The following workshops will be organized in conjunction with the ACM Multimedia 2002 conference.

• W1: Immersive Telepresence
• W2: Multimedia and Security
• W3: Multimedia Information Retrieval

The workshops will take place on Friday, December 6th, 2002. A specific registration is required for the participation to the workshops.

If you want more information on the contents of the workshops and how to actively participate, please visit the workshop websites and contact directly one of the organizers.

W1: Workshop on Immersive Telepresence

Organizers:

Gopal Pingali	IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, NY, USA
Ramesh Jain	Georgia Institute of Technology, USA

Refer to the Worshop web site for more detailed information.

Description: Areas of interest for this workshop include (but are not limited to):

• Design of telepresence systems
• Architecture of physical spaces to support telepresence
• Multimodal sensing (including cameras/computer vision, microphone arrays/acoustics, haptic sensors, active badges etc.)
• Multimodal presentation and display (including projection systems, flat panels, 3D graphics, 3D audio)
• Virtual and augmented reality
• Network infrastructure
• Spatio-temporal databases for telepresence
• Design of the telepresence experience
• User studies on effective telepresence
• Example systems for videoconferencing, virtual meetings, remote surveillance etc.

W2: Workshop on Multimedia and Security: Authentication, Secrecy, and Steganalysis

Organizers:

Jana Dittmann	Applied University Leipzig, Germany
Jessica Fridrich	SUNY Binghamton, NY, USA
Petra Wohlmacher	Regulatory Authority for Telecommunications and Posts, Germany

Refer to the Worshop web site for more detailed information.

Description: Based on the previous excellent experience of the last four workshops, the objectives of the workshop are

• Discussion of authentication technologies, both on the basis of fragile watermarks and combinations of perceptual fingerprints and robust watermarks for digital image, video, and audio data
• Discussion of reversible watermarking technologies, i.e. technologies where the origi-nal content can be completely restored. As a generalization, there appears to be a considerable interest in reversible watermarking methods with the additional property that embedding commutes with predefined degradation processing. This means that watermark removal after content degradation yields content with minimum degradation. The definition of parameter ranges (robust-ness, security, transparency, capacity, complexity) for different watermarking application areas;
• Steganalysis as method to detect media manipulations to embed hidden communication channels: Steganographic capacity for various embedding paradigms, identification of steganographic products, estimation of message size and its decoding, universal blind detectors for unknown steganographic methods, practical definition of steganographic security.
• Discussion of electronic signatures especially focused on ongoing processes of legislation and harmonization, but also definitions of requirements for technical equipment as well as their related security infrastructures, and interoperability aspects of electronic signature products. Particularly within the multimedia area there exist specific requirements.

W3: Workshop on Multimedia Information Retrieval

Organizers:

Prof. Sibel Adali	Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Prof. Yuichi Nakamura	University of Tsukuba, Japan
Dr. Uma Srinavasan	CSIRO, Sydney Australia

Refer to the Worshop web site for more detailed information.

Description:

Following the success of the three previous workshops, MISRM 1999, and MIR 2000, MIS 2001 all held in conjunction with the respective ACM Multimedia Conferences, we are organizing a fourth edition of the Inlt. Workshop on Multimedia Information Retrieval, MIR 2002, to be held jointly with ACM Multimedia 2002. Its purpose is to bring together researchers, developers and practitioners from academia and industry. The workshop will serve as a forum for discussion, presentation, and exploration of techniques, approaches and experiences in the field of multimedia information retrieval.

In order to have an application focus, this year we will have a special invited session on Multimedia content-based retrieval for cultural heritage applications. The special session will focus on content-based retrieval in the framework of cultural heritage applications and will be organized in cooperation with DELOS-NSF working group on "Digital Imagery for Significant Cultural and Historical Materials".