SAAM 2018

Workshop on Semantic Applications for Audio and Music

9th October 2018, Monterey, California, USA.
Held in conjunction with ISWC 2018.

Call for Contributions

Deadline has been extended to 24th May 2018. Abstract still due on 18th May 2018.

The SAAM organising committee would like to invite researchers, engineers, developers and all those interested in semantic applications for audio and music to submit their work (long/short/challenge papers) to SAAM 2018, held in conjunction with the International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2018) on October 9th, 2018, in Monterey, California, USA.

SAAM is a venue for dissemination and discussion, identifying intersections in the challenges and solutions which cut across musical areas. In finding common approaches and coordination, SAAM will set the research agenda for advancing the development of semantic applications for audio and music.

Abstract submission deadline: 18th May 2018 (23:59 UTC-11)
Submission deadline EXTENDED: 18th May 2018 24th May 2018 (23:59 UTC-11) (see IMPORTANT DATES)
Submissions via: EasyChair SAAM2018 page
Contact: saam2018@easychair.org
The workshop proceedings will be made available in the ACM Digital Library.

Background and Objectives

Music provides a fascinating and challenging field for the application of Semantic Web technologies. Music is culture. Yet as knowledge, music takes fundamentally different forms: as digital audio waveforms recording a performance (e.g. MP3); symbolic notation prescribing a work (scores, Music Encoding Initiative); instructions for synthesising or manipulating sounds (MIDI, Digital Audio Workstations); catalogues of performance or thematic aggregations (playlists, setlists); psychological responses to listening; and as an experienced and interpretable art form. How can these heterogeneous structures be linked to each other? To what end? How do we study these materials? Can computational and knowledge management analyses yield insight within and across musics? Semantic Web technologies have been applied to these challenges – across industry, memory institutions and academia – but with results reported to conferences representing the communities of different disciplines of musical study.

The workshop will bring together established members of the Music Informatics and ISWC communities with users, practitioners and researchers beyond its normal boundaries. SAAM will encourage a multidisciplinary audience, providing attendees with the opportunity of learning about the needs and experiences of these users. Conversely, music specialists will be availed of the latest developments in the Semantic Web, and how they can be applied to their work. SAAM also invites the wider community to discover “what makes music interesting!”.

Topics of Interest

Topics of interest for the workshop include, but are not limited to:

Consuming and exploiting music and media data on the Semantic Web

  • Music recommender systems using Semantic Web data
  • Visualisations of music and time-based media using Semantic Web data
  • Semantic Web-based automation in content management, distribution, archiving and curation
  • Emerging interchange standards using Semantic Web technologies (e.g. IIIF AV)
  • Music and media content resolution
  • Semantic Web in musicology
  • Sonification and composition techniques in the context of the Semantic Web

Producing and publishing music and media-related data on the Semantic Web

  • Annotations, ground truth collections and crowd-sourcing for music and media collections
  • Uniquely identifying music resources on the Web
  • Automatic interlinking of music- and media- related datasets
  • Learning ontologies and structured music data from Web mining
  • Publishing the results of content-based analysis on the Semantic Web
  • Semantic Web technologies in the recording studio
  • Capturing annotations at source in composition and performance

Managing music and media-related data

  • Management of music libraries, archives and digital collections
  • Managing music analysis services and workflows
  • Semantic Web services for music and media processing, rights, policies, payment
  • Preserving Semantic Web data through remixing and re-use
  • End-to-end semantic flows throughout the music creation and interpretation lifecycle

Modelling music and media-related data

  • Music and media metadata, from production to personal applications
  • Ontologies and knowledge representation for the music and time-based media domains
  • Representations for time-based navigation e.g. musical and narrative structures

Submissions

SAAM invites short, long, and challenge paper submissions. Papers will be peer reviewed by 2-3 members of the programme committee following a single-blind review process. Please produce your paper using the ACM template and submit it to SAAM on EasyChair by 24th May 2018 (see Important dates and please note that the abstract has to be submitted by the 18th).

Submission formats

Full papers (maximum 8 pages plus references) should report on substantially complete and mature work, or efforts that have reached an important milestone. Short papers (maximum 4 pages plus references) may highlight demonstrators or preliminary results to bring them to the community’s attention, or present emerging technologies and approaches as position papers. For both full and short papers, we encourage submissions which report the practical application of semantic technologies to the audio and music domain, and for which demonstrators can be shown during presentation of the paper at the workshop. We also encourage sharing of demonstrators amongst participants during the workshop coffee break.

Accepted full and short papers papers will be included directly in the workshop proceedings to be published in the ACM ICPS, and presented at the workshop.

Music and Audio Applications Challenge papers (maximum 1 page plus references), henceforth ‘Challenge papers’, encourage the attendance and engagement of users (or potential users) of Semantic Web technologies through music and audio applications. Challenge papers should take the form of an extended abstract or short position paper reporting or motivating a specific problem, use case, or application. Challenge papers need not report a completed implementation or evaluation, and may be illustrative or speculative in proposing an application of semantic technology from the perspective of a clearly articulated user need.

Accepted Challenge papers will be incorporated within a single consolidated article, edited by the chairs, and included in the workshop proceedings. Challenge papers will be presented as short pitches, followed by collective discussion, within a dedicated session at the workshop.

Summary of submission lengths (details above):

  • Long papers: up to 8 pages excluding references),
  • Short papers: up to 4 pages (excluding references),
  • Challenge papers: 1 page extended abstracts (excludings references).

All submitted papers must:

  • be written in English;
  • contain author names, affiliations and e-mail addresses;
  • be formatted according to the ACM SIG Proceedings template, using 9pt Type 1 font;
  • be in PDF format (please ensure that the PDF can be viewed on any platform) and formatted for A4 size.

It is the authors’ responsibility to ensure that their submissions adhere strictly to the required format. Submissions that do not comply with the above requirements may be rejected without review. Please note that at least one author from each accepted paper must attend the workshop to present their work, and must be registered by 29th June 2018 (see Important dates).

ACM template
Submissions: EasyChair SAAM2018 page
Contact email: saam2018@easychair.org

The workshop proceedings will be published in the ACM ICPS and will be made available in the ACM Digital Library. Please use the ‘ACM SigConf’ version of the ‘2017 ACM Master Article Template’ – for MS Word (Mac and Windows versions are available), please use the ACM_SigConf template from the master for LaTeX (version 1.50), and see sample-sigconf.tex

Important Dates

Abstract submission deadline: 18th May 2018 (23:59 UTC-11)
Paper submission deadline EXTENDED: 18th May 2018 24th May 2018 (23:59 UTC-11)
Notification of acceptance: 27th June 2018
Registration deadline for one author per accepted paper: 29th June 2018
Camera ready submission deadline: 29th July 2018
Workshop: 9th October 2018

Workshop Organisation

Programme chairs

Sean Bechhofer, School of Computer Science, University of Manchester
George Fazekas, Centre for Digital Music (C4DM), Queen Mary University of London (QMUL)
Kevin Page, Oxford e-Research Centre, Dept. Engineering Science, University of Oxford

Organising Committee members

Miguel Ceriani (Website Chair)
David Weigl (Publicity and Proceedings Chair)
tbc.

Programme Committee

Alessandro Adamou, Insight Centre
Miguel Ceriani, Queen Mary University of London
Mathieu d’Aquin, Insight Centre
David De Roure, University of Oxford
Alan Dix, University of Birmingham
Stephen Downie, University of Illinois
Frederic Font, Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Nick Gibbins, University of Southampton
Andrew Hankinson, Bodleian Libraries
Kevin Kishimoto, Stanford University Libraries
Graham Klyne, University of Oxford
David Lewis, University of Oxford
Pasquale Lisena, EURECOM
Albert Meroño-Peñuela, VU Amsterdam
Terhi Nurmikko-Fuller, Australian National University
Sergio Oramas, Universidad Politécnica Madrid
Mark Sandler, Queen Mary University of London
Stefan Schlobach, VU Amsterdam
Xavier Serra, Universitat Pompeu Fabra
York Sure-Vetter, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
Florian Thalmann, Queen Mary University of London
Jacco Vanossenbrungen, CWI & VU Amsterdam
David Weigl, University of Oxford
Tillman Weyde, City University of London
Thomas Wilmering, Queen Mary University of London