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<h1><red>I-GUARD -- Intelligent Guidance in Artist's Digital Dossiers</red></h1>
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/// http://www.cs.vu.nl/~eliens/research/i-guard.html
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<h1> 1) <small><a href=local/programma-catch.pdf><font color=silver>NWO/CATCH grant request:</font></a></small> I-GUARD</h1>
:@ 1a) Intelligent Guidance in Artist's Digital Dossiers
%%<br> The proposal is online at:
%%http://www.cs.vu.nl/~eliens/research/i-guard.html
:@ 1b) I-GUARD
:@ 1c) Dr. A. Eli&euml;ns
<br>Address: Faculty of Sciences,
Div. of Mathematics and Computer Science,
De Boelelaan 1081, 1081 HV Amsterdam, email: //eliens@cs.vu.nl 
:@+ 2) Classification: 
(3) Personalisation through presentation
:@+ 3) Composition of the Research Team
<slide id=ig-group>
<c>
/// research team
</c>
<small>
<ul>
<li> Vrije Universiteit -- Informatica
<li> Universiteit Utrecht -- Letteren
<li> Instituut Collectie Nederland
<li> (Montevideo)
</ul>
</small>
<navigate/>
</slide>
:@+ 4) Description of the Proposed Research

Contemporary art is an intrinsic part of our cultural heritage.
Installations, performances, video and other forms of media art,
as for example <em>web art</em>, have the interest of a small
group of adherents, but are in comparison with more traditional
art forms, far more difficult to present to a general audience.
Another problem presents itself, due to the type of materials
used and the context-specific aspects of these art forms,
in the conservation of the works.
<lp>
In our research we address the issue of providing access
to these contemporary art forms from a wide variety
of perspectives, ranging from the interested layman
to the expert that has to deal with archiving,
conserving and the possible re-installation of the art works.
<lp>
Our research is centered around the notion of <em>digital dossier</em>,
that is the collection of information needed to (properly)
understand one or more works of art in the context of the oeuvre
of the artist.
The information consists of descriptive text, images depicting
the work(s), and possibly video registrations as well as 
interviews with the artist.
From the perspective of the expert, in charge of conserving
the work(s), the dossier must contain all the information needed
for (proper) re-installation.
<lp>
For the presentation of the <em>digital dossier</em>
we deploy a <em>rich media presentation environment</em>
with which we gained ample experience in our
research in <em>intelligent multimedia</em> [_IMVU],
among others in previous pilots with ICN,
in which we realized such environments for
the Dutch artist Marinus Boezem and the Serbian-Dutch 
artist Marina Abramovic.
<lp>
In our present research we will focus in particular
on intelligent navigation and interaction
with the (presentation environment of the) digital dossier.
%%With regard to
Due to the wish and need to
support the use of the dossier from a variety of perspectives,
the presentation environment must offer a multitude of 
potential interaction scenarios, and accomodate the needs
of the variety of users in an intelligent fashion.
<lp>
An essential part of intelligent interaction is provided
by the possibility to give assignments in loosely
structured natural language, to query for particular aspects 
of the work, as for example properties of the materials
that are used, or to specify desires
with respect to the presentation of the information offered.
<lp>
In summary, from a research perspective we address the following
issues:
<slide id=ig-issues>
<c>
/// research issues
</c>
<small>
<ul>
<li> representation of information of one or multiple works
of art in a <em>digital dossier</em>,
<li> presentation of that information in a 
<em>rich media presentation environment</em>,
<li> intelligent navigation and interaction, and
<li> support for interaction with loosely-structured
natural language.
</ul>
</small>
<navigate/>
</slide>
\noindent
The results of our research will on the one hand contribute to making
contemporary art forms accessible to a larger audience
and on the other hand are explicitly meant
to support the complex task of the conservation
and re-installation of works of art in an effective manner.



%%<ul>
%%<li> interactive 3D graphic environment
%%<li> intelligent navigation and interaction
%%<li> processing natural language input
%%</ul>
%%<lp>
%%Keywords: pilot, explorative research, unstructured domain


:@- 4a) Scientific aspects

The presentation of information in a 3D environment
will <em>not</em> be the central focus of our research.
Instead we will concentrate on navigation and interaction,
and support for interaction with natural language.
In addition, we will tackle issues of representation of information
and investigate a generic approach to the construction of
digital dossiers.
We will now discuss possible solutions and the scientific 
aspects related to the topics of, respectively,
navigation, natural language and intelligent guidance
seperately.

:@ Navigation:
Given the complexity of the information space related to a work 
of art, interactive facilities must be provided
for the user to gain a quick overview of the information
available as well as the means to deepen the inspection rapidly,
avoiding needless and cumbersome detours.
At the same time, the user must be allowed to inspect
the (multimedia) material related to the work of art,
such as a collection of images or video recordings.
<lp>
To accommodate the complex structure of the information space
we have developed a 3D representation of a <em>concept graph</em>,
a semantic device well-known from artificial intelligence,
which allows the user to expand a node representing
a particular concept or aspect into a collection of related
nodes.
Moreover, for the presentation of (multimedia) information
we have developed a (generic) <em>presentation gadget</em>,
that displays images or video and textual information simultaneously.
The actual content of the presentation gadget depends
on the node of the concept graph from which it is
expanded.
The presentation gadget allows for limited browsing
following (textual) links, within the material presented.
At each moment, the presentation gadget can be collapsed
to continue navigation in the concept graph.
<lp>
Using the concept graph in conjunction with the 
presentation gadget resolves the duality of information
and presentation that is inherent for (multimedia) digital dossiers,
and thus promotes what may be called the immersive
experience of digital artist's dossiers.

:@ Natural language:
Having a concept graph as a generic navigation device, it 
still remains a problem how to fill the concept graph
with meaningful content, and how to indicate
meaningful relations between the concepts and aspects
covered by the nodes of the concept graph.
In the prototype digital dossier for Marina Abramovic
this was done by hand, based on information derived
from a transcripion of an interview with the artist
(provided to us by ICN).
<lp>
Interviews with artists is one of the means ICN deploys
to gain knowledge needed for the conservation of
contemporary artworks.
Such interviews provide a rich source of textual information,
that includes both general viewpoints on the artist's oeuvre
as well as specific constraints that adhere to
the (re) installation of the work(s) of art.
<lp>
In our research we will investigate the use of techniques
from formal linguistics, [_Grammar], as a means to derive
both structure and content of the concept graph
for a particular dossier (semi) automatically.
Using a basic lexicon of terms and phrases
related to contemporary art we should be able to
generate a representation of the textual information
that may serve as a basis for construction of the concept graph.
This representation must contain an enumeration
of the concepts, the relation between occurrences of concepts,
as well as a reference to the work(s) of art to which the
concepts apply.
<lp>
Natural language processing technology may not only serve
for the static analysis of the material, when the digital dossier
is created, but also dynamically when the dossier is being used,
to aid the user in finding relevant information.
Research issues here are, on the one hand,
the interpretation of user input (that is, loosely
structured natural language),
and on the other hand, filtering the concept graph
representing the information space in such a way 
that it adequately reflects the user's interest or perspective.

:@ Intelligent guidance:
Our aim is to arrive at a general framework for artist's digital
dossiers, that provide intelligent guidance
to both the expert user, responsible for the
future re-installation of the work(s),
and the interested layman, that wishes to get acquainted
with a particular work or collection of works.
In general, there are two techniques that we can apply to provide such
guidance:
<small>
<ul>
<li> filtering the information space according to the user's
perspective, and
<li> intelligent agents, that (pro) actively aid the user in searching 
the information space.
</ul>
</small>
\noindent
Filtering the information space may be done, as indicated
above, using techniques from formal linguistics
to restrict the concept graph that defines the navigation
structure,
by stating assumptions with respect to the relevance
of particular linguistic categories from
a user's perspective.
<lp>
Intelligent agents is an approach stemming from artificial intelligence
which allows for providing guidance in a variety of ways,
possibly even in an embodied form using
a face or humanoid figure to give suggestions
to the user on what interactions to perform.
In [_AWC] we have investigated the use of embodied
agents in a digital dossier for the artist Marinus Boezem.
In our current research, however, we will very likely
not use embodied agents.
Nevertheless, we will investigate to what extent we can use an agent model,
possibly with learning capabilities as explored in [_Interactive],
to provide guidance and support interaction.

:@ The background of our research
is provided
by our previous research on <em>intelligent multimedia</em>,
as described in [_IMVU].
Our intelligent multimedia platform supports interactive
3D graphics, multi-user virtual environments, as well
as embodied agents. 
See [_Platform], [_Community] and [_STEP].
It uses distributed logic programming, [_DLP],
and is built on object-oriented programming technologies, [_OO]. 
It has been applied
in <url href=http://www.cs.vu.nl/~eliens/casus>student projects</url>,
done in cooperation with ICN, for developing digital
dossiers for respectively Marinus Boezem
and Marina Abramovic.
<lp>
A natural language interface for an agent capable of learning
has been explored, in cooperation with the formal linguistics
group of the University of Utrecht, by our candidate
researcher in his master thesis project, which has resulted
in a publication on the Interactive Virtual Agents conference,
[_Interactive].
This application used the Grail parser, which is based
on the notion of <em>parsing as deduction</em>, [_Grammar].
In the proposed research we wish to continue this cooperation
to further incorporate language processing capabilities
in our framework.
<lp>
As a complement to the theoretical and technical research we also
plan to continue our empirical  
human-computer interaction studies, as reported in [_AWC],
to assess the viability of our approach.
<lp>
The contribution of the cultural heritage institutes,
in particular ICN, will be to provide the material,
assist in finding relevant categorizations and, inevitably,
function as the touchstone against which our efforts
will be evaluated.







:@- 4b) Innovation

Although <url href=http://www.ifla.org/II/etext.htm>digital archives or digital libraries</url>
are by no means a new phenomenon,
our concept of <em>digital dossiers</em> contains a number
of innovative elements.
<lp>
A digital dossier provides a unified information and
presentation space.
In this sense it differs significantly from
a digital archive with a traditional web interface,
where navigation and presentation are distinct.
Digital dossiers allow to a much greater extent for an immersive
experience of the information related to works of art.
As such it is reminiscient to explorations in
<em><url href=http://library.thinkquest.org/18261/?tqskip1=1>virtual archeology</url></em>.
<lp>
As concerns <em>intelligent guidance</em>,
again, although agent technology itself is by no means new,
we firmly believe that our use of techniques from
formal linguistics in combination with agent technology offers
exciting new ways in which intelligent guidance may be realized.
<lp>
The type-logical perspective of our linguistic framework
will enable us to exploit commonalities between the reasoning facilites
underlying visual information processing, and language processing,
[_Categorial].
Hence, fundamentally, we address issues of the relation between
visual and verbal/linguistic structures.
Pragmatically, this will be reflected in our explorations of how textual
relations can best be presented in a tangible way
to the user of the digital dossier.
<lp>
On a longer term, our research opens the prospect
of having an information representation scheme
that may, with minimal additional annotation, be used
to generate a fully functional digital dossier.


:@- 4c) Relevance for cultural heritage

In contrast with the majority of research (proposals)
in the CATCH-framework,
which are concerned with making a great mass of artworks
accesible to a wide audience using (fairly)
traditional techniques of presentation,
our research addresses the more narrow area of contemporary artworks,
which require the use of more advanced presentation technologies. 
<lp>
Our work has started as an extension to the
<url href=http://www.incca.org>INCCA project</url>,
which provides a digital archive of meta-information indicating
sources of information on (the conservation of) contemporary art.
However, as also indicated in the 
Culture 2000 project proposal, more advanced
practices and techniques are needed to adequately
capture the requirements for the re-installation
of contemporary art works.
<lp>
Our research aims at developing the (information) technologies
needed to implement such practices and techniques,
and more in particular to develop a framework for realizing
digital dossiers with intelligent guidance,
adapted to the particular perspective of its users,
which may be conservation experts or intelligent laymen.
The framework will be built on open standards and may eventually be donated
to the cultural heritage community.



:@+ 5) Literature
Online references, see
<small>
<ul>
<li> intelligent multimedia -- http://www.cs.vu.nl/~eliens/research
<li> Culture 2000 -- http://www.cs.vu.nl/~eliens/research/i-guard.html
</ul>
</small>

%%<lp> See [_IMVU], [_OO], [_DLP], [_Platform], [_Community], [_STEP], [_Interactive], [_AWC].



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