Latest News

• The ISon 2013 proceedings are now online: http://interactive-sonification.org/ISon2013/proceedings/
• Our special issue proposal on Interactive Sonification for the IEEE Multimedia Magazine has been accepted. The Call for Papers can be found here and it is open to everyone.
• These are the Evaluation Criteria and Reviewing Guidelines for the ISon 2013.
• The ISon submission website is: https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ison2013

Welcome

The ISon 2013 will take place in Erlangen, Germany, on December 10th 2013, with a satellite event on the 9th of December 2013. It is organized by the Fraunhofer IIS.

The ISon 2013 meeting is the 4th International workshop on Interactive Sonification, following the initial ISon 2004 workshop held in Bielefeld and the previous ISon 2007 workshop in York and ISon 2010 workshop in Stockholm. The meeting offers the chance to:

• meet experts in sonification,
• present and demonstrate your own research,
• strengthen your European networking in sonification research,
• learn about new exciting trends.

In this workshop will pay special attention to the problem of reproducible research and pervasive computing in Interactive Sonification to:

• explore how the rapidly changing world of computer interfaces and pervasive computing is providing new widely available platforms for sonification,
• allow for the formal evaluation and comparison of Interactive Sonification systems,
• establish standards in Interactive Sonification,
• set up a network of interested researchers in the field and exchange experiences.

High quality will be assured by a peer-reviewing process, and besides a web publication we plan to also publish a special journal issue, as in the 1st ISon and 3rd ISon meeting, see IEEE Multimedia Special Issue on Interactive Sonification, and Springer Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces.

About ISon

Sonification and Auditory Displays are increasingly becoming an established technology for exploring data, monitoring complex processes, or assisting exploration and navigation of data spaces. Sonification addresses the auditory sense by transforming data into sound, allowing the human user to get valuable information from data by using their natural listening skills. The main differences of sound displays over visual displays are that sound can:

• Represent frequency responses in an instant (as timbral characteristics)
• Represent changes over time, naturally
• Allow microstructure to be perceived
• Rapidly portray large amounts of data
• Alert listener to events outside the current visual focus
• Holistically bring together many channels of information

Auditory displays typically evolve over time since sound is inherently a temporal phenomenon. Interaction thus becomes an integral part of the process in order to select, manipulate, excite or control the display, and this has implications for the interface between humans and computers. In recent years it has become clear that there is an important need for research to address the interaction with auditory displays more explicitly.

Satellite Events

There are several satellite events in connection to this workshop:

• A visit to the famous Christmas market of Nürnberg:
  http://www.nuernberg.de/internet/portal_e/kultur/ctz_3601.html
• A Hackday on Interactive Sonification for navigation in virtual spaces that takes place on the 9th of December 2013.
• A social dinner that takes place on the 10th of December 2013 (location to be decided).
• A Guided tour to the installations of Fraunhofer IIS, the home of MP3, that takes place on the 9th of December 2013:
  http://www.iis.fraunhofer.de/en/bf/amm.html

For more details about these satellite events please read the workshop programme.

Call for Papers

Interactive Sonification is the specialized research topic concerned with the use of sound to portray data, but where there is a person at the heart of an interactive control loop. This workshop encourages submissions for oral or poster presentations that deal with:

• interfaces between humans and auditory displays,
• new platforms for Interactive Sonification,
• reproducible research in Interactive Sonification,
• mapping strategies and models for creating coherency between action and reaction (e.g. acoustic feedback, but also combined with haptic or visual feedback),
• perceptual aspects of the display (how to relate actions and sound, e.g. cross-modal effects, importance of synchronisation),
• applications of Interactive Sonification,
• evaluation of performance, usability and multi-modal interactive systems including auditory feedback,
• sonification for data analysis and mining,
• computational models of sonification,
• practical systems and working prototypes,
• frameworks for the formal evaluation and the statistical analysis and comparison of Interactive Sonification systems,
• signal and audio processing algorithms for audio synthesis.

We invite two forms of presentation:

• Full Papers: 20 minutes presentation (15+5), papers in PDF format 4–8 pages.
• Posters: papers in PDF format 4–8 pages, ideally including a demonstration.

To ensure a high quality of the contributions, all papers will go through a double-blind review selection process.

Proceedings and Special Issue

The peer-reviewed publications will be published on this website. We plan to further develop the web proceedings into a special issue of an international journal, as we did in the 2004 and the 2010 ISon workshops.

Paper Submission

The paper submission process is as follows. First, authors submit a 1-page extended abstract that is reviewed by the organizing committee. Then, the organizing committee selects the most relevant abstracts and notifies authors of their eligibility for full paper submission. Please note that the eligibility for submission is not a guarantee that the paper will be published. Finally, to guarantee a high quality of the contributions, full papers go through a double-blinded review process.

The details about the submission process are as follows:

• For all the above categories please submit a 1-page extended abstract of the proposed paper by July 26th 2013 (see important dates below). No template is needed for the abstract submission.
• Authors will be notified of eligibility for submission by August 2nd 2013.
• Authors must submit their full paper (4 to 8 pages) before October 1st 2013.
• Authors will be notified of acceptance by October 18th 2013.
• Accepted papers will be designated either as posters or as lectures.
• The deadline for camera-ready papers is November 15th 2013.
• Authors must consider reviewer´s comments to submit the final version of the paper.
• Abstracts and full papers are to be submitted at
  https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ison2013.
• Please indicate in the abstract if you intend to submit multimedia examples.
• Authors of accepted papers are asked to prepare their manuscript according to the following document styles, provided here as LaTeX-template (zip, 165kB) or as Word template (doc, 159kB).
• For any general enquiries please contact enquiry@interactive-sonification.org.

For each accepted paper, at least one author must register for the ISon 2013 conference prior to the author registration deadline (see important dates). Papers with no registered author on the author registration deadline will be removed from the workshop programme and will not appear in the proceedings.

Reviewing Process

The reviewing process of the full paper is double-blinded: authors and reviewers will be anonymous to each other. Therefore, when preparing your manuscript for submission, do not put actual authors names on the first page andavoid excessive or explicit references to your own work. To ensure a high quality of the contributions, the following criteria will be considered:

• Novelty of the paper
• Scholarly/scientific quality Appropriateness of topic
• Importance
• Paper organization
• Readability
• Stimulation potential
• Fostering of open source and free software tools/data
• Fostering reproducibility of research
  Contribution to the overall balance of topics at ISon 2013.

After the reviewing process, accepted papers will be designated (by the Programme Committee) either as posters or as lectures.All accepted papers have the same status, assignment as poster or lecture is not indicative of the relevance or potential impact but on the type of content and way to better reach the intended audience.

Paper Templates

For the full paper submission, please submit your paper in PDF format according to one of the following templates:

• LaTeX-template (zip, 170KB)
• Word template (doc, 163KB)

Submission Page

The submission website is:

• https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ison2013

Keynote

ISon 2013 will feature a keynote by Andy Hunt of the University of York, sponsored by Fraunhofer IIS and the University of York.

Title

The Interface Revolution: Interactive Sonification in the era of Pervasive Computing

Abstract

In just over 25 years of studying Human Computer Interaction for audio I have seen some great changes, but they have tended to be quite slow and incremental. In the early days it seemed that we spent a few years here and there increasing the usage of a ‘mouse´, refining how menus operate, responding to Apple or Microsoft´s latest desktop interface etc. Musical / sonic interfaces were the preserve of a strange set of researchers (that´s us folks) developing our own equipment and being limited to work in the lab. Suddenly in the last few years something huge seems to have been occurring and it shows no signs of stopping. We are witnessing the arrival and development of mass-market devices capable not only of real-time audio and graphics processing, but with increasingly sophisticated multi-touch or even gesture-based control systems. Interactive Sonification was always about the blend of HCI and auditory displays. The current challenge is how our research will develop in the era of Pervasive Computing - now that everyone is gaining access to devices capable of Interactive Sonification.

Bio

Andy Hunt is a Senior Teaching Fellow in the Audio Lab at the University of York UK. His research interests include human-computer interaction for audio and music, interactive sonification, and new musical instruments. He is co-founder, with Thomas Hermann, of the Interactive Sonification Workshop series (Bielefeld 2004, York, 2007, Stockholm 2010 and Fraunhofer, Erlangen 2013). He co-edited The Sonification Handbook with Thomas Hermann and John Neuhoff. He teachesInterfaces for Audio Interaction, Pervasive Computing, Time Management, Musical C Programming and Music for the Media. He enjoys playing in jazz and rock bands, writing music for film and TV, and developing interactive music Apps for iOS.

Information for Presenters

The day and time of the presentation will be available on the conference programme (coming soon).

Poster presentation of papers:

Time:

Posters will be hung in specific spaces at the venue for the whole day. Presenters are expected to be near their poster at the dedicated poster session.

Poster dimensions:

The maximum dimensions of the poster should not exceed ISO A0 size (maximum height = 1189mm, maximum width = 841mm). Posters will be hung in Portrait format.
Poster PDF will be collected and made available with the papers on the ISon website.

Poster stand assignment:

Each poster presenter will be assigned to a particular stand. Put up your poster on the stand that displays your paper title.

Sound:

Sound examples should only be played through headphones. Presenters are expected to bring their own headphones and playing device. Loudspeakers will not be allowed.

Miscellaneous:

Specific technical requirements should be asked to the conference organization (enquiry@interactive-sonification.org) before November 25th 2013.

Oral presentation of papers:

Time:

Each paper has an allocation of 20 minutes for presentation, 15 minutes for the speech and 5 minutes for Q&As.

Presentation devices:

The room will be equipped with a video projector (VGA connector), an audio output (stereo minijack), and a microphone. Presenters are encouraged to use their personal computers for presentations but a computer will be also available. Presenters should check their equipment in the break before their session and be available for chatting with the session chair.

Presentation content:

Make sure to include sound examples when possible and to prepare a lively presentation.

Miscellaneous:

Specific technical requirements should be asked to the conference organization (enquiry@interactive-sonification.org) before November 25th 2013.

Awards

• Best paper and poster award.

Important Dates

• Extended abstract deadline: July 26th 20013.
• Notification of eligibility for submission: August 2nd 2013.
• Full paper submission deadline: October 1st 2013.
• Notification of acceptance: October 18th 2013.
• Deadline for camera-ready papers: November 15th 2013.
• Deadline for registration: November 15th 2013.
• Special technical requirements request: November 25th 2013.
• Satellite event: December 9th 2013.
• ISon 2013 workshop: December 10th 2013.

Programme

Sunday, 8th December 2013

For those willing to have a drink on Sunday before the ISon starts, we will meet at the hall of Tennenloher Hof Hotel (Wetterkreuz 32, 91058, Erlangen, Tennenlohe) at 10:30pm.

Monday, 9th December 2013

Tuesday, 10th December 2013

Hackday

For more details on the hackday please contact the organizers and check the following information.

Registration

Important note:

Remember that, for each paper/music piece, at least one author must be registered for the conference by November 10th 2013. If none of the authors is registered by this date, the paper will be removed from the conference proceedings.

Registration:

Registration fees will be taken on trust and collected during the first day of the conference. Please send an email to enquiry@interactive-sonification.org to register.

Registrations to the ISon2013 workshop include:

• Attendance to all paper sessions, posters and keynote.
• mid-morning and mid-afternoon coffee breaks on the9th and/or 10th of December.
• Meals on the 9th and/or 10th of December.
• 1 ticket for the workshop get-together dinner on the 10th of December.

Prices:

Early registration, before November 10th 2013:

• 80€ non-student and student registrations.

Late registration, after November 10th 2013:

• 90€ non-student and student registrations.

Location

The ISon 2013 will take place at Fraunhofer IIS, in Erlangen, Germany: http://www.iis.fraunhofer.de/en/kontakt/anfahrt/erlangen.html

Accommodation

Important note:

We are not able to organize any block-booked cheap accommodation. Participants will have to arrange their own travel and accommodation. We advise you to book accommodation early as it can be very difficult to find last-minute accommodation in Erlangen.

Hotels:

Here you can find some convenient hotels in Tennenlohe, where Fraunhofer IIS is located:

http://www.iis.fraunhofer.de/en/kontakt/hotels.html

Special prices for Fraunhofer visitors are available on the hotels located in Tennenlohe. Please mention that you will be visiting Fraunhofer IIS when doing your reservation.

Tennenlohe is a small residential village. For those of you interested in staying in a more exciting city, Erlangen and Nuremberg are full of possibilities for accommodation.