[Nettime-bold] master classes Interfacing Realities

[joke brouwer <jb@v2.nl>]

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

=====================
Master class with Lev Manovich
C3, Budapest, 22 November - 26 November 2002
METADATING THE IMAGE
=====================
MASTER CLASS with Joel Ryan
ZKM Karlsruhe, 27 November - 1 December 2002
MAPPING YOUR CREATIVE TERRITORY
=====================
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 � 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 � 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 � 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 � 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 � 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 � 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 � 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 � 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@zkm.de
Fax: 0049-(0)721-8100 1509
Tel: 0049-(0)721-8100 1500

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






Boudewijn Ridder
V2_Organisatie --- Eendrachtsstraat 10 --- 3012 XL Rotterdam --- 010-2067272
ridder@v2.nl --- http://www.v2.nl

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