Call for Participation: ITSIGUI 2019

Innovation in Tourism Systems, Intelligent Gamification and User Interaction ( ITSIGUI 2019 )

Las Palmas de Gran Ganaria – Spain, October 1 – 2, 2019

Topics, Deadlines and Program Committee

1. Topics

New spaces are emerging for constructive reflection in the context of social and technological research fostered by the rise of the democratization of access to online information in the process of convergence of the different disciplines of human knowledge.The present conference is one example of them.

In this event we pay special attention to multimedia mobile communication that has made the possibility available to millions of users to instantly access information related to tourism and its main components, such as the cultural and natural heritage, among others, of thousands of places, scattered far and wide, of our planet.

In addition, the uninterrupted progress of the new technologies and the tourism industry require intercultural content that intelligently adapts to the potential recipients and generators of positive trends in social networks.

In this creative stage, education has a priority role, as it continues to be one of the mainstays of culturally developed communities, as evidenced by recent history, together with the evolution of civilizations, regardless of temporal and spatial space.

In our days, educational creativity finds in gamification a learning technique that continues with the precepts formulated in the 20th century with learning by playing. In this sense, gamification, understood as a mechanics of games in the educational-professional field, opens new fields for study and research to achieve better results, together with the requirements of users of intelligent interactive systems in the new millennium.

Therefore, this is an ideal environment for all people who want to present the results obtained in the application of software and hardware, in a thriving and progressive triad, such as the tourism industry, gamification applied to education, and the design of interactive contents for end users of the latest generation of multimedia systems, intelligent or not. The main areas of the conference are listed below.

Finally, the main topics that have been listed do not mean a limitation to present other topics, which can enrich and enhance the current vision. As well as the possible new horizons that can be opened for the future in the short, medium and long term.

Many conferences are focussed on specific aspects of tourism, gamification, learning, computer science, interfaces, user experiences, artificial intelligence, etc. and bring together leading experts in a particular field or sometimes on a specific technology. At such large conferences students are often marginalized or relegated to poster sessions. Our workshops, symposia, etc., are not a big scale and aim to promote dialogue between established professors and graduate students working on new directions. Hence topics from the whole range of artificial intelligence, big data, communicability, computer science, cultural heritage attraction, database and business intelligence, ecotourism, gamification design, human-computer interaction, information retrieval and data mining, learning analytics, ludification, machine learning, marine and coastal areas tourism, mobile computing, new technologies, serious games, software quality, tourism industry, etc. are welcomed. Last year’s workshops, symposia, etc., organized by ALAIPO and AInCI, for instance, included papers, research-in-progress, etc., on the topics (see below the alphabetical order).

All contributions –papers, research-in-progress, workshops, demos, posters and doctoral consortium, should be of high quality, originality, clarity, significance and impact. In the current international conference it is demonstrated how with a correct integration among professionals of formal and factual sciences interesting research lines in the following subjects: Augmented Reality, Big Data and Gamification, City Tourism, Communicablity, Computer Graphics, Design, Education, Entertainment Computing and Edutainment, Game-Based Learning, ICT, Interfaces, Methodologies, Multimedia Systems, Preservation of Cultural Heritage, Rural Tourism, Software Engineering, Tourism and Technology, User Studies, UX, and other computational areas are solicited on, but not limited to (alphabetical order):

Computer Science and Tourism

:: Climate Change and Tourism Impact
:: Computer Science for Cultural and Natural Heritage, Travel and Tourism
:: Data Science, Analysis and Computational Thinking
:: Database and Business Development
:: Digital and Social Market for Real and Virtual Tourists
:: Ecotourism
:: e-Tourism
:: Industrial Tourism: ICT Management and Development
:: Informatics for the Preservation of Cultural and Natural Heritage
:: Information Retrieval and Data Mining
:: Revenue Management
:: Web Design: Tourism Strategies

Intelligent Gamification

:: Games and Computer Graphics
:: Gamification in the Cloud
:: Intelligent Systems and Gamification as a Service
:: Interactive Narrative and Digital Storytelling 
:: New Media and Games
:: Pedagogical Principles of Gamification
:: Pervasive/Ubiquitous Gaming
:: Player Behavior Modelling 
:: Serious Games User Assessment 
:: Video Game Design and Development

User Interaction

:: Assessing Personal Abilities through Mobile Multimedia Systems
:: Design for Multimodal Interaction
:: Emotions and Affective Interaction 
:: Human-Computer Interaction: History, Technologies and Trends
:: Immersiveness, Multimedia and Virtual User Experiences
:: Interaction in Augmented Reality and Internet of Things
:: Interactive Narrative and Digital Storytelling
:: Natural and Adaptive User Interfaces
:: Social Computing and User Behaviour
:: UX and Interactive Systems: Learning, Entertainment and Realism

All submitted papers will be reviewed by a double-blind (at least three reviewers), non-blind, and participative peer review. These three kinds of review will support the selection process of those that will be accepted for their presentation at the international conference.  Authors of accepted papers who registered in the conference can have access to the evaluations and possible feedback provided by the reviewers who recommended the acceptance of their papers, so they can accordingly improve the final version of their papers.

Best regards, 

Francisco V. Cipolla Ficarra (Chair – coordinator)
&
Pamela Fulton and Doris Edison (International Secretariat)


ALAIPO: Asociación Latina Interacción Persona-Ordenador –Latin Association of HCI (www.alaipo.com) and AINCI: Asociación Internacional de la Comunicación Interactiva –International Association of Interactive Communication (www.ainci.com). Address: Via Tabajani 1, S. 15 (7) – 24121 (Bergamo) Italy :: c/ Angel Baixeras, 5 – AP 1638 – 08080 (Barcelona), Spain. Email: info@alaipo.com :: info@ainci.com


P.S. If you wish to be removed from this mailing list, please send an email to info@ainci.com or info@alaipo.com with “remove” in the subject line. Thanks.     

2. The conference have the following deadlines

Works Submissions: Open. Consequently, as they are received, they will be evaluated. It is a way to speed up the process to make up the final program of the international conference, visa requirements, should plan travel well in advance, etc. In other words, it is not necessary to wait until the deadline to send them for the evaluation process. 

Deadline Works Submissions: August, 27th
Authors Notification: Two weeks after the submission/s 
Camera-ready, full papers: September, 28th 
International Conference: October, 1 – 2 

Call for Participation: ESIHISE 2019

Evolution of the Sciences, Informatics, Human Integration and 
Scientific Education
( ESIHISE 2019 )

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria – Spain
October 3 – 5, 2019

Introduction and Topics, Deadlines and Program Committee

1. Introduction and Topics

The modernization of the sciences and education is and will be one of the cornerstones for all the inhabitants of our planet. Those who from the 1980 have been behind this issue have been direct and indirect witnesses of great breakthroughs and some recoils. These ups and downs are due to exogenous or endogenous factors, to the daily reality of the formal and factual sciences. Many of those factors are beyond the control of all those scientists and professors, who, in a modest and honest way, collaborate in the development of the quality of life of all humankind.

An evolution or revolution which dilutes narrows the digital divide (i.e. between users with a paid access to non-original multimedia content through a set of ultra-modern mobile devices; and users with a free access to creative multimedia content through a set of the classical non-mobile devices) among the human beings whose theoretical and practical research focuses on the cornerstones of the current population pyramid, as well as for the future generations oriented at the use of the latest interactive technologies in the communicability and quantic-nanotechnological-self-sufficient era.

This is an era in which the universities, for example, have focused on accelerating the statistic numbers of degrees issued in relation to the registered students or the spot they take in the listing of the best colleges within and without their borders. In this regard there have been a myriad measurement tables with different qualitative parameters sometimes contradictory with each other if one considers the whole global village described by McLuhan. This phenomenon is an exported fashion to the most remote corners of the planet, where the educational and scientific priorities, obviously, are totally different from the wild quantification of knowledge.

If this tendency of scientific and educational knowledge is established, it is important to ask some rhetoric questions such as:

  • Why in many industrialized countries are there so many university professionals in view of the high unemployment rates in situ?
  • What is the financial cost for the original communities of turning their nuclear specialists, engineers, industrialists, mathematicians, etc., in teacher for interface design, human-computer interaction, cognitive science, tourism, journalism, business administration; or their graduates in audiovisual, architecture, computer programmer, physics, mathematics, to mention a few examples, in experts of invalidity or autism; or the graduates in fine arts, literature, etc., in pedagogues for robotics, electronics, medicine and marketing, among others?
  • How can it be achieved that the previous asymmetries and theoretical and practical detractions, whether it is in the training or workplace stage, not only do not have room, but are boosted in the new millennium, under the alleged supervision of the educational and scientific authorities?
  • Who really controls the trends in the market of supply and demand in the local and global education university?
  • Are there mechanisms to detect the creation of educational and scientific models alien to the reality in which the different nations are immersed?

This tiny set of questions, whether it is in a latent or manifest way, shows us the behaviour of millions of people daily. Questions that should be enlarged as we talk about the modernization of the sciences and education, as a kind of infinite semiosis, not only to grasp the current state, but also with a sight intent on the short, middle and long term for the scientific education of the future generations.

The current international conference is intended to be an open space for the interchange of original ideas, valid theories, innovating experiences, results obtained, learned lessons and future research works, in the educational, scientific and industrial field. The exchange of knowledge, training, research and development in this triad encounter the following main and secondary issues, which are listed as follows.

All contributions –papers, workshops, demos, research-in-progress, posters, doctoral consortium, etc., should be of high quality, originality, clarity, significance and impact. In the current international conference it is demonstrated how with a correct integration among professionals of formal and factual sciences interesting research lines in the following subjects and other main areas are solicited on, but not limited to (alphabetical order):

:: Modernization of the Sciences and Education

• Educational Research
• Engineering Education
• Epistemology
• Fields of Science Education
• Formal and Factual Sciences
• Human and Social Factors
• Informal Science Education
• New Challenges in Formal Education
• Scientific Method 
• Scientific Modelling

:: Science of Information and Computer Information Systems

• e-Science
• Human-Computer Interaction: Past, Present and Future 
• Information and Communication Technology
• Interactive Systems: Design, Communicability and Evaluation 
• Knowledge Visualization
• Smart Environments 
• Social Computing

:: People, Science and New Technology

• Cultural Systems, Employment and Human Integration
• Diffussion of Innovation
• History of Science
• Knowledge Transfer
• Open Science
• Research and Technological Development
• Science 2.0
• Scientific Publications

Many conferences are focussed on specific aspects of education, computer science, humanistics studies, multidisciplinary approaches, etc. At such large conferences students are often marginalized or relegated to poster sessions, for instance. The ALAIPO and AInCI conferences, workshops, symposiums, etc., are not a very big scale and aim to promote dialogue between established professors and graduate students working on new directions. Hence topics from the whole range of modernization of the sciences and education, research and development, knowledge transfer, computer information systems, new challenges in university/tertary education, human and social factors, democratization of the scientific information and the new technologies, original and creative contents for scientific learning, among others are welcomed. Last year’s symposiums, workshops, conferences, etc., organized by ALAIPO and AInCI, for instance, included papers on the topics. An extensive listing connotes and reflects the requirement and also skill necessary to find intersection zones of the disciplines among the different domains, fields, and specialities; which at the same time potentially boosts and merges the formerly different scientific views.

Finally, all submitted research works will be reviewed by a double-blind (at least three reviewers), non-blind, and participative peer review. These three kinds of review will support the selection process of those that will be accepted for their presentation at the international conference.  Authors of accepted research works who registered in the conference can have access to the evaluations and possible feedback provided by the reviewers who recommended the acceptance of their contributions, so they can accordingly improve the final version of their research works.

Best regards, 

Francisco V. Cipolla Ficarra (Chair – coordinator)
&
Doris Edison and Pamela Fulton (International Secretariat)


ALAIPO: Asociación Latina Interacción Persona-Ordenador –Latin Association of HCI (www.alaipo.com) and AINCI: Asociación Internacional de la Comunicación Interactiva –International Association of Interactive Communication (www.ainci.com). Address: Via Tabajani, S. 15 (7) – 24121 (Bergamo) Italy :: c/ Angel Baixeras, 5 – AP 1638 – 08080 (Barcelona), Spain. Email: info@alaipo.com :: info@ainci.com

2. The events have the following deadlines:

Works Submissions: Open. Consequently, as they are received, they will be evaluated. It is a way to speed up the process to make up the final program of the Conference. In other words, it is not necessary to wait until the deadline to send them for the evaluation.
Deadline Submissions: August, 27th 
Authors Notification: Two weeks after the submission/s 
Camera-ready, full papers: September, 28th 

Call for Participation: RDINIDR 2019

Fifth International Conference on Research and Development in Imaging, Nanotechnology, Industrial Design and Robotics ( RDINIDR 2019 )

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria – Spain
October 7 – 9, 2019

Introduction and Topics, Deadlines and Program Committee

1. Introduction and Topics

In the last years, a myriad of notions stemming from the sciences have been used in an incorrect way for mercantilist purposes. We have an example in the wide context of the user experience design, human-robot interaction, human-computer interaction, human-computer communication, human-computer interfaces, etc. with the notion of interdisciplinarity when in fact there are cases in which we should speak of transdisciplinarity or multidisciplinarity. Evidently three notions which are not synonymous between themselves. However, where the economic factor prevails over the scientific knowledge, all of this is possible.

This vision and/or modus operandi which is lax, consents or tolerates a set of errors in the formal and factual sciences which may seriously affect the future of computer science, robotics, the interfaces and the users of the future interactive systems and the hardware. This is one of the reasons why we have decided to carry out this conference on a yearly basis. It is a meeting for the exchange of knowledge and experiences tending to draw reliable lines of research and of constant work for the immediate future, as well as in the mid and long term.

The changes in the economically developed societies, allow to see how at a vertiginous speed the sector of the latest technologies, particularly where computer science, electronics, mechanics and telecommunications converge, are generating new professions for the current and future workers of that working environment. Now that working place (r)evolution will entail that many professions in the sector of services of those new technologies are going to disappear. Others will go into a continuous process of transformation or metamorphosis.

This process will give rise to the need to count on new professionals for the following areas: drones which will work in the field of the audio-visual , safety, etc.; the computer, electronics and robotics experts for the creation and maintenance, whether of humanoid automats, and/or intelligent machinery; telemarketers online for long distance education or healthcare; analysts in communicability to determine the degree of reliability of the online information for the private corporations and industries, government bodies, etc.; designers, programmers and software implementers oriented at the Apps, tablets, smartphones, drones, 3D printers, computer graphics, computer animation, etc. They are new professions, where the digital aspect of information will totally prevail over the analogue.

In the face of this new process of great current and coming changes, where will be produced not only unions and intersections of knowledge, to give rise to new areas of knowledge, it is necessary to reflect on the philosophy of science, computer science and all its derivations, artificial intelligence, robotics, software quality, communicability, avant-garde design, creativity, art, beauty, innovation in materials and nanotechnology, quantum computers, etc. Next are shown the main groups into which the acceptance of research works in their diverse formats is divided, without excluding other issues, which the authors will consider fit to introduce in the current conference.

All contributions –papers, demos, research-in-progress, posters, doctoral consortium, and workshops should be of high quality, originality, clarity, significance and impact. In the current international conference it is demonstrated how with a correct integration among professionals of formal and factual sciences interesting research lines in the following subjects and other main areas are solicited on, but not limited to (alphabetical order):

:: Imaging

• Computational Creativity
• Infographics
• Machine Vision
• Perceptual Psychology
• Stereo Imaging

:: Industrial Design

• 3D Printing
• Art Principles
• Computer Graphics 
• Ergonomics
• Philosophy of the Design

:: Nanotechnology

• Green Nanotechnology
• Nanoelectronic Devices
• Nanomaterials 
• Nanomedicine Applications
• Quantum Computing

:: Hardware and Computing Engineering

• Electrical Engineering and Hypermedia Mobile Systems
• Programming Languages and Components Innovative for Human Behavior in Robotics
• New Devices for Acquiring, Processing, Analyzing, and Understanding Images
• Supercomputing 
• Testing High-performance Computing Applications

:: Research and Development

• Cloud Computing
• Human-Computer/Robotics Communicability
• Mechatronics
• Philosophy of Science
• Scientific Visualization

:: Robotics

• Education and Training in Autonomous Robotics
• Evolutionary and Simulator Robotics
• Human-Robot Interaction 
• Open-Source Robotics
• Robots in Social Media

Many conferences are focussed on specific aspects of informatics, multimedia communication, education, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, etc., and bring together leading experts in a particular field or sometimes on a specific technology. At such large conferences students are often marginalized or relegated to poster sessions, for instance. The ALAIPO and AInCI conferences, workshops, symposiums, etc., are not a very big scale and aim to promote dialogue between established professors and graduate students working on new directions. Hence topics from the whole range of human-robot interaction, recent advances in software and hardware, industrial design, creativity, Sprout’s technology, research develpments in nanotechnology, etc. are welcomed. Last year’s symposiums, workshops, conferences, etc., organized by ALAIPO and AInCI, for instance, included papers on the topics. An extensive listing connotes and reflects the requirement and also skill necessary to find intersection zones of the disciplines among the different domains, fields, and specialities; which at the same time potentially boosts and merges the formerly different scientific views.

Finally, all submitted research works will be reviewed by a double-blind (at least three reviewers), non-blind, and participative peer review. These three kinds of review will support the selection process of those that will be accepted for their presentation at the international conference.  Authors of accepted research works who registered in the conference can have access to the evaluations and possible feedback provided by the reviewers who recommended the acceptance of their contributions, so they can accordingly improve the final version of their research works.

Best regards, 

Francisco V. Cipolla Ficarra (Chair – coordinator)
&
Pamela Fulton and Doris Edison (International Secretariat)


ALAIPO: Asociación Latina Interacción Persona-Ordenador –Latin Association of HCI (www.alaipo.com) and AINCI: Asociación Internacional de la Comunicación Interactiva –International Association of Interactive Communication (www.ainci.com). Address: Via Tabajani, S. 15 (7) – 24121 (Bergamo) Italy :: c/ Angel Baixeras, 5 – AP 1638 – 08080 (Barcelona), Spain. Email: info@alaipo.com :: info@ainci.com

2. The events have the following deadlines

Works Submissions: Open. Consequently, as they are received, they will be evaluated. It is a way to speed up the process to make up the final program of the Conference. In other words, it is not necessary to wait until the deadline to send them for the evaluation.
Deadline Submissions: August, 27th.
Authors Notification: CTwo weeks after submission/s.. 
Camera-ready, full papers: September, 28th.

Conference: October 7  9, 2019  

Call for Participation: ADNTIIC 2019

Tenth International Conference on Advances in New Technologies, Interactive Interfaces and Communicability ( ADNTIIC 2019 )

Design, E-commerce, E-learning, E-health, E-tourism, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0

Córdoba – Argentina
November 13 – 16, 2019

Introduction and Topics, Deadlines and Program Committee

1. Introduction and Topics

The user interface is the environment par excellence where the latest breakthroughs in the formal and factual sciences converge. In the design of the current and future interactive systems, the presentation of the content on the screen is the key to the success of the rest of the components which make up an avant-garde computer science structure.

The year 2010 opens an interesting decade in which to consolidate communicability, especially with the constant (r)evolution of the interfaces of the interactive systems. Right now we are starting to see the first results of the intersection of scientific knowledge to increase the quality of telecommunications in the daily life of millions of users. However, the interactive systems will keep on programming from the point of view of design of the interfaces, using the last advances in the software and the constant progress of the hardware. A democratization of the future models in human-computer interaction will ease the interaction in the environments of immersive multimedia oriented towards education, health, work and leisure time.

The current era of interactive communication makes us reflect and work daily to meet the needs of the societies to which we belong, and tends to improve the quality of life of each one of its members. In this environment the new technologies can and must be within reach of everyone. A state of the art will be the starting point of the works until reaching the future technological tendencies born from the interaction between the human being, the constant technological (r)evolution and the environment. This is a place where the intersection of knowledge deriving from the formal and factual sciences can enrich in a masterful way each one of the research projects presented and related to the last generation interactive systems online and off-line.

The (r)evolution of the net must allow the human being to take a steady flight towards new horizons where the technological breakthroughs are shared by the base of the pyramid –the general public, in the least possible time. Important steps have been taken in that direction in the last years thanks to the globalization of telecommunications and social networks. However, the costs stemming from the free access to digital information and/or the legislations in force, prevent even today that flight in many societies to millions of potential users of multimedia interactive systems. In the current scientific environment we intend to build a bridge of solutions to eradicate problems, suggesting innovating solutions and future guidelines of action thanks to the lessons learned with the research works we have made or that are currently in progress.

Many conferences are focussed on specific aspects of computer science, multimedia, education, artificial intelligence, computer vision, etc., and bring together leading experts in a particular field or sometimes on a specific technology. At such large conferences students are often marginalized or relegated to poster sessions, for instance. The conferences, workshops, symposiums, courses, etc., are not a very big scale and aim to promote dialogue between established professors and graduate students working on new directions. Hence topics from the whole range of human-computer interaction, multimedia, software, design, etc. are welcomed. Last year’s symposiums, workshops, conferences, etc., organized by ALAIPO and AInCI, for instance, included papers on the topics (see below the alphabetical order). An extensive listing connotes and reflects the requirement and also skill necessary to find intersection zones of the disciplines among the different domains, fields, and specialities; which at the same time potentially boosts and merges the formerly different scientific views (see below, we have only some main areas).

All contributions –papers, workshops, demos, research-in-progress, posters and doctoral consortium, should be of high quality, originality, clarity, significance and impact. In the current international conference it is demonstrated how with a correct integration among professionals of formal and factual sciences interesting research lines in the following subjects Advances in New Technologies, Interactive Interfaces and Communicability and other computational main areas are solicited on, but not limited to (alphabetical order):

:: Communicability and Design

• Aesthetic and Creative Design 
• Auditory Contents for Interactive Systems 
• Cognitive Modeling 
• Communicability in Multimedia and Hypermedia Systems Online and Off-line 
• Interactive Design and Semiotics 
• Practices and Aproaches of Visualization Design 
• User Experience Design

:: E-commerce

• Benchmarking
• Customer Centricity and E-branding 
• Globalization and New e-Business and e-Marketing Strategies
• m-Commerce and Pervasive Computing
• Security Models for m-Payment Systems 
• Virtual Community and Business Development

:: E-learning

• Collaborative Learning
• Dynamics and Statics Media for Education
• Innovative Uses of Technology for Learning and Teaching 
• Intelligent Agents and Multiagent Models
• Pedagogical Tools for Supporting Learning Environments 
• Mobile Learning Environments and Applications 
• Video Games for Learning

:: E-health

• Bioengineering
• Experimental Services in Specialist Care, Telerehabilitation and Remote Surgery
• Image Processing and Computer and/or Robot Vision
• Medical Informatics and Wearable Devices
• Scientific Visualization
• Stereoscopic and Digital Photography
• Telenursing and Health Monitoring

:: E-tourism

• Augmented/Mixed Reality for New Media Art 
• Communications Strategies for Increase the Tourism Market
• Cultural Heritage and Eco-Museum 
• Effective Models and Technologies for Virtual Tours
• Emerging Visitor Attractions and Innovations Trends in ICT 
• Resarch and Development for Tourism and Virtual Museum 
• Travel Technology and Multimedia Mobile Systems

:: Interactive Interfaces

• Advances in Human-Computer Interface
• Brain-Computer Interface
• Computer Graphics and Computer Animation
• Human-Robot Interaction
• Interfaces and Languages 
• Mobile Augmented Reality Applications
• Novel Tangible User Interfaces

:: Digital Information and New Media

• Architecture Documentation
• Digital Cartography, Geo-Spatial Visualization and GIS Aplications 
• Digital Sound
• Future Challenges for Information Retrieval
• Journalism On-line: Discursive Analysis
• Media, Information and Documentation 
• Veracity and Credibility in Interactive Information

:: Software and Systems Engineering

• Open Source Software and Applications
• Programming Languages and Techniques
• Security Management of Emerging Networks and Services
• Social and Human Factors in Software and Systems Engineeriing
• Software Quality: Measurement and Metrics
• Telecommunications and Information Privacity
• Usability and Heuristic Assessment

:: Web 2.0 and Web 3.0

• Big Data
• Cloud Computing
• Databases Technologies for Data Mining
• E-entertainment 
• E-government
• E-job
• Smart Cities
• Ubiquitous Web

All submitted research works will be reviewed by a double-blind (at least three reviewers), non-blind, and participative peer review. These three kinds of review will support the selection process of those that will be accepted for their presentation at the international conference.  Authors of accepted papers who registered in the conference can have access to the evaluations and possible feedback provided by the reviewers who recommended the acceptance of their papers, so they can accordingly improve the final version of their papers.

Best regards, 

Francisco V. Cipolla Ficarra (Chair – coordinator)
&
Pamela Fulton, Doris Edison and Luisa Varela (International Secretariat)


ALAIPO: Asociación Latina Interacción Persona-Ordenador –Latin Association of HCI (www.alaipo.com) and AINCI: Asociación Internacional de la Comunicación Interactiva –International Association of Interactive Communication (www.ainci.com). Address: Via Tabajani, S. 15 (7) – 24121 (Bergamo) Italy :: c/ Angel Baixeras, 5 – AP 1638 – 08080 (Barcelona), Spain. Email: info@alaipo.com :: info@ainci.com

2. The events have the following deadlines

Works submissions: Open. Consequently, as they are received, they will be evaluated. It is a way to speed up the process to make up the final program of the international conference, visa requirements, should plan travel well in advance, etc. In other words, it is not necessary to wait until the deadline to send them for the evaluation process. 

Deadline Works Submissions: September, 30th – local time in Hawaiian Islands
Authors Notification: Two weeks after the submission/s 
Camera-ready, full papers: October, 20th 

Conference: November, 13 – 16.


Computer Graphics Pioneers Score Second Technical Oscar for  Industry Standard Visual Effects

Computer Graphics Pioneers Score Second Technical Oscar for Industry Standard Visual Effects

written by Melanie A. Farmer

Pixar is synonymous with innovative computer animation, revolutionizing an industry that has brought moviegoers such hits as Toy Story, Cars and A Bug’s Life, films that have all received accolades for their breakthrough digital artistry just as much as their entertainment value. This awards season, Pixar cofounder Edwin Catmull and SIGGRAPH members and computer graphics pioneers, Tony DeRose and Jos Stam, have won a Scientific and Engineering Academy Award, for creating and expanding the fundamental mathematics behind the breakthrough graphics used in many of these popular animated films, and more. The methodology they’ve pioneered is now an industry standard for achieving strikingly realistic images on the big screen.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presented the trio with plaques at the Feb. 9, 2019, awards ceremony held at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. They were honored for their “pioneering advancement of the underlying science of subdivision surfaces as 3D geometric modeling primitives,” and the Academy noted that their advancements has helped “transform the way digital artists represent 3D geometry throughout the motion picture industry.”

Courtesy of Pixar, Geri’s Game

This marked the second time the three awardees were recognized for subdivision surfaces. In 2006, the Academy honored their work with a Technical Achievement certificate. Indeed, their advancements in subdivision surfaces is quite a feat, one that has been fine-tuned and developed for more than 40 years.

Subdivision surfaces enables digital artists to automate the technique of smoothing out surfaces, and as a result achieve highly realistic replications of physical objects in film. The examples of surfaces are endless—from human faces and skin, to clothing, table tops, and car bodies.

While Catmull is credited in the field for the first proof of subdivision surfaces, throughout the decades, DeRose, senior scientist emeritus at Pixar, and Stam, a graphics researcher at NVIDIA, have worked on advancing and improving subdivision surfaces, directly contributing to the success of the technique used in film today.

Stam’s expertise is in the simulation of natural physical phenomena for 3D computer animation and in simulation of fluids and gases. In fact, this is his third Academy Award win, having scored a Sci-Tech award in 2008 for the design and implementation of the Maya Fluid Effects system, a widely used technology for realistically simulating and rendering fluid motion. In 2005, he also was awarded the prestigious SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement award, given to members for exemplary contributions to the field of computer graphics.

In the subdivision surfaces work, Stam is credited for essentially making the technique more accessible for artists. He devised mapping methodology that eliminated complex hardware limitations that had been challenging for digital artists in prior iterations of the system.

“Now established techniques could be used for subdivision surfaces,” said Stam. “Since subdivision surfaces can express a wider range of shapes this made them accessible to artists.”

As a teenager, Stam drew caricatures, painted, and even got into air brush painting. His love for art informed his research as a computer scientist. So, he not only thinks in ‘1s’ and ‘0s’, he also considers the artist in the equation.

“I like art and I like math. In a way, they are not that different,” he said. “They are two ways to express your creativity within given bounds. In art you must work with physical tools like brushes, chisels and the computer! In math, your reasoning must make sense within a formal framework. Somewhat paradoxically art and math result from a balance between boundaries and creativity.”

When DeRose first introduced the use of subdivision surfaces in computer animated film it was for Pixar’s earliest shorts, Geri’s Game. Of the experience, he said it would not have been a success had he not worked closely with the film’s artists.

“It was that tight interaction that led to a lot of the improvements that we are being recognized for. Without sitting with the artists and understanding what they really needed, we wouldn’t be here today,” he said.

In subdivision surfaces, DeRose is credited for adding flexibility to the method and for improving the overall usability of the technology. For instance, he and collaborators devised an artist-friendly way to pick and choose when and where to add more sharpness to smoothed out surfaces. He also worked on adding shading techniques. 

For DeRose, the Academy Award underscores just how far the field has come and celebrates the comprehensive mathematics that goes along with it. Still, countless math problems remain, and he is excited for what the future holds.

“New mathematics is being created all of the time,” said DeRose. “Some of the new mathematics being created is in response to problems that have come up in filmmaking and graphics. Yes, we’ve solved a lot in 30 years or so, but there are still a lot of problems to address, including coming up with principled ways to deal with the massive geometry as a result of the more and more realistic and grander effects we’ve been able to achieve. There’s a lot of data to approximate now.”

During his acceptance speech at the Feb. 9 ceremony, Catmull made a lighthearted reference to the past when he said that prior techniques for representing organic shapes and surfaces “really sucked,” and he knew then, when he first got into computer graphics, that this was the problem he wanted to solve.

“For me, this has been an incredible journey. I never could’ve predicted any of it,” he said. “It started 46 years ago with an idea. And sometimes it just takes a lot of really smart people working on it from different points of views, from different places, and a lot of patience, and if you do that, you can end up with something that works.”

Moviegoers may never know that complex geometry is behind some of the splashiest visual effects they’ve witnessed on the big screen, and frankly, that is the way computer scientists want it. 

“I am sometimes blown away by what the artists were able to achieve with our software,” said Stam. “It’s like being a brush oil paint maker and looking at a Rembrandt … In fact, it is a sign of a work well done if the technology is hidden completely from the viewer. No one wants to see the ‘grip man’ holding the mic in a movie shot.”