Aiming to develop a collaboration with Bernard Stiegler and to pursue the reflection on Web philosophy, Harry Halpin and Iri announced the project « PhiloWeb » (Programme FP7 Marie Curie n°275253) that has been recently recognized by the European Commission. This project, that will last 24 months, enables H. Halpin to join Iri to prepare a book designed to expose his research themes to a larger public.

This project follow Alexandre Monnin‘s work (Paris 1, Iri, Cnam) on Web philosophy (http://web-and-philosophy.org/) as much in his thesis as through the organization of international event such as PhiloWeb 2010 or, more recently, french-speaking like the Philosophie and Engineering, beside the IC 2011 conference of the AFIA board.

Alexandre Monnin also carries out interviews with researchers and engineers interested in those questions. Among them are Tim Berners-Lee, François Rastier, Bernard Stiegler, Bruno Bachimont, Manuel Zacklad, Eddie Soulier, Fabien Gandon, etc.
Interviews available here : http://www.dailymotion.com/PhiloWeb

Summary of the project :

After the success of the Web, and considering the structural changes it triggered, Web designers as well as researchers have to tackle a increasing number of difficulties which root is clearly philosophic. Among them, a lot of old issue are hiding under a new look (issue concerning knowledge, identity and language) at a time when unprecented issues are raised by the emergence of social Web and the Web of objects. In a world where technologies of information rule increasingly more, our nature as individuals changes insofar as our cognitive and social capacities outsource more and more. However, philosophers only start to link those technological stakes to the french philosophical tradition, that explores the origins of conceptual structures, and the analytical tradition strongly influenced by harshness. This project aims to be the start of a bigger project that will try to link those two traditions around a research object: the World Wide Web. A strictly pluridisciplinary approach is thus required. The final aim is to make this project concrete by writing a book provisionally named The Open World: A Philosophy of the Web.

The basic goal of this project is to exploit digital tools and practices to organize, conserve and diffuse corpuses and digitized resources from human and social science research, in order to permit:

•  The validation of research results

•  An electronic version as well as exchanges between professionals and amateurs

•  The conception and realization of multimedia digital productions

•  Cultural mediation in exhibitions and museums.

THE CONSORTIUM 2008 (support Adonis/Cnrs and MRT)

•  The Museum of Man (« Muséum national d’histoire naturelle », National Museum of natural history), coordinator,

•  The Museum of European Mediterranean Civilizations (Ministry of culture and communication: MCC),

•  The Eco-anthropology and Ethnobiology laboratory (CNRS / Museum / Univ. Paris VII),

•  The Ethnomusicology laboratory (CNRS / University Paris X / MCC),

•  The Linguistics laboratory MoDyCo (CNRS / University Paris X),

•  The Anthropology unit – biological and cultural adaptability (CNRS / University Médit.),

•  The LEDEN team (University Paris VIII / CNRS / MSH Paris North / MCC),

•  The Institute of Research and Innovation. THE PROJECT 2009 (with support from the MRT)

Implicated Teams

•  Institute of research and innovation, coordinator,

•  Center of research and ethnomusicology (CREM), LESC, UMR 7173,

•  Laboratory of Musical Acoustics (LAM), UMR 7190,

•  Phonothèque of the MMSH, Aix-en Provence, USR3125,

•  National Museum of Natural History (MNHN, département HNS),

•  Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilizations (MUCEM),

•  National Institute of Documentary Techniques (INTD),

•  National Museum of Arts and Crafts / Mission National,

•  Quai Branly Museum,

•  Federation of Ecomuseums and of Community Museums.

Initiated and supported by the ADONIS-CNRS and the MRT program (Mission of Recherche and Technologie from the Ministry of Culture and Communication), in 2008, the ANTHROPONET project conducted a first phase of technological watch, exploring techniques and establishing a « cahier des charges » of specifications for developing indexation tools, enrich collaboration and validate various research data. During the feasibility study, a task group was brought together in light of the necessity to respond, as a priority, to four specific research needs in the human and social sciences:

-  To allow researchers to rapidly index recorded materials while respecting the archiving norms and then ensure interoperability
-  To dispose of a powerful tool for the production and indexation of audio and video archives,
-  To enrich and annotate these temporal contents, in line with editorial valorization,
-  To access collaborative tools among researchers, but also help bring together museum mediators and the amateur public to exchange and enrich ideas.

In the 2nd phase, the project will allow:

-  Continuation of the prospective analysis and the technological watch, and expansion to new actors from the cultural world, especially museums (seminars and workshops)

-  Reduction of the field of study from the 1st phase to audiovisual documents (audio and video) from SHS research, and consider mainly the researcher’s activity.

- Using the « Telemeta » and « Lignes de temps » tools, to create « proof of concept » models with interested researchers.

AlloCiné wishes to propose the pioneer model based on the logic of gifting, but also on new forms of prescription based on social networks (real networks beyond such « social » tools as Facebook) to construct a platform offering a radically new form of movie offers. AlloCiné, with its million users per month, represents a unique base for experimentation in this field and thus allows us to deepen its status as a prescription pole in the domain of cinema.

The project focuses mainly on socioeconomic issues and, for this reason, is associated with AlloCiné, a social-media leader in the field of European cinema and distribution operator of VoD films from major operators, offering a multidisciplinary pool of highly complementary research:

Digital Life Lab team, from the Telecom Institute, specializes in sociology and the economy of digital medias, and will conduct fundamental research on what underlies the dynamics of gifting, the basis for the project. The results will have a direct impact on the conception or adaptation of the analysis of exchange and recommendation algorithms, and on the general design of the platform.

EOLE Laboratory at HEC-Paris, which focuses on the management of creative industries and new business models for the economy of digital media, will be in charge of models and economic simulations.

Lip6, which studies the engineering of knowledge and, in particular, the analysis and calculation of scores in social and content networks, will conduct research on the analysis underlying exchange and recommendation algorithms.

IRI develops its theoretical research on technologies of figures and amateurs, the ecology of attention and the technologies of contribution. IRI, in close collaboration with NoDesign and AlloCiné, will work on developing the visualization of exchange, personalization and commentary/enrichment interfaces.

NoDesign will produce usage scenarios with the Telecom Institute, as well as proposing designs for systems and platform supports and, more generally, for user material and the social environment.

This challenge has quickly been object to major innovations that are highly symbolic of Internet and TV networks’ latest mutations. There are many examples that are now famous like pictures search engines (Google, Bing), video search engines (Google, Orange’s VOD…). Thus, Youtube – true symbol of the american giant Google – has rapidly invested every Internet user’s life. However, even though these invention are major and innovative, the competition is still running. Indeed, these efforts mainly aimed to import ancient interaction modes that had been developed for text on new media and devices, by using innovation of the Web 2.0 (PHP, Ajax, Flash) and 3.0 (social networks). These interfaces enable for example to consult videos and pictures posted and tagged by others users, and this on several devices. Even if it is necessary, the migration of ancient interfaces isn’t enough: the true issue challenge is adapt to new types of files and to new technical advance in this field that are:

1) the highly plurimedia characteristic of documents on Internet (including text, image, video). It becomes increasingly less relevant to consider these media as independent within a document search engine;

2) The availability of new technologies of research by example, of classification and summary of multimedia files;

3) Adaptation to new devices that possess different interaction tools, beyond the usual mouse (remote controls, tactile commands…) and to customs linked to it (nomadism);

4) screens with variable resolution and size des écrans de taille et de résolution très variables (9cm et 480×320 for an iPhone to 132cm et 1920×1080 for LCD TVs, 30 cm et 1024×768 for an iPad).

But present interfacing tools (request and display) used by search engines are based on quite old systems that process media one by one. Concerning research, it is based on algorithms that try to find, in an indexed network, the string of a request. The use of such techniques is made necessary by constraints the search and index engine has to meet; something that becomes problematic insofar as it as to deal with huge amount of data. Concerning display, it consists in offering a well-ordered list of link toward aimed files, with for each link a description of the content of it (text extract, picture).

Such techniques don’t use all the knowledge on the networks, because it is scattered in highly heterogeneous and often unstructured sources. Moreover, they don’t take into account the characteristics of modern devices. Finally, they use only a limited part of technical advances in multimedia data processing. Despite the great research efforts of the community for data processing and indexation, that have achieved real success, the solutions that efficiently combine the recognition of new multimedia files and new display and research modes remain few. In their time, search engine such as Google or Yahoo built and framed the browsing and the document creation on Internet. New interaction modes will enable a better access to new media from new interfaces, and will allow the emergence of new types of websites and files highly multimedia and interactive.

In this context, PERIPLUS is a project of industrial research that deals with the major challenge that is browsing in digital metadata from mobile or fixes devices, specifically in the environment of e-journalism. This project plans to develop a synergy between ICST research, design, use and industrialists in order to offer several demonstrator that present innovative way to research, map, browse and interact, powered by new data processing technologies. The main aim of the project is to show the relevance and the feasibility of individual or collective use of tools for dynamic classification, multimedia summary generation, gestural interaction and browsing in a news corpus.

Recently, artistic criticism, and in particular theatrical studies, utilizes video to analyze and understand how the creative process evolves over time. This type of research necessitates a complete mechanism which Show On-line(s) attempts to establish: a low-cost methodology for recording and industrial audiovisual materials, appropriate methods for indexation and a flexible, open data model, as well as scientific, pedagogic and public tools for publishing, all in a context where the amateur public can aspire to new situations in confronting the works.

The project comprises four main objectives, in terms of interdisciplinarity in human and social sciences (Theater/Opera), and direct crossovers with the information sciences :

1. A research objective on mise-en-scène, starting from two fields of experience: Theater and Opera, with the goal of developing a methodology and tools focusing on a genetic analysis of the works based on video recordings. On the one hand, an improved transmission of knowledge, of skills, of different approaches, for improved comprehension, therefore improved critical judgement, of creation and the different elements with which it is constituted. On the other hand, an improved transmission of theater history, because for the first time, we will be able to offer scholars and future professionals a visual memory of theatrical work, and to nourish their capacity to innovate through knowledge of previous works.

2. An industrial objective for the conception and development of a simple, reliable tool for recording, indexation, analysis and publication of enriched archives.

3. A documentary and engineering objective, proposing an approach that predominantly uses the emerging standards of the semantic Web (ontology of tags/RDF) and of the audiovisual Web (W3C mediafragment/HTML5)

4. A social engineering and sociological analysis objective, developing, on the one hand, annotation strategies and collaborative analysis with the public and, on the other hand, studying the social dynamics linked to engaging amateurs directly with professional productions.

]]> http://www.iri.centrepompidou.fr/projets/a-traduire-en-en_us-spectacle-en-lignes/feed/ 0 http://www.iri.centrepompidou.fr/projets/a-traduire-en-en_us-etourisme/ http://www.iri.centrepompidou.fr/projets/a-traduire-en-en_us-etourisme/#comments Thu, 28 Feb 2013 16:37:31 +0000 Solal Attias http://www.iri.centrepompidou.fr/?p=6477 Innovative solutions in augmented reality on mobiles and tablets for patrimonial and cultural tourism.

The goal of this project is to develop an innovative French solution to « intelligent augmented reality » on mobile phones and tactile tablets (smart AR or smart hyper-reality), to offer visitors and tourists an enriched experience on French soil. These tools will allow a large variety of offers for tourists, to better guide them before, during and after their visit, to teach them, to entertain them, and to share their discoveries in a new way.

The project eTourisme is an important loan project (digitalizing and validating technologies with cultural, scientific and educational content).

The consortium at the origin of this project includes i-Marginal, the CEA-List, PME and start-ups, LTU technologies, DiotaSoft, XediX, research partners, i-Matériel.Lab (LivingLab), the Institut de Recherche et d’Innovation (IRI), the EPITA and institutional partners, AtoutFrance, the Centre Pompidou, La Cinémathèque Française, Issy Media, Villa Arson.

More details here

eGonomy as a R&D project intends to develop an intuitive search engine that provides a new way to explore large databases based on behaviour analysis. Applied to image databases, primarily focused on the photographic collection of the Réunion des Musées Nationaux (that contains ca. 550 000 images), the engine will quickly identify images of interest to the amateur and professional user. Threfore the project is based on dynamic profiling, fuzzy logic, contributive annotation and data visualization.

eGonomy is realised by the start-up MOBEN FACT (project manager), the Réunion des Musées Nationaux (RMN, photo agency), the PME PERTIMM, ART&FACT, XEDIX, TECDEV, the public research labs CEA-LIST, LIRIS and LUTIN and the Institute for Research and Innovation Centre Pompidou (IRI).

For more information please visit the project website: http://www.egonomy.net/

The Histoiredesarts corpus

The corpus used for the needs of this project is extracted from Histoiredesarts. It currently counts about 5000 descriptive notes referring, by deep links, to the same number of online ressources. Each note from Histoiredesarts contains key words, initialy produced as simple tags.

« HDA-BO », semantic tagging module

« HDA-BO » is a semantic tagging module from the corpus Histoiredesarts intended for the back-office of the site, for the recovery of existing material by the editorial team and for its enrichment.

Technically, the key words used to re-index the corpus are borrowed from Wikipedia articles (the titles of the encyclopedia articles), for example : « Quentin de La Tour », « Vallée des rois (Valley of the kings) », « IVe siècle av. J.-C. (4th century B.C.) » etc.

This tool offers a function that links to Wikipedia. The complete list of articles from the encyclopedia is available for each tag. The re-indexation consists simply of substituting the tag for its equivalent among the Wikipedia articles. The module then imports the label and the URI from Wikipedia. It also imports a link towards the semantic Web version of Wikipedia : DBpedia.

This approach offers numerous advantages, in particular:

- The disambiguation, for example, allows to distinguish « Roman » referring to Roman art, from « Roman » in the sense of literary works.

-The universal interoperability of key words: the article’s Wikipedia URI gives each key word an universal identifier. All institutions adopting this procedure would be interoperable with the Histoiredesarts corpus.

-The automatic enrichment of metadata: certain data contained in the Wikipedia articles can be automatically excerpted to enrich indexation. This can permit, for example, to interrogate Histoiredesarts in a foreign language, to automatically locate a monument on a map, to associate images or definitions to research, or even to generate thematic indexes (index for writers, for painters…).

-Underlying logical relationships in Wikipedia content (for example, inclusion relationships between French cities, departments and regions) enable the enrichment of research functionalities, such as finding all cities belonging to one region.

Thanks to this tool, the 350 partner institutions of the project will have the capacity to enrich and update their own data independently.

« HDA-Lab », proof of concept

Proof of concept : « HDA-Lab »

« HDA-Lab » is a research and navigation interface of the semanticized version of the Histoiredesarts corpus.

The first functionalities available online today (not yet definitive) focus on searching by facets: time (timeline), space (world map), arts (list of fields), thematic keywords (tag cloud) and their sharing on the
Web 2.0.

Through the month of June, « HDA-Lab » will be enriched with other features: searching with an increasingly complete list, multilingual access, heuristic map, index of authors, etc. The corpus, which is currently being processed, will ultimately be fully re-indexed.

This experimental prototype, from an initiative by Research & Development, is not intended to replace the Histoiredesarts directory, but to explore new paths offered by the Web 3.0 and thus encourage cultural institutions to adopt these new technologies.

This proof of concept is firmly oriented toward the end-user: users will be able to compare online, the classic features of the original interface with the enhanced features of the proof of concept. The objective is to demonstrate the feasibility of semantic tagging and sensitize the end-user to the challenges of Web data.

For more information :

Article du C/Blog d’A.Monnin, présentant le Web Sémantique.
Article du C/Blog de B. Sajus et A.Monnin présentant HDA-Lab.

Partners: Eureva, IRI, Institut Télécom Paris Sud, Orange Labs, LaboGroup SAS

Blinkster is a free, simple and accessible application for responding in a direct maner to the needs for researching information in everyday life, using Internet resources. It :

• Is usable by most mobile phones.
• Is widely accessible thanks to having the simplest interface possible,
• Gives access to reference and community content,
• Uses heuristics giving pertinent answers to current questions.

The Blinkster system is composed of both a client application on mobile phones and a hosted service that interfaces with other Web services. The user can take a photograph with his mobile phone and choose a research scenario. He then receives in return a list of results corresponding to the photo and the chosen scenario.

On a mobile phone, the interface is extremely simple and intuitive: When the application is opened, a window appears with a video excerpted from the camera application, and some buttons representing the research scenario to be used. These buttons trigger the taking of a snapshot, then send the request to the Blinkster server. To refine the search, information from captors available on the phone (GPS, geo-localization, user language) are sent at the same time as the photo and the scenario type.

The image is then sent to the Blinkster servers, which analyse, extract key-words using recognition algorithms (comparison of images and logos, barcodes, OCR), and then use these key-words to research pertinent results for the user, using heuristics combining appropriate service content and existing external web services. The results are presented in the form of a structured list adapted to the format of the phone.

To improve user comfort, the button display representing the different available scenarios can be customized.

This approach is based on a single, natural gesture on the phone, aim/click, without any intermediate manipulation. It is a pragmatic approach: what the user sees can immediately and precisely be associated with structured content.

Optionally, the user can contribute by adding to the Blinkster contribution base. This contribution takes the form of a text message (and eventually a rating) entered on the application’s main menu of the application. This contribution is stocked by Blinkster and indexed with the key words found on the photo. It will then be made accessible to all users.

The same gesture (aim/click) can address an important number of daily scenarios. The first version of the application will support a limited number of scenarios. This list will be refined over the course of the application’s life as opportunities arise. The scenarios we propose to develop for the launch of the product are the following :

-          A culture scenario : From the photo of a referenced work or that of a bar code accompanying commentary on the work, the application provides:

• Complementary information on the work (detailed commentary),
• Directions (on foot) to associated works,
• Comments about this work,
• Various points of interest in the user’s vicinity.

-          An experimental translation scenario

Blinkster’s strong points include:

-          User-friendliness for the client (aim/click),

-          Architectural flexibility of client/web services that can easily integrate new sources of web content and new functions,

-          The relevance of results, presented in a format specific to mobile phones,

-         The possibility to store most of the client application on mobile systems, including versions specifically adapted to a public less familiar with mobile applications: simplified interface with even fewer buttons, high-contrast display of results…

Required configurations

The Blinkster project is made up of two aspects: server and client.

• Client configuration

The Blinkster project will initially be stored on two mobile platforms. To work in optimal conditions, Blinkster software necessitates a phone equipped with a camera and an unlimited  3G connection.Taking these factors into account, it was decided that the priority would be to bring ths Blinkster application to iPhone and Android.

The iPhone application needs an iPhone 3G or superior, equipped with a 3.1+ version of the system.

The Android application needs a mobile phone equipped with a 1.5+ version of the Android system.

The Blinkster application needs 10Mo of free space on the phone for installation and archiving the search history for an offline or off-cover consultation.

• Server configuration

The Blinkster server platform requires a cloud-computing platform.

The project « SocialWeb » also proposes an alternative model that places
 the collective in the center of social networks and develops a promotional space,
 all of which Bernard Stiegler refers to as « the economy of contribution. » Stiegler was inspired by the American sociologist and psychologist Jacob Moreno, who, in
 the early 1930s, invented the new field of “Sociometry,” which became the paradigm 
of analyzing social networks (in particular, their graphic representation). From Moreno, we retain the principal of organizing sociality into social atoms. The
 project’s other important reference is French philosopher Gilbert Simondon and his theories of psychic and collective individuation, in which
 the group or collective subjects individuate themselves together. In this respect, Moreno and 
Simondon occupy extreme positions vis-à-vis one another. The Simondonian theory
 of collective individuation can serve as a remedy to technical individualism, but
 the overlaps between the two also interest us.

A social-network prototype will be developed, based on groups
 rather than individuals, and offering the user tools for its creation and administration.
 The intention is to emphasize the anonymity at the heart of social interactions and group dynamics. This project is financed by the “Office of Naval
 Research Global,” under the coordination of Alexandre Monnin and Harry Halpin.
The research is undertaken by Yuk Hui, a postdoctorate researcher, and the
 implementation of the system by engineer Julia Anaya.

Linked article: The next Facebook will be a toolkit for social computing