'Ere be dragons

摘要

Welcome to the Thirteenth ACM International Conference onMultimedia (ACM MM 2005) held in Singapore from 6 - 11 November2005 at the Hilton Hotel.ACM Multimedia is the premier academicconference in multimedia. The series started in 1993, at the startof multimedia era, and has quickly developed into the topconference in the field. Over the years, the concept of multimediahas evolved, from research in separate "non-textual" media such asimage, video and audio in the early years, to truly "multimedia"approaches integrating information of multiple medium types,including text and metadata, in recent years. Today, the conferencecovers a wide range of topics on the foundations of multimedia, aswell as multimedia applications, content and system.>The pervasive use of multimedia has permeated into almost everyaspect of our life. This is reflected in a wide variety of programsincorporated into the conference. The conference features the usualhigh-quality technical paper presentations, short poster paperpresentations, doctoral symposium for senior graduate students,brave-new emerging topics, as well as tutorials and workshops invarious topical areas. One key aspect of this conference that isdifferent from most other academic conferences is its emphasis onsystems and applications. To this end, the conference also includestechnical demonstrations of research prototypes and systems, opensoftware competition, video demonstration of concepts andapplications, as well as interactive arts which includes anexhibition of multimedia art. The interactive arts program, startedin ACM MM 2004, is well integrated into the main activity of theconference this year.>The main technical program achieves a balance between theory andpractice in applications, content and systems research inmultimedia. This year we received 312 papers in three tracks:Applications (98 submissions), Content (150 submissions) andSystems (64 submissions). Each paper was reviewed by threereviewers in a double-blind review process. The program committeemet on 23 June 2005 in Beijing to select the papers to be presentedat the conference. The rigorous review process has culminated intothe acceptance of 49 papers: 15 in Applications track, 24 inContent track, and 10 in Systems track. This represents anacceptance ratio of 16%. We would like to thank the programcommittee and the technical program co-chairs, Mohan Kankanhalli,Lynn Wilcox, and Ralf Steinmetz, for a difficult job well done.>This year we received a record number of over 200 submissionsfor the short paper track co-chaired by Chitra Dorai, KiyoharuAizawa and Roger Zimmermann. This is an increase of 28% over lastyear's submission. With hindsight of last year's experience, theco-chairs had pro-actively set up a program committee to handle theanticipated load. Thus despite the high load and short review cycleof about one month, the review process had been smooth andrigorous. The committee accepted 59 papers from the submittedpapers. This, together with another 11 papers recommended from thefull paper track, results in a high quality set of short papers.All credits must go to the short paper program committee andco-chairs for doing an outstanding job.>Another track that has grown steadily and has gained a specialfoothold in this conference is the interactive arts program. Underthe guidance of co-chairs Alejandro Jaimes, Andrew Seniors andWolfgang Muench, the group set out to attract quality submissionsfor full, short as well as exhibition papers for this program. Thepublicity and subsequent review process have culminated into theacceptance of 9 full papers, 12 short papers, and 16 exhibits.These papers are integrated into the main program for theconference. In particular, a 7-day exhibition of interactivemultimedia arts will be held in conjunction with this conference atthe art gallery of the Lasalle-SIA College of the Arts inSingapore. The exhibition will be open to the main conferenceparticipants, as well as