related to images that caught my fancy. Of course, the Grau book itself raises another side of the question about whether images will have the last word. At this point in time it is not available electronically although sections of the text (without the images!) are on Google Books; moreover Google Books does not offer active links to all the many, many websites the Grau book references. Amazon’s page for the book does not link to a Kindle version. Instead, Amazon has a link asking visitors to tell the publisher to offer a Kindle version. So, will images have the last word? Perhaps. Or perhaps we need to ask: Is it a good thing for images to have the last word? I did not think that the depth of this kind of question was fully addressed in the book since its focus was on the importance of understanding images as vital and dynamic parts of our world today. Thus, my primary concern about this volume, which I recommend overall, is that the reflections and analytical approaches offered did not seem to balance the euphony and cacophony of our experience today. While I’m not exactly sure how this relates to whether images will have the last word, I do know that at times all of the changing images surrounding me feel very cacophonic. As a participant in the movement is to reverse the dominance of textual sources in our approaches to knowledge, as we celebrate our visual abundance, visualization methods, the distribution of images, and how imagery benefits our lives; it seems foreign to have evolved to the point that I think so much about the visual noise. Even in this book I found that some of the projects seemed strikingly cacophonic, and thought that the theoretical assumptions of the authors overall are more biased toward euphonic reactions to our visual culture than the harshness and discordant qualities that are congruent with our visual culture? Perhaps the next step is making sure we address that the cacophonic side is actively included in our critical analyses or imagery. Grau does stress that using an historical lens is an aid in understanding our imagery today. This perspective opens the door for a balanced analysis of the visual and textual and I support him in this effort. Therefore, while the book is only a slice of the imagery picture today, I think readers will gain much from spending time with Imagery in the 21st Century. References: [1] See my Leonardo Review at http://leonardo.info/reviews/feb2003/GRAU_ione.html. [2] “Encyclopaedia Britannica To End Print Edition, Go Completely Digital,” http://www.corporate.eb.com/?p=508. Further Information:: http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12675 http://www.mediaarthistory.org/pub/Imagery21Century.html

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ACM RecSys 2012 Workshop on Interfaces for Recommender Systems (InterfaceRS'12)
by Rong Hu 30 Apr '12

30 Apr '12

1st CALL FOR PAPERS: ACM RECSYS WORKSHOP ON INTERFACES FOR RECOMMENDER SYSTEMS (InterfaceRS'12) Held in conjunction with RecSys 2012 9th - 13th September, Dublin, Ireland InterfaceRS’12: https://www.abdn.ac.uk/~csc284/InterfaceRS/index.html RecSys'12: http://recsys.acm.org/2012/ Submission deadline: 8 June 2011. ======================================================= As a half-day workshop, InterfaceRS desires to bring together researchers and practitioners around the topics of designing and evaluating novel intelligent interfaces for recommender systems in order to: (1) share research and techniques, including new design technologies and evaluation methodologies (2) identify next key challenges in the area, and (3) identify emerging topics. This workshop aims at creating an interdisciplinary community with a focus on the interface design issues for recommender systems and promoting the collaboration opportunities between researchers and practitioners. As an interactive intelligent system, recommender systems are developed to give recommendations which match users' preferences. Since the emergence of recommender systems, a large majority of research focuses on objective accuracy criteria and less attention has been paid to how users interact with the system and the efficacy of interface designs from users' perspective. Well-designed user interfaces have the capability of enhancing user interaction experience and overall satisfaction. For example, explanation interfaces can increase user confidence in their decision choices and inspire user trust and loyalty to the used system. Nowadays, a variety of novel recommendation technologies have been developed to meet different needs (e.g., group and social recommenders). Recommender systems have also extended to new application platforms (e.g., mobile devices). In addition, heterogeneous information resources have been incorporated into recommender systems (e.g., psychological factors, social media). This brings forward new challenges in designing effective and efficient interfaces for these new recommender applications. Topics of interests include, but are not limited to: – Explanation interfaces – Context-aware interfaces – Social interfaces – Ubiquitous and mobile interfaces – Affective Interfaces – Spoken and natural language interfaces – Collaborative multi-user interfaces – Conversational interfaces – Adaptive interfaces – Argumentation and persuasion interfaces – Example- and demonstration-based interfaces – New approaches to designing interfaces for recommender systems – Case studies – Empirical studies and evaluations of new interfaces – Evaluation methods and metrics (e.g., evaluation questionnaire design) – User studies – Human factors (e.g., privacy, security, trust, confidence, transparency) – Comparative studies across domains – Design guidelines ====================== Submissions ====================== We invite the submission of papers reporting original research, studies, advances, experiences, or work in progress in this area. Three submission types are accepted: • Full technical papers (8 pages), presenting technical, scientific, and/or applicative findings, contribute to the knowledge and understanding of problems of interest, and/or present methodological advancements. • Short technical papers (4 pages), presenting work in progress or of shorter, specific scope. • Short demo papers (4 pages), describing how the novel interface prototype is used to solve practically important problems. A supplemental informal description (1-2 pages) should be attached to the submission, describing what attendees will be able to see or do during your demo (e.g. screenshots), and itemize any equipment or facilities that you will bring for your system demonstration. An accompanying video is optional, but highly encouraged. Any submitted video should be at most three minutes long and 50MB in size. Each paper will be evaluated by at least three reviewers from the Program Committee. The papers will be evaluated for their originality, contribution significance, soundness, clarity, and overall quality. The interest of contributions will be assessed in terms of technical and scientific findings, contribution to the knowledge and understanding of the problem, methodological advancements, and/or applicative value. All submissions shall adhere to the standard ACM SIG proceedings format and be sent as a PDF file via EasyChair (http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=interfacers12) by June 8th, 2012. Note that at least one author of accepted papers needs to register and attend the workshop. ====================== Important Dates ====================== • Paper submission deadline: 8 June 2011. • Author notification: 22 June 2011. • Camera ready version due: 6 July 2011. ====================== Program Committee ====================== Li Chen, Hong Kong Baptist University, China Henrik Eneroth, Antrop, Sweden Alexander Felfernig, Graz University of Technology, Austria Helen Hastie, Heriot-Watt, Scotland, UK Eelco Herder, L3S Research Center, Germany Franca Garzotto, Politecnico di milano, Italy Alejandro (Alex) Jaimes, Yahoo! Research, Spain Joseph Konstan, University of Minnesota, USA Jesse Vig, Palo Alto Research Center, USA Additional members to be announced. ====================== Organizers ====================== Nava Tintarev, University of Aberdeen, Scotland, UK. Rong Hu, EPFL, Switzerland. Pearl Pu, EPFL, Switzerland.

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GeoVA(T) - GeoVisual Analytics: Time to Focus on Time (2012 edition) - extended deadline 10.05.2012
by Gennady Andrienko 30 Apr '12

30 Apr '12

*** apologies for cross-posting *** News: to accommodate several requests, the deadline is extended till Thursday, the 10th of May, 2012 *** no further deadline extension are possible ____________________________________________________________ This is a forwarded message From: Gennady Andrienko <gennady.andrienko(a)iais.fraunhofer.de> To: <geovis(a)iais.fraunhofer.de> Date: Thursday, February 23, 2012, 4:46:55 PM Subject: [geovis] CFP: GeoVA(T) - GeoVisual Analytics: Time to Focus on Time (2012 edition) ===8<==============Original message text=============== Dear colleagues, Please consider submitting your best work to our GIScience workshop GeoVA(T): GeoVisual Analytics: Time to Focus on Time The deadline is Thursday, the 10th of May, 2012 Submission format: PDF, up to 4 pages in IEEE VisWeek format Conference management system: https://cmt.research.microsoft.com/GEOVA2012/ Best regards, Gennady Andrienko, on behalf of the workshop organizers ____________________________________________________________ Fraunhofer Institute IAIS: http://www.iais.fraunhofer.de ICA GeoVisualization Commission: http://geoanalytics.net/ica Andrienko's homepage: http://geoanalytics.net/and publications: http://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=R370BREAAAAJ ____________________________________________________________ ---------------------- Call for papers ------------------------------- GeoVisual Analytics, Time to Focus on Time Workshop @ GIScience (18 September 2012, Columbus OH, USA) & Special issue of Information Visualization (early 2013) http://geoanalytics.net/GeoVA(t)2012 The workshop is a follow-up of the successful workshops on - Visualization, Analytics and Spatial Decision Support at the GIScience’2006 conference, - Geovisualization of Dynamics, Movement and Change at AGILE'2008, and - GeoSpatial Visual Analytics at GIScience'2008. - GeoSpatial Visual Analytics: Focus on Time at AGILE'2010. Selected papers from the previous workshops, including research agenda papers, were published as special issues of - International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 2007, v.21(8) - Information Visualization, 2008, v.7 (3/4), and - Cartography and Geographic Information Science, 2009, v.36 (3) - International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 2010, v.24(10) Geospatial visual analytics has a tendency to emphasize the spatial components of geographic information. At this workshop we encourage approaches that utilize and emphasize the temporal characteristics of geographic information in rich, novel and useful ways - it's time to focus on time. The theme for the workshop and this special issue of the Information Visualization journal is the use of GeoVisual Analytics approaches for exploring and analysing large data sets with both spatial and temporal components. Original papers are solicited in this area. In particular, we encourage innovative papers detailing tight integration of visualization, data mining, database processing, optimization and other computational processing. The workshop will provide participants with the possibility to present ongoing and developing work without committing to a full journal paper. The journal special issue will provide selected participants with the opportunity of reporting their work in a refereed journal. Papers will be selected for consideration for the spacial issue according to the quality, maturity and likely impact of the work in addition to its fit with the theme. Example topics include, but are not limited to, the visualization and interactive analysis of large data sets representing: - individual and group movement behaviours, either in physical or virtual spaces - dynamics of geo-localised sensor data - spatio-temporal events - visualization and analysis of multi-scale and multi-temporal data - large high-dimensional data sets in space and time - streams of spatio-temporal data as well as - models and semantics of time in geospatial visual analytics - knowledge construction and reasoning about spatial and temporal phenomena and processes - application of innovative visual analytics methods to real-life problems Organizers and Guest Editors: - Gennady and Natalia Andrienko (Fraunhofer Institute IAIS), - Jason Dykes (City University), - Menno-Jan Kraak (ITC), - Heidrun Schumann (University of Rostock) ICA Commission on GeoVisualization: http://geoanalytics.net/ica Supported by: - SPP VA - Scalable Visual Analytics: Interactive Visual Analysis Systems of Complex Information Spaces (DFG Priority Research Program) - MODAP - Mobility, Data Mining, and Privacy (FET-Open Coordination Action) - MOVE - Knowledge Discovery from Moving Objects (COST-Action IC0903) Please send all inquiries to G.Andrienko: Web site: http://geoanalytics.net/GeoVA(t)2012 Conference management system: https://cmt.research.microsoft.com/GEOVA2012/ Submission and selection procedure & deadlines end-October, 2011 preliminary CFP announced February 23, 2012 final CFP announced May 10, 2012 Authors should submit extended abstracts (PDF, up to 4 pages in IEEE TVCG format, see http://www.cs.sfu.ca/~vis/Tasks/camera_tvcg.html for formatting details) via the conference management system.) Abstracts should be up to four pages in length. Illustrations and supplementary online materials are welcome, they should be included to the PDF. Authors should indicate whether they are interested in developing the abstract into a full paper for the special issue June 10, 2012 Guest editors will select abstracts for the presentation at the workshop and notify authors. Short abstracts of accepted presentations will be published online at the workshop web site. September 1, 2012 Full papers for the special issue(s) are submitted September 18, 2012, Columbus, Ohio, USA Authors of accepted abstracts present their work at the workshop for feedback and discussion October 1, 2012 Authors will be notified about acceptance for the special issue November 1, 2012 Deadline for submitting final papers and responding to reviewer’s comments. December 1, 2012 Final notifications early 2013 IVS special issue published ________________________________________________________________________

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PhD studentship - visualising cultural data - academic-industrial partnership
by Stephen Boyd Davis 25 Apr '12

25 Apr '12

PhD studentship - visualising cultural data - academic-industrial partnership A PhD studentship is available at the Royal College of Art in London, funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. The funding includes the fees and a living allowance. This is a collaboration with industry, based at System Simulation, a research-led software engineering company in central London with a distinguished record of working with museums and other cultural organisations. The studentship provides a strong base on which to develop an industrial or academic career. The aim of the research is to reveal new knowledge by visualising diverse large datasets in rich interactive timelines and related graphical displays. Our principal aim will be public understanding of historical and other data - making complex patterns visible at a glance - though the visualisation tools will be adaptable to advanced use by researchers, curators, historians, and others. The work presents a wealth of research problems among which the successful applicant is encouraged to identify a distinctive path. The right applicant will have a strong desire to combine in-depth study and practical development. Your experience will include the design and development of interactive software. A software engineer may be the ideal candidate, but others with significant development experience are welcome to apply. You will be enthusiastic, and preferably knowledgeable, about visualisation and visual analytics, and have some understanding of working with large datasets. You will be committed to evaluation as well as making, since it is essential that the products of the research are usable and likeable as well as functioning to a high technical standard. See the documents online for further details… On jobs.ac.uk: http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/AEG446/epsrc-funded-phd-studentship/ On RCA site: http://www.rca.ac.uk/Default.aspx?ContentID=161457&GroupID=161452 Closing date 17 May 2012. Studentship to begin no later than 30 September 2012 – an earlier start is preferred. To discuss academic / industrial aspects of the studentship, email stephen.boyd-davis(a)rca.ac.uk<mailto:stephen.boyd-davis@rca.ac.uk> To discuss administrative / financial aspects, email suzanne.strong(a)rca.ac.uk<mailto:suzanne.strong@rca.ac.uk> An indication of past work by the academic director of this research can be seen here: http://rca.academia.edu/StephenBoydDavis/Papers The Royal College of Art is a world-renowned postgraduate-only institution. In RAE2008 its research had the highest "world-leading" ranking of all submissions that combined art and design. Stephen .......................................................................................................................... Stephen Boyd Davis | Research Leader, School of Design | Royal College of Art Kensington Gore, London SW7 2EU, United Kingdom Telephone Wanda Polanski (School of Design) 44 (0)20 7590 4352 Personal extension 44 (0)20 7590 4343 www.rca.ac.uk ..........................................................................................................................

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Job: Visual Analytics Postdoc Position (Social Media), Middlesex University, London, UK
by Kai Xu 23 Apr '12

23 Apr '12

. Expected starting date: June 2012 . Application deadline: May 14, 2012 . Length: 2 years . Salary: £34,053 - £39,117 per year . Location: London, UK . Contact: Dr Kai Xu - k.xu(a)mdx.ac.uk . More details: http://www.mdx.ac.uk/Assets/EIS56.pdf . Application information: http://www.mdx.ac.uk/aboutus/Work/vacancies/ We are looking for a post-doctoral researcher to work on the Visual Analytics techniques for Social Media analysis (e.g., Twitter). The researcher is expected to take a leading role in designing and developing novel Visual Analytics techniques to address the data quality and uncertainty issues commonly encountered in Social Media analysis. 'Provenance' is expected to be an important part of the solution. The researcher will be part of a collaboration team formed by Middlesex University, City University (Prof. Jo Wood and Prof. Jason Dykes), Loughborough University (Dr. Derek Stephens), and Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (dstl). The researcher will be based at the Interaction Design Centre within the School of Engineering and Information Sciences at the Middlesex University located in London, UK. The Centre leads the UK Visual Analytics Consortium (UKVAC) that includes Bangor University, University College London, Imperial College, and Oxford University. Dr Kai Xu Senior Lecturer in Visual Analytics School of Engineering and Information Sciences Middlesex University The Burroughs, London, NW4 4BT, UK Email: k.xu(a)mdx.ac.uk Phone: +44 (0)20 8411 5510 http://kaixu.me/ http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=sTfJNSIAAAAJ http://idc.mdx.ac.uk/projects/visualanalytics/

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Deadline extended! Final CFP for CGIV12, 24 - 27 July 2012, Taiwan
by whua5569＠gmail.com 13 Apr '12

13 Apr '12

We sincerely apologize if you receive multiple copies of this email. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ CFP~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ CGIV2012 - 9th International Conference on Computer Graphics, Imaging and Visualization www.graphicslink.co.uk/cgiv2012/ 24 - 27 July 2012 ● National Chiao Tung University ● Hsinchu ● Taiwan · www.graphicslink.co.uk/cgiv2012/VENUE.htm ************************** Important Dates: 30 April 2012 (extended!) – Submission of papers & Submission of tutorials: https://www.conftool.net/cgiv2012/ 21 May 2012 – Submission of camera-ready & early registration closes *************************** Call for Paper, Symposium proposal, Poster, Abstract for PhD Workshop, Tutorial, Video, Digital Art, Exhibition and Participation Theme and scope is planned as series of symposia with details and further information is available at: www.graphicslink.co.uk/cgiv2012/symposia.htm Computer Graphics: 3D-Visual Environments Computer Animation, Information Visualisation, and Digital Effects Real Time Computer Graphics Rendering Solid Modeling Imaging: Image/Video Analysis Forensic Digital Imaging Computer Vision Techniques for Computer Graphics visualisation: Visualisation Visualisation – Scientific & Information Visual Analytics Bioinformatics Visualization BioMedical Visualisation Visualisation in Built Environment GeoVisualization and Information Visualization Simulation Visualisation Cgiv Application: Computer Aided Geometric Design & Graphics Digital Art and Gallery WebGraphics Intelligent Recognition Techniques, Applications, Systems & Tools Mixed and Virtual Reality MultiMedia Digital Entertainment Computer Games and their applications (CGa) Education and Industrial Prospective For submission and conference registration, please log into the online conference management system: https://www.conftool.net/cgiv2012/ Accepted papers will be published by The Conference Publishing Services (CPS ~ http://www.computer.org/portal/web/cscps/) that is indexed with the major indices. Selected accepted paper will be invited paper will be included in the special issues of journals and edited book chapters. Conference Co-ordinator P.O.BOX 29,HATFIELD,AL9 7ZL,United Kingdom. Tel: (Int. +44) 1707 - 652 224 Fax: (Int. +44) 1707 - 652 247 Email: cgiv12(a)graphicslink.co.uk URL: www.graphicslink.co.uk/cgiv2012/

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New data available: VAST Challenge 2012 Call for Participation
by Cook, Kristin A 11 Apr '12

11 Apr '12

Apologies if you receive multiple copies.) VAST Challenge 2012 Call for Participation Mini-challenge 2 data now available! See http://www.vacommunity.org/vastchallenge2012 This year's VAST Challenge focuses on visual analytics applications for both large scale situation analysis and cyber security. There will be two mini-challenges to test your visual analytics applications and your analytical skills. Available now: In mini-challenge 1, (the imaginary) BankWorld's largest financial institution, the (fictitious) Bank of Money needs your best situation awareness visualizations to understand the health of its global corporate network. How do you visualize status data for a network containing nearly a million computers in a way that you can perceive network health and identify problems? Available now: In mini-challenge 2, unusual events are occurring in one of the Bank of Money's regional offices. Some of them may very well wreak havoc across the institution if they turn out to be malicious. What are these unusual events? And if you were in charge of computer security, what actions should be taken to safeguard the network and quite possibly save the Bank of Money from disaster? (Participants from last year's VAST challenge may find their firewall and IDS log analysis tools useful for this challenge as well.) We encourage participation by individuals and teams in industry and academia. Creative approaches to visual analytics are encouraged. Please visit http://www.vacommunity.org/vastchallenge2012 for more information about the challenge and to download datasets and instructions. Data for mini-challenge 1 is available now. Data for mini-challenge 2 will be available soon. For more information, please contact vast_challenge(a)visweek.org<http://visweek.vgtc.org/visweek/2012/info/call-participation/vast_challenge…>. The submission deadline is July 9, 2012. We look forward to seeing your creative solutions! Kris Cook and Georges Grinstein, VAST Challenge Committee co-chairs

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VizSec 2012
by John Goodall 11 Apr '12

11 Apr '12

VizSec 2012 will be held in mid-October as part of VisWeek in Seattle. When we know the exact date, we will update the web site. Papers are due July 1. The International Symposium on Visualization for Cyber Security (VizSec) is a forum that brings together researchers and practitioners from academia, government, and industry to address the needs of the cyber security community through new and insightful visualization techniques. Co-located this year with VisWeek, the 9th VizSec will provide new opportunities for the usability and visualization communities to collaborate and share insights on a broad range of security-related topics. Accepted papers will appear in the ACM Digital Library as part of the ACM International Conference Proceedings Series. Important research problems often lie at the intersection of disparate domains. Our focus is to explore effective, scalable visual interfaces for security domains, where visualization may provide a distinct benefit, including computer forensics, reverse engineering, insider threat detection, cryptography, privacy, preventing 'user assisted' attacks, compliance management, wireless security, secure coding, and penetration testing in addition to traditional network security. Human time and attention are precious resources. We are particularly interested in visualization and interaction techniques that effectively capture human analyst insights so that further processing may be handled by machines, freeing the analyst for other tasks. For example, a malware analyst might use a visualization system to analyze a new piece of malicious software and then facilitate generating a signature for future machine processing. When appropriate, research that incorporates multiple data sources, such as network packet captures, firewall rule sets and logs, DNS logs, web server logs, and/or intrusion detection system logs, is particularly desirable. More information is on the web site: http://www.ornl.gov/sci/vizsec/

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Position Available for Visualisation Researcher
by Ross T Smith 04 Apr '12

04 Apr '12

Dear Infovis Community, We are looking for a Research Fellow with knowledge in Information Visualisation to work on the project "Interactions of Large Graph Structures on Large Displays". We are seeking enthusiastic applicants who have a passion for research. We will be considering candidates from various backgrounds with skills such as computer graphics, scientific visualisations, Augmented Reality and related areas. For further details and to apply please visit: http://unisa.nga.net.au/bin/fnt_info_page.cfm?JobID=2111&info_mode=new_app&… The closing date for applications is the 2nd July 2012 Location: The Wearable Computer Laboratory Adelaide, Australia Term: Fixed term contract for 3 years Salary Range: Classification – Research Associate (ARAS) Salary range – ARAS: $70,043 - $75,186 pa effective 30 June 2012 Total Remuneration Range approximately – $77k-$82k pa effective 30 June 2012 Classification – Research Fellow (BRF) Salary range – BRF: $79,145 - $93,986 pa effective 30 June 2012 Total Remuneration Range approximately – $87k-$103k pa effective 30 June 2012 Regards, Ross Smith PhD. Deputy Director: Wearable Computer Laboratory University of South Australia School of Computer and Information Science Tel: +61 (0) 8 8302 5551 Fax: +61 (0) 8 8302 3381 http://r-smith.net http://wearables.unisa.edu.au ross(a)r-smith.net<mailto:ross@r-smith.net>

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CFP: IEEE Network Magazine, Special Issue on Computer Network Visualization
by John Goodall 28 Mar '12

28 Mar '12

Call for Papers IEEE Network Magazine http://dl.comsoc.org/livepubs/ni/ Extended Deadline - May 1, 2012 Special Issue on Computer Network Visualization, Nov./Dec. 2012 issue Background Computer networks are dynamic, growing, and continually evolving. As complexity grows, it becomes harder to effectively communicate to human decision-makers the results of methods and metrics for monitoring networks, classifying traffic, and identifying malicious or abnormal events. Network administrators and security analysts require tools that help them understand, reason about, and make decisions about the information their analytic systems produce. To this end, information visualization and visual analytics hold great promise for making the information accessible, usable, and actionable by taking advantage of the human perceptual abilities. Information visualization techniques help network administrators and security analysts to quickly recognize patterns and anomalies; visually integrate heterogeneous data sources; and provide context for critical events. Scope This special issue seeks original articles examining the state of the art, open issues, research results, evaluations of visualization and visual analytic tools, and future research directions in computer network visualization and visual analytics. All submissions should be written to be understandable and appealing to a general audience. Research papers should contain a substantial amount of tutorial content and minimal mathematics. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: * Uses of visualization for network status monitoring and situational awareness * Visualization methods employed in the classification of network traffic and its analysis * Visualization methods enhancing network intrusion detection and anomaly detection * Visualization methods for the analysis of network threats (e.g. botnets) * Visualization methods for the analysis of network routing * Methods for integrating analytics and visualization together for network analysis tasks * Methods for visually integrating heterogeneous data sources to support network analysis tasks * Case studies of open source visualization tools in network analysis tasks * Evaluations of network visualization tools in situ Manuscript Submission Articles should be written in a style comprehensible and appealing to readers outside the speciality of the article. Authors must follow the IEEE Network Magazine guidelines regarding the manuscript and its format. For details, please refer to the "Guidelines for manuscripts" at the IEEE Network Magazine web site at http://dl.comsoc.org/livepubs/ni/info/authors.html. Submitted papers must be original work and must not be under consideration for publication in other venues. Authors should submit their manuscripts in PDF through ScholarOne for IEEE Network Magazine. Choose this special issue from the drop down menu on the submission page. Authors uncertain about the relevance of their paper to this special issue should inquire with the guest editors before submission. Schedule Submissions: May 1, 2012 Author notifications: July 1, 2012 Final papers: September 1, 2012 Publication: November 2012 Guest Editors John Goodall Oak Ridge National Lab jgoodall(a)ornl.gov John Gerth Stanford University gerth(a)graphics.stanford.edu Florian Mansmann University of Konstanz Florian.Mansmann(a)uni-konstanz.de

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