Call for Papers

		   Special Topic Issue of _JASIST_

	Computational Methods for Style Analysis and Synthesis

   The next Special Topics Issue of the _Journal of the American
   Society for Information Science and Technology_ (JASIST) is
   scheduled to come out in early 2004 on the topic of Computational
   Methods for Style Analysis and Synthesis. The guest editor for
   this special issue will be Shlomo Argamon of the Illinois Institute
   of Technology in Chicago, IL.

   In recent years a growing number of researchers working in a
   variety of different areas have focused on explicitly addressing
   recognition and generation of style in their various disciplines,
   research that contrasts with traditional emphases on 'performance'
   or 'content' or 'meaning'.  Indeed, in some media such as music,
   visual art and to a lesser extent, film and even expressive speech,
   'meaning' itself comprises mainly factors such as excitation and
   calmness or other emotional expressions that can be considered
   aspects of style instead of what is usually thought of as content.

   Recent achievements in style research include systems for
   authorship attribution, organizing and retrieving documents based
   on their writing style, composing new music in a given composer's
   style, rendering animation in different motion styles, and more.
   Work in all media shares the problem of formalizing a notion of
   style, and developing a modeling language that supports the
   representation of differing styles.  The precise methodology used
   may depend upon the use of stylistic variation in a domain. Often,
   style is used to place a work into a genre, i.e. a context of other
   works. In other cases, style can be used to connect affect to
   content, as in the generation of animation sequences. Such
   different uses of style in some medium can be analyzed and such
   analysis used to categorize or identify particular works as well as
   to enable automatic generation of works with particular styles.

   Beyond purely utilitarian considerations are other important issues
   specifically related to using computers as an adjunct to artists in
   various media (graphics, music, text, etc.), and here we may
   examine the expressive qualities expressed by different stylistic
   mechanisms.  Here the fundamental questions are: How may stylistic
   features be formalized?  How may they be extracted from a given
   performance or piece?  How do such features correlate with the
   "feeling" being conveyed?  How may style be incorporated or added
   to a performance or piece?

   We seek submissions that address all aspects of style analysis and
   synthesis from a computational perspective, but are particularly
   interested to see work that addresses some of the following
   questions:

   - What is style, and how may it be formalized?
   - What kinds of features indicate style (as opposed to function or
     meaning)?
   - How is style related to short- and long-term temporal
     dependencies, such as found in music or text?
   - How do stylistic features correlate with affect of the
     observer/performer?
   - How may style be effectively combined with pre-existing content?
   - What sorts of formal modeling methods are useful in representing
     style?
   - How may one effectively learn a style of expression and then
     execute it?
   - How does perceived style depend on the observer's context?
   - How may presentation style affect comprehension?
   - What connections can be drawn from stylistic methods used for one
     domain to another?

   We seek papers that discuss research in the area of Style Analysis
   and Synthesis in all media and from many angles.  Inquiries can be
   made to the guest editor at argamon@iit.edu.

     Manuscript submissions (four copies of full articles) should be
     addressed to:

     Professor Shlomo Argamon
     Department of Computer Science
     Illinois Institute of Technology
     10 W. 31st Street
     Chicago, IL  60616

     (312) 567-5289	voice
     (312) 567-5067	fax
     argamon@iit.edu	email

   The deadline for accepting manuscripts for consideration for
   publication in this special issue is August 31, 2003.  All
   manuscripts will be reviewed by a select panel of referees, and
   those accepted will be published in a special issue of
   _JASIST_. Original artwork and a signed copy of the copyright
   release form will be required for all accepted papers.

   A copy of the call for papers will be available on the World Wide
   Web as is further information about _JASIST_, at http://www.asis.org/.

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