master classes Interfacing Realities

[V2_Organisation]

Interfacing Realities is a Culture 2000 project initiated by V2_ and 
realised in collaboration with EncArt. EncArt (European Network for 
Cyber Arts) is a longterm collaboration between the ZKM in Karlsruhe, 
Ars Electronica in Linz, C3 in Budapest and V2_ in Rotterdam that 
started in 1997.
Interfacing Realities covers a series of four masterclasses that focus 
on new concepts for information management in general, and the usage 
and creation of databases and archives in contemporary art practices in 
particular.

http://www.v2.nl/Projects/interfacing_realities

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Master class with Lev Manovich
C3, Budapest, 22 November - 26 November 2002
METADATING THE IMAGE
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MASTER CLASS with Joel Ryan
ZKM Karlsruhe, 27 November - 1 December 2002
MAPPING YOUR CREATIVE TERRITORY
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more info about these two master classes below



MASTER CLASS with Lev Manovich
C3, Budapest, 22 November - 26 November 2002

METADATING THE IMAGE
Human cultures have developed rich and precise systems to describe oral 
and written communication: phonetics, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, 
narrative theory, rhetoric, and so on. Dictionaries and thesauruses 
help us to create new texts while the search engines and the ever 
present ?find?? command on our desktops help us to locate the 
particular texts already created, or their parts.

Paradoxically, while the role of visual communication has dramatically 
increased over the last two centuries, no similar descriptive systems 
were developed for images ú at least not on the same scale. So while 
the number of different types of images we routinely create today is 
extremely large, if not infinite (and it has become ever larger after 
computer tools made possible to more easily combine photographs, 
graphics and text, and to apply operations previously reserved for each 
of this separate medium to all the other media ú blurring text, etc.), 
the systems we have to describe these images are very poor. For 
instance, stock photography collections divide millions of images into 
a couple of dozen categories, at best, with names such as ?joy? 
?business,? and? achievement?; professional designers typically use 
even more limited range of categories to describe their projects ( 
?clean,? ?futuristic,? ?corporate,? ?conservative,? etc.)

As computerization dramatically increases the amount of media data that 
can be stored, accessed and manipulated, we are gradually shifting 
towards more structured ways to organize and describe this data. For 
example, we are moving from HTML to XML (and next to Semantic Web); 
from MPEG-2 to MPEG-7; from ?flat? lens-based images to ?layered? image 
composites and discrete 3D computer generated spaces. In all these 
cases the shift is from a ?low-level? metadata (the fonts on the Web 
page, the resolution and compression settings of a moving image) to a 
?high-level? metadata that describes the structure of a media 
composition or even its semantics.

What about images? Computerization creates a promise (which maybe only 
an illusion) that images that traditionally resisted the human attempts 
to describe them with precision ú will be finally conquered. After all, 
we now easily find out that a particular digital image contains so many 
pixels and so many colors; we can also easily store all kinds of 
metadata along with the image; and we can tease out some indications of 
image structure and semantics (for instance, we can find all edges in a 
bit-mapped image.) Yet visual search engines that can deal with the 
queries such as ?find all images which have a picture of ? or ?find all 
images similar in composition to this one? are still in their infancy. 
Similarly, the metadata provided by a image database software I use to 
organize my digital photos tells me all kinds of technical details such 
as what aperture my digital camera used to snap this or that image ú 
but nothing about the image content. In short, while computerization 
made the image acquisition, storage, manipulation, and transmission 
much more efficient than before, it did not help us so far to deal with 
one of its side effects ú how to more efficiently describe and access 
the vast quantities of digital image being generated by digital cameras 
and scanners, by the endless ?digital archives? and ?digital libraries? 
projects around the world, by the sensors and the museums?

The theoretical part of the Master class will develop in more detail 
the paradigm sketched here. We will discuss the key modern attempts (in 
cinema, graphic design, art history, psychology, and other fields) to 
make images into a language ú i.e., to develop formal techniques to 
describe images and to predict their effects on the viewer. Against 
this background, we will look at the history, the present research and 
the emerging trends in computer research which pursue the similar 
project: visual search engines, the new hybrid forms of cinema which 
combine cinematography with a more structured way to represent space 
borrowed from 3D computer graphics, the state of the art in computer 
vision applications, and so on. We will also look at the works of a few 
new media artists that engage with the politics and poetics of image 
metadata (Joachim Sauter, George Legrady, and others).

Finally, we will also engage with some larger questions about the 
functioning of images in a global information society. For example, is 
it true that we live in a predominantly visual culture, or does 
computerization in fact downplays the role of an image in favor of 
other representations such as text and 3D space? Will our visual 
culture be still dominated by photographic-like images in the twenty 
first century, or will other kinds of images eventually take their 
place? While computers allow us to manipulate old media in new ways, 
creating new hybrids and new forms, do they also enable any completely 
new and unprecedented types of visual representations?

The practical projects developed during the Master class can pursue one 
of two directions. A project can present an analysis of some existing 
(and socially important) system for cataloging and describing images 
and their contents ú for instance, the categories used by stock media 
collections, the categories used to classify facial expressions of 
human emotions in computer research, the categories used by graphic 
designers to talk about the styles of Web design. If possible, these 
projects should address the following two questions: (1) are there any 
conceptual shifts which can be observed in the logic of image 
description systems as they become implemented in a computer, thus 
turning into software? (2) What are the relationships between image 
description systems and the descriptions used by software for other 
type of media?

Alternatively, a participant can develop a conceptual proposal for a 
software interface to record, describe, access, or manipulate images in 
a new way. While new media artists have extensively critiqued existing 
software interfaces in general and developed many particular 
alternatives, surprisingly little energy has been spend so far thinking 
on how we interface to images. And yet the computerization of visual 
culture opens all kinds of interesting possibilities waiting to be 
explored. For instance, if it already possible to record and store 
practically unlimited number of still and moving images of one?s 
existence, what kind of interface can we use to organize and navigate 
these images? Or, given that we now can use database software to 
classify, link, and retrieve images and image sequences along with 
other media, how can a database structure be used to represent the life 
of a modern city, the history of a place, etc. In other words, behind 
the difficult problem of visual metadata that has become more pressing 
in computer age than ever before, there is also an exiting promise ú 
the promise to represent reality and human experience in new ways.

The projects created during the class will be featured on a Master 
class Web site and will be published in a new book by V2 (Rotterdam). 
Therefore, regardless of whether a participant chooses to pursue 
analytical or practical project, the final files should be ready to be 
put on the Web and to be published in the book. Therefore the project 
should be presented as a single panel (similar in style to 
architectural proposals), available in Web-ready and print-ready 
versions (for instance, an HTML file and an Illustrator file).

date: 22 - 26 November 2002
location: C3, Budapest, Hungary
participants: 10 (a maximum of 6 students)
costs: 200 euro, students 100 euro (traveling and lodging must also be 
payed by the participants)

Subscribe as soon as possible by using the webpages: 
http://www.v2.nl/Projects/interfacing_realities

=====================

MASTER CLASS with Joel Ryan
ZKM Karlsruhe, 27 November - 1 December 2002

MAPPING YOUR CREATIVE TERRITORY
The application of new tools for scientific visualization to music
with Joel Ryan
for composers, media artists, mathematicians, and computer scientists

Navigating detail in musical real time

Modern music attempts to manage an unprecedented plethora of detail. The
massive data problem is as much the nature of contemporary culture as it
is the gift of our new computer based tools. This quest is not unique to
music and mathematical tools have recently emerged to deal with
understanding complex heterogeneous systems of data. The workshop,s goal
is to find ways to coordinate the recognition and recovery of states of
complex real time instruments. A target example could be called the
"Preset Mapping Problem". The workshop focusses on music, but the
solutions might be directly applicable to the control of any real time
system. The focus will not be on the musical time line or score problem.

The workshop is prospecting for new tools for composition and music
performance suggested by innovations in the visualization and navigation
of scientific data. Methods are emerging in fields as diverse as
immunology, protein synthesis, chaotic dynamics and data mining of
texts, all fields which have come to life since computational based
techniques have brought their complexity with in grasp. The sheer
immensity of the problems attempted has stimulated the search for
intermediate tools for sifting multidimensional avalanches of detail.
Perhaps our faculty of visual analysis can add to what our ears tell us.

Participants
The workshop is addressed to participants:
+ who have expertise in practical music platforms like SuperCollider or
+ Max and musician/composers  who need this solution
+ who have experienc in one of the sciences which already have practical
solutions for large data space problems
+ who can act as mathematical references

The workshop is limited to 10 participants. The language is English.

Joel Ryan
is a composer, inventor and scientist. He is a pioneer in the design of
musical instruments based on real time digital signal processing. He
currently works at STEIM in Amsterdam, tours with the Frankfurt Ballet
and is Docent at the Institute of Sonology in The Hague.

Application
The fee for the 5-days workshop is 200 Euro (for students 100 Euro). The
deadline for the application is 13 November 2002.

Please, fill in the application form:
+ Name, Address, E-Mail, Telephone:
+ Student: yes/no
+ Profession: / Subject of Study:
+ Curriculum Vitae:
+ Motivation (short text why you want to participate):

To be sent to:
ZKM - Institute for Visual Media
Postfach 6909
D-76049 Karlsruhe

E-Mail: image at zkm.de
Fax: 0049-(0)721-8100 1509
Tel: 0049-(0)721-8100 1500

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More information: <http://www.v2.nl/Projects/interfacing_realities>