MCM 2009 is Over - Was Great!

This morning was the last session of the 4-day conference Mathematics and Computation in Music (MCM) 2009. It was a great opportunity for the academics and practicioners in this area to meet and discuss. Was very well organised, sufficient catering, excellent venues. My photos about this event are on Flickr in a separate set.

My poster got a lot of queries and discussions - I will follow up and prepare a full paper on this, probably submitting to the Journal of Mathematics and Music:



MCM 2011 will probably take place in Paris, at IRCAM.

And I am looking forward to the Windows version of OpenMusic, which the developers said will be out in 2 months from now.

Sonic Spatial Perspectives

On Friday and Saturday, the conference "Sonic Spatial Perspectives" was held in Gandhi Hall at Leeds Metropolitan University. Our Nikos Stavropoulos had invited Jonti Harrison from University of Birmingham to set up the BEAST (Birmingham ElectroAcoustic Sound Theatre) here. 72 loudspeakers were distributed across Gandhi Hall, allowing the creation of an incredible sound space. Derek Hales from University Huddersfield opened the conference as the Director of C3KE, who funded this event. Then Jonti Harrison gave the keynote talk to introduce the system. During these two days, there were 3 concerts with acousmatic music, two workshops, and a round table discussion. Basically, the playing of a pre-recorded spatialised piece still requires an performance by someone who is "diffusing" the sound at the mixer console, operating an array of sliders which can be mapped to speakers or speaker groups. One point of the discussions was how that interface could be improved: instead of controlling the speaker output, one might imagine an interface which allows to control the sound sources directly.

Online Conference between us and Yorkshire

On Sunday we prepared for the conference in the evening. We planned to use Skype to link to a group who assembled in the Sagar Street Gallery in Castleford. Jake would deal with the computing there, and I set up the laptop here. There were some problems initially, but we got it working, even with video. For a while we used also the online conference system DimDim. Our group showed some of the poems and paintings that had been created, and we presented the results of the interviews. We had been a bit sceptical before, as the mobile internet connection appeared not to support the require bandwidth. But in the end it worked out fine.

Presentation at Conference

On Tuesday morning, Ruth, Jane, Brian and myself are invited to be in the speakers panel of this conference and give a presentation. With the exception of Brian we begin working on our Powerpoint presentations, which would be about our work, interests, and about our own institutions. Brian does not use PowerPoint - he talks in the "classical" traditional way, without slides and computer.

My talk is about "Artificial Creativity". I reuse some of the material that I had presented at the Mini-Symposium at the Leeds Met Staff Development Festival 2 months ago. Fortunately a projector is made available, so that we can connect the laptop and show the presentations. My talk causes some laughter by Brian: I mention Ray Kurzweil's "Cybernetic Poet". Brian dismisses the automatically generated poem which I show as an example, as rubbish... and he is probably right.

Conference on Creativity and Literature

Our hosts at the HM Patel Institute have asked us to participate in the conference which they are organising on Monday and Tuesday, and we agree. The topic of this conference fits very well our background and agenda: "Creativity and Literature". Beccy and Jenny hold a workshop on creative writing, where a "river of paper" is created. Brian sits with the panel in the front and gives an opening address. There are about 150 participating students.

The conference opens with a group of students coming in and singing a traditional prayer. Then a few welcome words by the panel. In the afternoon is Beccy's and Jenny's workshop. The students are very keen on learning, and it is amazing how they follow the speakers' words.




In the late afternoon there is a book fair, where books are being exhibited and offered at a discounted price. In the evening is "The Poets' Meet": Gujarati poems are being read by the authors, and also Brian gives a reading of one of his poems. The local painter Kanu Patel here from Vallabh Vidyanagar paints live a painting, accompanying the read poems. Afterwards there is an exhibition of his paintings in the court yard of the institute.



Food is being served at the university: lunch and dinner includes the usual vegetarian dishes, all served on a big metal plate, with a few cups containing the more liquid things. The accompanying drink is buttermilk. Some in our group have concerns, as they have read that anything with cream should be avoided, because of the danger of bacterial infection. But I rely on buttermilk having some acidity, and also on the antibiotic effect of the omnipresent chilli in all the food items. I eat lots of raw onions and hope that this will scare off any bacterium that should dare an attack...

ISMAR: Posters (2nd Photosynth)

With the pictures I took today, I now created a quite elaborate photosynth: with 97 photos and a synth quality of 100% (no picture was left out) this is the best synth that I have made so far. Each poster can be viewed in its full resolution as a separate picture.

Opening of ISMAR Conference

The ISMAR conference takes place at the Engineering Faculty of U.Cambridge. The morning keynote today was given by Paul McIlroy from Hawk-Eye. As the Technical Director, he presented the Augmented Reality and tracking systems which his company employs in sport events for showing the exact ball location, which is very useful in judging critical situations.

Afterwards was a session devoted to progress of display technology. After the lunch break there were sessions about user studies, layout, and applications (still ongoing). I had to go back to the hotel room to take care of some work to be done.

ISMAR: Reception in the Wren Library

The Wren Library is located in the Trinity College. It host books from back to the 8th century, and also the first print of Newton's Principia. A very honorable place. ISMAR participant were given access to visit the library room, before a reception took place downstairs.

Travel to Cambridge

First an appointment for immunisation at my NHS surgery, then a haircut. Then briefly to work, running last minute errands. Then taxi to the train station - train to Cambridge, to visit the Annual ISMAR conference. I have been the Finance Chair this year. Gerhard Reitmayr from U.Cambridge has done an excellent job in organising the local issues, and has been of great help with the financial transactions etc.

I arrive in the late afternoon, time for a brief stroll. Half of the town are the "colleges" from the University Cambridge. Honorable buildings, often closed to visitors.

Trinity College

ESOF 2008 - 2nd Day

I get up early. In the breakfast room of the hotel I am the first and only one. Who has breakfast on a Saturday morning at 7:30? But the first talk starts at 8:30, and I do not want to miss it: as session on Biofuel.

There are 3 experts who point out the dilemma re using biofuels, as I already had debated it with myself a year ago. The experts, however, come to a positive conclusion, in accordance with the official EU position: they can provide additional energy, and not only that, but also can provide more benefits especially to the 3rd world, as they can plant it and create income their for the agricultural sector. I remain sceptical: the panelists did not show how much CO2 these fields actually consume, compared to a tropical rain forest for example. One of them pointed out that the energy is about 9 GJ per hectar. I would have to convert this into how much fuel this actually is, in terms of liter of Biodiesel or Kerosin.

After this session I walk through the exhibition area. There is the German DAAD there - I leave my address, as they may want to establish an DAAD alumni organisation.

I originally wanted to listen to another UK speaker, to as to support my current "home" country: a talk by Sir Richard Mottram about Science and Terrorist Threat. But I get stuck at the exhibition and the outreach expo...

ESOF 2008 - 1st Afternoon

As the participation at the Marie Curie workshop allows participation at the ESOF 2008 Conference, I begin to look at which of the talks I would listen to. There are many parallel session and talks. I decide to go to the one given by Sir David King from UK, U.Oxford,about the challenges of the 21st century. Naturally, a big challenge is the climate change. By 2050 there will be 9 Billion people on Earth, with the population growth fortunately levelling out. The CO2 content in the atmosphere had been in the past 300,000 years between 200 and 280 ppm. Right now it is about 380 ppm, and it will stabilize in the most optimistic scenario at about 450 ppm. He is a proponent of nuclear energy and of gen-manipulated (GM) crops. In some ways he appears to be a bit close to politics, as he had been an advisor of the UK government, and he made some remarks which imply his close links with the UK government.



I had sat down at a row far in the back, with a lot of leg space as a walk way was going through there. I sat down quite low, being exhausted from the long days, and at a few instances I had slightly dozed off. Hope that I had not snored...!

In the evening there was the official opening of ESOF, with 8 welcome speeches, 3 of them in Spanish.



A stage performance of two artists working with bib bubbles completed the evening.

CIRCLE Conference - 2nd day

My talk is at 9:00. There are about 9 attendees, the rest must be in the other two parallel sessions. I meet another colleague from Leeds Met: she is working on technology-enhanced learning and is glad that a few more technology-oriented people attend this conference. We agree to have a meeting next week at Leeds Met, to discuss some joint projects. My talk goes well, the introduction to Web 2.0 is positively received. There are a few more talks this morning which deal with the application of technology in various areas of eGovernment, Market Research, Marketing, etc.

A few participants have to leave already, but I stay for the whole duration into the afternoon. It is a great opportunity to learn about another field and to make contacts across disciplines.

At this conference, there were overall 70 papers, and 120 participants, as we learn at the concluding session. Next year, CIRCLE will be in Dornbirn, Vorarlberg. It seems that the topics of this conference are quite relevant to some of the PhD students from the Danube-University Krems – I will inform them about this event; maybe a few could publish papers then.



In the evening, there is another joint event: the bus drives to the coastal city of Larnaca. We stop at the beach promenade with its palm trees and walk to the St. Lazarus Church, where the grave of St. Lazarus (died 90 A.D.) had been found in the 9th century. I did not ask how they were so sure it was really Lazarus – afterall, the Carbon-dating method had not yet been fully developed in the 9th century.



There is a prayer service in this Creek-Orthodox church, as our group slowly intrudes there, to step down into the crypt with the empty sacrophaguses.

We continue to the art cafe "1900" for a drink.

Then further on with the bus a short distance to the fish restaurant "Monte Carlo" where a generous fish meze is being served. Back at the hotel around midnight.

CIRCLE Conference - 1st day

The conference location is at the University of Nicosia, the former "Intercollege". The campus is about 5 km away from the city centre, and a bus transfer has been provided by the conference organisation. Unfortunately, only one bus goes in the morning to the conference and back in the evening. Since the public transportation in Nicosia appears to consist only of taxis (I have not seen a bus with line numbers on it yet), we would have to share a ride from the hotel to the conference location. At this first morning, the bus has been scheduled to depart before the breakfast is served – so most of us in the Centrum Hotel decided to skip the bus and leave after breakfast, sharing taxis – still enough time to arrive there before the first session starts.




The topic of the CIRCLE conference is "Consumer Behavior and Retailing Research". This is a bit off my own research interest, but I can contribute with a technology perspective: my talk on Friday will be about "Marketing in Web 2.0". The conference is organised in 3 parallel tracks, so it is not possible to attend all talks. The quality of the presentations varies from interesting student proposals to complete research studies.




In the evening, a tour is given through Nicosia. Well, we cover only a small part of the town: an area where "buildings have been reconstructed in the style of the 19th century". Unfortunately we no not see any of the really remarkable buildings, but we get a detailed explanation of the parking lots and the soccer/football places around the old city wall. We enter a bistro for a drink, then the bus continues to a village south of Nicosia, for an evening Meze with lots of meat and wine. A "show" is performed: dancers pretending to be part of the customers, begin to dance to the music and invite the guest to join in. It is possible that somewhere on Flickr/YouTube some pictures of me might appear...

After returning to the hotel around midnight, it is time to think about my presentation the next day: well, I just have to add to my existing set of slides (two: title page with my name, and an empty conclusions slide) a few more. Am done after midnight at 1:30.

Conference Inauguration

At the University of Nicosia, the former Intercollege, the conference is opened by the conference chair Prof. Ruediger Kaufmann from U. Nicosia. The Cyprus Finance Minister gives a speech, followed by a very inspiring keynote given by Prof. Leo Paul Dana (New Zealand). The official program concludes with a Cypriot dance group performance. The evening concludes with a wine tasting and a few finger food snack items. Unfortunately there is no Wifi at the conference site, so I can access my email only later in the evening back in the hotel.

PhD Seminar

The main reason why Claudio has invited me to this conference was the participation in the newly launched European PhD supervision program. In the afternoon a seminar is held for those PhD students. I learn that this collaboration with Austrian Universities actually pre-dates the collaboration with Krems DUK!

In London at conference/workshop: GCCR 2008

A while ago, my colleague Prof. Colin Pattinson had alerted me to a workshop in London: about a workshop about a "Grand Challenge for Computing Research" with the topic Bringing the history to life for the citizen, organised by Prof. David Arnold from U. Brighton.

So today I got up early in the morning (4:45), then took the 6:05 train to London Kings Cross. Arrived at 8:30 on time. In the train there was free WiFi - for everyone, not just for 1st class! Great - I immediately tried out the GPS on my new mobile phone and used GpsGate to upload the data to a server. Worked excellent: satellites to mobile, mobile to WiFi, WiFi to server, server, back to WiFi, to my laptop computer where my position was then shown on a map. Works really great! I will setup our own CT server soon to have this functionality.

At the workshop there were only 7 participants. I gave a 15 min overview about Colin's and my view of this challenge. Very interesting - I enjoyed this topic and look forward to contribute something to it!

From 17:45-19:30 the main GCCR08 began with a series of short intros about 8 of the Grand Challenges. Very interesting - but I had been up since very early in the morning, and had to fight my head from falling to the sides.

Afterwards there was a posh dinner. The venue for this event was the Royal Society a few blocks away from the venue of the workshop at the British Computing Society (BCS).

Paper submitted to CIRCLE Conference

This weekend the major activity was in preparing a paper for the CIRCLE conference. I had submitted an abstract earlier, which had been accepted ("Marketing in Web 2.0"), and the due date for the camera-ready paper was this Saturday - so I thought. When I checked again the website, I realised that the due date had been already Wednesday, 5.3. - so I was already late. Well, I finished the paper yesterday night and sent it off, despite some distractions from the tech front which I came across while preparing the final paper version and checking some references.

About the HCI Conference Series

This was the first time I attended this event. In 1999 my colleague Sundar from RSC had participated in the HCI while it was held in Munich - we had a joint paper then. In 2001 my colleague Joshua McGee presented our joint paper at the HCI conference in Geneva. In 2003 I had submitted a paper, but due to a short-term arranged at my employer at that time, I was not able to travel - what a pity! And now in 2007, this was the first time for me to attend this conference. Its positive side is at the same time also its negative side: the vast array of topics makes it possible to get a great overview of current trends and developments in the whole Human-Computer Interaction area, from automated system intelligence to user ergonomics. This also means that a participant can only attend a fraction of presentations, which is unfortunate as there are plenty of interesting talks and topics. The relatively benign review process also means that papers of a lower quality are accepted.

Overall, I think that the approach of the conference organisers is right: being inclusive and making this conference to a networking event, where the whole HCI community is welcomed. This allows to get contacts to many different experts and learn about the many different aspects of current HCI research.

HCI Conference: My "Main" Presentation

My own session is the first one in the morning. I had been asked by the conference organizers to chair this session "Gesture Recognition" - not sure why me and not anybody else from that conference. Yesterday I had already checked where this session room is: 2-F, on the 1st floor (= ground floor, they use here the US system for naming floors). Since there are 24 parallel sessions, some of those larger exhibition halls in the convention centre have been subdivided into smaller rooms. I have a map from the conference booklet, but the way down seems weird: one staircase seems to lead to a dead end, so I go back and take the main stairs. From there, a sign points through a dark dungenous hall, with damaged floor and very little lighting, to that other subdivided exhibition hall.

The entrance to the room 2-F seems to be the furthest away from everything; I hope that not too many would be discouraged by the strange location of this room and the early time of the session.

But at 8 am about 15 people actually attend this session. Just to be on the safe side I try my laptop on the projector - and the image is shifted. What the hell? This never had happened. I try to get tech support, there is one of the conference assistants sitting around the corner. When she comes into the room, someone had already fixed this, and the first presenter could give his talk. So I assumed that the fault was with the projector - the laptops would have to be set to 800x600, I was told. When I as the 2nd presenter connected my laptop again, with the new resolutions settings, the same thing happened again: only the left half of my slides was visible. So I quickly changed the order of the session, accepted the offer of a memory stick from that friendly conference attendee, put my presentation there, and presented as the 3rd presenter on the laptop computer which had been provided by the conference. This worked ok. (Note to myself: next time prepare memory stick with presentation, just in case).

Interesting talks in my session, about gestures and multimodal interaction.
In the following break I visited the exhibition room. Tobii showed their eye tracking system, also another company (Seeing Machines) showed their individual setup of stereo eye tracking. One company from Austria, g-tec, showed a system for controlling a computer through the brain, by measuring voltages around the head.


I met a former colleague of mine: Prof. Axel Schulte, now a chair of the department at UniBw Munich where we both had worked for our PhD in the early 1990s. A nice opportunity to catch up after so many years.

First day at HCI Conference

This HCI conference is huge. This has the advantage to be able to get in contact with many people in the field. Of course, this also has the disadvantage that one cannot attend all of the many parallel sessions. There are usually 24 parallel sessions - full of interesting talks. I guess, I will have to study the DVD with all the papers later, to get the most out of this conference. Unfortunately I did not bring a DVD reader with me - is not built-in in my light laptop. The morning sessions included topics of interfaces, AR/VR, human-robot interaction, and many other related issues or ergonomics and human factors.

There were also several exhibitors: Tobii showed their eye tracker, a few companies showed some demos of automatic interaction through face tracking, and several publishers displayed their current program. In the foyer there were 370 posters - some of the poster wall, howerver, were empty, due to the presenters not being present.

One of the afternoon sessions was chaired by my friend Marc Fabri, about "Emotions in HCI". Interesting perspectives and investigations. Also Marc himself gave a talk about his PhD work on emotional avatars. One software glitch: the laptop just displayed the avatar head - no GUI of the messenger app showed up. Looked still quite nice, these two heads just nodding around on the desktop - there must be an application for this!

The last session this day was chaired by Prof. Andreas Holzinger, about Future Interfaces in Technology-Enhanced Learning. Quite a relevant topic, also considering our Leeds Met focus on eLearning. I gave there the 2nd talk: it had actually been prepared by my student Johannes Christian, but he was unable to attend the conference. The session went well, everybody kept their 15 min time - Andreas made sure that the session ended in time, as he had to go on to a board meeting right after the session.