Semantic Abstraction

Organised units of interactive multimedia material, called "titles", are becoming rapidly available beyond their original format, namely Compact Disks, and they appear in Digital Libraries and on the Web. For large collections of such titles, browsers and query mechanisms addressing the multimedia assets alone while reasonably well developed are inadequate: we lack techniques for efficient generic retrieval of structured multimedia information. In this paper we present the notion of conceptual title abstractions, a representation of one or more titles that captures and abstracts at a variable level of detail the structure, interactivity and generic content of the represented titles. We develop an algebra for title abstractions-which form a partial order-and present a language which can be used for specifying and abstracting titles. A straightforward extension of the language can be used to query databases of title abstractions, and indirectly very large repositories of organised interactive multimedia material. Examples taken from applied projects illustrate the approach, as the language was originally developed for the specification and production of multimedia titles in series.

Choreographer George Balanchine was known for rejecting the premise that his ballets were abstract. Yet, a closer look into his comments on abstraction reveals a greater degree of ambivalence toward the concept than previously noticed. His influential words found response in dance critical writing, where the term “abstract” continued to circulate, but was often applied in vague ways, such as “so-called abstraction.” This and other softened terminological variations formed an ambiguous collection of abstractive terms, like a vague word cloud around the dance concept. This article explores abstraction in Balanchine’s particular ballets, and makes a two-fold argument. On the one hand, by emphasizing the visual aspects of Balanchine’s compositions, we may uncover ways to untangle his dilemma about dance abstraction. Visual theories of “semantic abstraction” by Harold Osborne, and of “the gesture of abstraction” by Blake Stimson, may help us to understand the abstractive modes in several...

Organised units of interactive multimedia material, called "titles", are becoming rapidly available beyond their original format, namely Compact Disks, and they appear in Digital Libraries and on the Web. For large collections of such titles, browsers and query mechanisms addressing the multimedia assets alone while reasonably well developed are inadequate: we lack techniques for efficient generic retrieval of structured multimedia information. In this paper we present the notion of conceptual title abstractions, a representation of one or more titles that captures and abstracts at a variable level of detail the structure, interactivity and generic content of the represented titles. We develop an algebra for title abstractions-which form a partial order-and present a language which can be used for specifying and abstracting titles. A straightforward extension of the language can be used to query databases of title abstractions, and indirectly very large repositories of organised interactive multimedia material. Examples taken from applied projects illustrate the approach, as the language was originally developed for the specification and production of multimedia titles in series.

A column (10) of a memory array includes a plurality of memory cells (11, 12) each having first and second independent access ports (T1, T2) and a cross-coupled memory latch (20). The first access port (T1) of each memory cell (11, 12) connects a first node (21) of the latch (20) to a first bit line (14), while the second access port (T2) of each memory cell connects a second node (22) of the latch (20) to a second bit line (15). A clearing arrangement (T7) is connected to the second bit line (15) for selectively coupling the second bit line to ground. A write driver is connected to the first bit line (14) for writing data to the memory cells (11, 12) in the form of single-ended signals. A memory cell is placed in a preset condition by simultaneously coupling the second node (22) to the second bit line (15) through the second access port (T2) and coupling the second bit line to ground through the clearing arrangement (T7). Once in the preset condition, data may be written to the cel...

Organised units of interactive multimedia material, called " titles " , are becoming rapidly available beyond their original format, namely Compact Disks, and they appear in Digital Libraries and on the Web. For large collections of such titles, browsers and query mechanisms addressing the multimedia assets alone while reasonably well developed are inadequate: we lack techniques for efficient generic retrieval of structured multimedia information. In this paper we present the notion of conceptual title abstractions, a representation of one or more titles that captures and abstracts at a variable level of detail the structure, interactivity and generic content of the represented titles. We develop an algebra for title abstractions-which form a partial order-and present a language which can be used for specifying and abstracting titles. A straightforward extension of the language can be used to query databases of title abstractions, and indirectly very large repositories of organised interactive multimedia material. Examples taken from applied projects illustrate the approach, as the language was originally developed for the specification and production of multimedia titles in series.

insight generation, and just about anything that humans, as intelligent beings, seek to do. We've used the term computing for human experience (CHE) 1 to capture technology's human-centric role. CHE emphasizes the unobtrusive, supportive, and assistive part technology plays in improving human experience; here, technology "takes into account the human world and allows computers themselves to disappear in the background." 2 We can distinguish this from Licklider's vision of human-computer collaboration, Eglebert's vision of augmenting human intellect and-more recently-ambient intelligence, and Vannever Bush's and McCarthy's machine-centric vision of making computing more intelligent so that it thinks and behaves like humans.