AAAI Fall Symposium on Style and Meaning

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
AAAI 2004 Fall Symposium
Style and Meaning in Language, Art, Music, and Design
October 21-24 at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City, Washington, D.C
http://music.ucsd.edu/~sdubnov/style2004.htm

In recent years a growing number of researchers working in artificial
intelligence, cognitive science, computer graphics, computer music, and
multimedia have begun to explicitly address issues of 'style' or
connotative semantics in their work. While it is still difficult to
precisely characterize these concepts satisfactorily (we know it when we
see it), common denominators are: an emphasis on manner rather than topic,
a focus on affective aspects of expression and understanding, and a search
for 'dense' representations of meaning in which elements simultaneously
symbolize multiple layers of meaning at once.

Recent work has included forensic authorship attribution, information
retrieval based on document genre or affect, composition of new music
in a given composer's style, rendering animation in different motion
styles, analyzing architectural styles for function and affect, and
much more. Work in all media shares the complex problem of formalizing
a notion of style, and developing a modeling language that supports
the representation of differing styles.

The goal of this symposium is to bring style researchers together to
seek out common frameworks for discussion. It will provide a unique
meeting ground for researchers and practitioners in all media that
share the problem of formalizing a notion of style, generating
discourse between diverse forms and approaches. We thus hope to move
towards better understanding style in all its manifestations, with an
eye to developing computational models and tools for dealing with it.

To facilitate interaction among participants, the symposium will
include, in addition to a number of "traditional" research paper
presentations: (a) invited talks by leading figures in style research,
(b) brief tutorials on work in individual media, and (c) panel
discussions discussing various practical issues in research on style.

INVITED SPEAKERS:
Sheldon Brown, UCSD (New Media Art)
Harold Cohen, Artist (Visual Arts)
Eduard Hovy, USC ISI (Natural Language)
Christopher Raphael, Indiana U. (Computer Music)
George Stiny, MIT (Architecture)

TUTORIAL SESSIONS:
Cognitive Linguistics: Joseph Goguen, UCSD
Computer Music: Roger Dannenberg, Carnegie Mellon
Computers and Architecture: Terry Knight, MIT

REGISTRATION INFORMATION:
To register, please download the registration brochure at:
http://www.aaai.org/Symposia/Fall/2004/fssregistration-04.pdf
Registration is also available on-line:
http://www.aaai.org/Symposia/Fall/fssregform.html
Reduced hotel rates are available until September 27 at:
http://crystalcity.hyatt.com/groupbooking/arti

FOR MORE INFORMATION, please contact:
Shlomo Argamon (co-chair), argamon.DeleteThis@iit.edu
Shlomo Dubnov (co-chair), sdubnov.DeleteThis@ucsd.edu