The art of video MashUp: supporting creative users with an innovative and smart application

In this paper, we describe the development of a new and innovative tool of video mashup. This application is an easy to use tool of video editing integrated in a cross-media platform; it works taking the information from a repository of videos and puts into action a process of semi-automatic editing supporting users in the production of video mashup. Doing so it gives vent to their creative side without them being forced to learn how to use a complicated and unlikely new technology. The users will be further helped in building their own editing by the intelligent system working behind the tool: it combines semantic annotation (tags and comments by users), low level features (gradient of color, texture and movements) and high level features (general data distinguishing a movie: actors, director, year of production, etc.) to furnish a pre-elaborated editing users can modify in a very simple way

Modelling the influence of personality and culture on affect and enjoyment in multimedia

Affect is evoked through an intricate relationship between the characteristics of stimuli, individuals, and systems of perception. While affect is widely researched, few studies consider the combination of multimedia system characteristics and human factors together. As such, this paper explores the influence of personality (Five-Factor Model) and cultural traits (Hofstede Model) on the intensity of multimedia-evoked positive and negative affects (emotions). A set of 144 video sequences (from 12 short movie clips) were evaluated by 114 participants from a cross-cultural population, producing 1232 ratings. On this data, three multilevel regression models are compared: a baseline model that only considers system factors; an extended model that includes personality and culture; and an optimistic model in which each participant is modelled. An analysis shows that personal and cultural traits represent 5.6% of the variance in positive affect and 13.6% of the variance in negative affect. In addition, the affect-enjoyment correlation varied across the clips. This suggests that personality and culture play a key role in predicting the intensity of negative affect and whether or not it is enjoyed, but a more sophisticated set of predictors is needed to model positive affect with the same efficacy

Knowledge will Propel Machine Understanding of Content: Extrapolating from Current Examples

Machine Learning has been a big success story during the AI resurgence. One particular stand out success relates to learning from a massive amount of data. In spite of early assertions of the unreasonable effectiveness of data, there is increasing recognition for utilizing knowledge whenever it is available or can be created purposefully. In this paper, we discuss the indispensable role of knowledge for deeper understanding of content where (i) large amounts of training data are unavailable, (ii) the objects to be recognized are complex, (e.g., implicit entities and highly subjective content), and (iii) applications need to use complementary or related data in multiple modalities/media. What brings us to the cusp of rapid progress is our ability to (a) create relevant and reliable knowledge and (b) carefully exploit knowledge to enhance ML/NLP techniques. Using diverse examples, we seek to foretell unprecedented progress in our ability for deeper understanding and exploitation of multimodal data and continued incorporation of knowledge in learning techniques.Comment: Pre-print of the paper accepted at 2017 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence (WI). arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1610.0770

Community as Canvas: The Power of Culture in the Emergence of Intelligent Communities

Intelligent Communities are cities and regions that use information and communications technologies (ICT) to build prosperous economies, solve social problems and enrich their cultures in the 21st Century. Many people are familiar with the concept of the Smart City, which turns to technology for solutions to problems from traffic congestion to leakage from water mains, public safety to parking tickets. The Intelligent Community is the next evolutionary step. Intelligent Communities turn to technology not just to save money or make things work better: they create high quality employment, increase citizen participation and make themselves great places to live, work, start a business and prosper across generations.Each year, the Forum presents an awards program for Intelligent Communities. The program salutes their achievements in building those inclusive, prosperous economies on a foundation of ICT. In the process, it gathers data for ICF's research programs, which the Forum shares with other communities around the world.The Awards are divided into three phases,and the analysis becomes more detailed andrigorous at each successive stage

’The Book of Stars’: Some Alternative Insights into Celebrity Fandom

While consumers have had a keen interest in the works and private lives of celebrities since the dawn of the Hollywood star system in the early 1920s, some consumers experience a significantly more intensive level of interest and admiration for a particular celebrity and, subsequently, become what are commonly known as fans. However, scant attention has been paid to how the relationship between fans and celebrities expresses itself in everyday consumer behaviour. This paper is taking an existential-phenomenological perspective to discuss fan behaviour as a holistic personal lived experience from a fan’s point of view. By using subjective personal introspection, the lead author provides hereby insights into his private lived consumption experiences as the fan of the young and talented actress Jena Malone, which were obtained and recorded as contemporaneous data over a period of 15 months. In doing so, the paper demonstrates how drawing on narrative transportation theory may provide a deeper understanding on the nature of celebrity fandom. The study found that a consumer’s fan experiences derive from one’s personal engagement with the celebrity’s artistic work and public persona, which is essentially the consumer’s personal intertextual reading of what s/he perceives to be relevant and reliable media texts

Weaving a fabric of socially aware agents

The expansion of web-enabled social interaction has shed light on social aspects of intelligence that have not been typically studied within the AI paradigm so far. In this context, our aim is to understand what constitutes intelligent social behaviour and to build computational systems that support it. We argue that social intelligence involves socially aware, autonomous individuals that agree on how to accomplish a common endeavour, and then enact such agreements. In particular, we provide a framework with the essential elements for such agreements to be achieved and executed by individuals that meet in an open environment. Such framework sets the foundations to build a computational infrastructure that enables socially aware autonomy.This work has been supported by the projects EVE(TIN2009-14702-C02-01) and AT (CSD2007-0022)Peer Reviewe

Cutting tracks, making CDs: a comparative study of audio time-correction techniques in the desktop age.

Producers have long sought to “tighten” studio performances. Software-based DAW’s now come with proprietary functions to facilitate this, but only the latest generation of platforms allow relative ease of use on longer takes. Each method has advantages and disadvantages in terms of ease and speed of use, transient preservation, implied subsequent workflow and (usually) unwanted artifacts. Whilst rhythmically consistent material with clear transients is readily controllable with contemporary tools, working with complex mixtures of note-values still presents a challenge and requires much user intervention. This paper performs a comparative study of different audio quantize techniques on percussive material, often on rhythmically complex performances. It will seek to compare necessary methodologies and workflow implications through the use of several contemporary systems: Recycle, Pro Tools, Logic, Cubase, Live, Melodyne, and Nuendo. The current level of man-machine interaction will be explored, and the best features from each platform will be collated. A model for the future will be speculatively presented