acid highlights
13th International Conference on Virtual Systems and Multimedia (VSMM07)
In September 2007, the annual conference of the Virtual Systems and Multimedia Society came
to Australia for the first time after having been held in Xi’an China in 2006, Ghent
Belgium in 2005, Ogaki Japan in 2004, and other overseas locations in previous years. The
conference was held from Sunday 23 to Wednesday 26 September 2007 at the Creative Industries
Precinct in Brisbane, with a special lead-up forum in Sydney on Friday 21 September.
VSMM07 was hosted by ACID, the Australasian CRC for Interaction Design,
endorsed by the United Nations through the UNESCO Culture Section, and accepted by Springer
for publication as a Tier 1 peer-reviewed conference.
Presenters and delegates at VSMM07 explored the following themes:
- Virtual Heritage and Virtual Cultures
- Virtual Environments and Virtual Experiences
- Applied Technologies and Systems
Five internationally recognised keynote speakers also presented their views on virtual
systems and multimedia.
A highlight of the keynote series was the closing speech presented by Professor Mark Burry
of RMIT’s Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory. Prof Burry delivered his
presentation via Skype video in real time from Barcelona, Spain, where he is the Chief
Architect on the project to complete construction of Antoni Gaudi’s Temple Sagrada
Familia.
A total of 140 individual delegates from 18 countries registered for part or all of the
conference sessions.
On the final day of VSMM07, prizes were awarded across a number of categories:
Queensland Government Industry Prize and Industry Category Best
Paper Award
Helen Travers, Ernest Hunter, Julie Gibson, Jonathon Campion: Pride and Performance:
Innovative Multimedia in the Service of Behavioural Health Change in Remote Indigenous
Settings
Applied Tech Category Best Paper Award
Christian Friedrich: SmartVolumes - Adaptive Voronoi Power Diagramming for Real-time
Volumetric Design Exploration
Virtual Environments Category Best Paper Award
Anita Kocsis: Unraveling Information and Crocheting Meaning: Designing Complex
Information for Museum Audiences
Virtual Heritage Category Best Paper Award
Marnie Feneley, Tom Chandler, Nils Gleissenberger, Ben Alexander: Reconstructing the West
Mebon Vishnu: A Marriage of Traditional Artefactual Analysis with Digital 3D
Visualization
Best Poster Award
Brian Donovan: Exceptional Access: Re-presenting Ancient Selinus Virtually
Student Bursary Awards
Changyu Diao: Interactive High Resolution Texture Mapping for the 3D Models of Cultural
Heritage
Eric Fassbender: Using a Dance Pad to Navigate through the Virtual Heritage Environment
of Macquarie Lighthouse, Sydney
Jianming Lu: Knowledge Based Lacuna Detection and Segmentation for Olf Paintings
Malcolm Pumpa: Beyond the Map: Issues in the Design of a Virtual 3D Knowledge Space for
Aboriginal Knowledge
Maia Zaharieva: From Manual to Automated Optical Recognition of Ancient Coins
'Attending the VSMM07 Industry Session allowed me to meet a lot of interesting people
from all around the world, and to learn from the global research leaders in visualisation
and 3D worlds.
'The new networks I formed, and the knowledge I gained, will be very useful to
BoaB's ongoing development of better services and completely new systems for our
clients. It was refreshing to get a new perspective as we are rapidly moving into
cutting-edge Semantic Web technologies and real-time visualisation will be a key driver for
the next stage of web tech.'
David Petersen
Systems Architect
BoaB Interactive
Urban Planning Tool:
We built an urban-planning simulation for secondary school students, so they can see the
effect of development decisions on a virtual model of the Kelvin Grove Urban Village and the
people who live and work in it.
HxI Experts Workshop:
We participated in the HxI Experts Workshop with NICTA, CSIRO and DSTO in 2006.
