General Information

The medium is the message! And the message was literacy, media democracy and music charts. Mostly one single distinguishable media such as TV, the Web, the radio, or books transmitted the message. No in the age of ubiquitous and pervasive computing, where information flows through a plethora of distributed interlinked media – what is the message ambient media will tell us? What means semantic in this context? Which experiences will it open to us? What is content in the age of ambient media? Ambient media are embedded throughout the natural environment of the consumer – in his home, in his car, in restaurants, and on his mobile device. Predominant sample services are smart wallpapers in homes, location based services, RFID based entertainment services for children, or intelligent homes. The distribution of the medium throughout the natural environment implies a paradigm change of how to think about content. Until recently, content was identified as single entities to information – a video stream, audio stream, TV broadcast. However, in the age of ambient media, the notion of content extends from the single entity thinking towards a plethora of sensor networks, smart devices, personalized services, and media embedded in the natural environment of the user. The consumer actively participates and co-designs contextual media experience One example is e.g. location based information. Initiatives as the smart Web considering location based tagging for web-pages underline this development.

Challenges in Ambient Media Research

The following challenges are identified:

• what are the media management & business issues around ambient media?
• how to select, compose, and generate ambient content?
• how to present ambient content?
• how to re-use ambient content and learning experiences?
• what are the characteristics of ambient media, its content, and technology?
• how can collaborative, participatory, or social media service better supported and extended?
• and what are ambient media in terms of story-telling, interactive, and art

The association aims at the creation of a think-tank of creative thinkers coming from technology, art, human-computer interaction, and social sciences, that are interested in glimpsing the future of semantic ambient intelligent empowered media technology. We are aiming at multidisciplinary, highly future oriented submissions that help to develop the Ambient Media Association (AMEA) for digital services, such as:

• case-studies (successful, and especially unsuccessful ones)
• oral presentation of fresh and innovative ideas
• artistic installations and running system prototypes
• user-experience studies and evaluations
• technological novelties, evaluations, and solution

Our Activities

• Four newsletters per year containing the latest information about ambient media research
• Library service for publications, thesis, books, educational resources, lecture notes, and other information resources
• Mailinglist for association members
• Organization, in-cooperation, and establishment of conferences, workshops, events, and awards
• Special interest groups for various topics around ambient media

Previous Activities

1. The 4^th Nokia Ubimedia MindTrek Award (28^th-30^th September 2011, Tampere, Finland) deadline for submitting the most innovative ubiquitous, ambient, and pervasive projects is the 15^th June 2011 (7000 Euro award sum): 
2. The 2^nd EuroITV 2011 Grand Challenge (29^th June-1^st July 2011, Lisbon, Portugal)  deadline for submitting the best projects in the field of TV & video is the 29^th May 2011 (3000 Euro award sum): http://www.euroitv2011.org/index.php/euroitv-grand-challenge
3. 15^th International Academic MindTrek Conference (28^th -30^th September 2011, Tampere, Finland) extended the deadline for papers, posters, demos, extended abstracts till the 12^th June 2011. Workshop proposals are due by the 27^th May 2011, and tutorial proposals are due by the 1^st July 2011: http://www.mindtrek.org/2011/academic
4. 5th International Symposium on Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence (UCAmI 2011), 5^th-9^th December 2011, Riviera Maya, Mexico, paper deadline 15^th June 2011 : http://mami.uclm.es/ucami2011/
5. 1^st International Workshop on Aesthetic Intelligence (AxI 2011) in conjunction with AmI 2011, 16^th November 2011, Amsterdam, Netherlands, paper deadline 25^th July 2011: http://www.humtec.rwth-aachen.de/aestheticintelligence/
6. 27/05/2011: 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference – workshop submissions due
   • 29/05/2011: EuroITV 2011 Grand Challenge (3000 Euros award sum) project submissions deadline 
   • 12/06/2011: 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference – papers,posters, demos, extended abstracts 
   • 15/06/2011: 4th Nokia ubimedia MindTrek Award (7000 Euros award sum) submission deadline 
   • 15/06/2011: 5th Intern. Symposium on Ubiquitous Comp. and Ambient Intelligence (UCAmI 2011) papers due 
   • 29/6-01/07/2011: EuroITV 2011 Conference, Lisbon, Portugal (www.euroitv2011.org) 
   • 29/6-02/07/2011: 5th Int. Conf. on Communities and Technologies, Brisbane, Australia (http://ct2011.urbaninformatics.net/)  
   • 01/07/2011: 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference – tutorials deadline   
   • 25/07/2011: 1st Int. Workshop on Aesthetic Intelligence (AxI 2011) paper deadline 
   • 28/9-30/9/2011: 15th MindTrek Conference, Tampere, Finland (www.mindtrek.org)