Digital re-Discovery of Culture

Zdravejte Priateli!

Dia Dhaoibh a Cháirde! Hi Folks!
This is a blog in English, informed by Irish Gaelic, with significant Bulgarian influence, and a little bit of Turkish. We hope to add ... Macedonian, Serbian, ..., Russian, ...

Be surprised by what you will find.

If you be not surprised, then we will have failed ...

Ankara 2007

The Age of Image predates and is currently
contemporaneous with the Information Age. In
our times the explosive expansion of Web 2.0
Social Space, typified by the phenomena of
De.licio.us, Flickr, MySpace, YouTube..., and the
concomitant emergence of folksonomy, present
interesting challenges in the management of this
information. One key process by which to
accomplish this in Social Space, is the wedding
of folksonomy (of the people) with ontology (of
the machine). Such a wedding must necessarily
be conducted in the shared physicality of the
word, of language. In this respect, WordNet
together with OWL, play the role of matchmaker.
But the same Social Space also provides an
opportunity for natural folksonomical tagging by
digiFoto (key)image. The research harness for
experimental keyimage tagging consists of Flickr
as the main (digiFoto image) Social Space
testbed and De.licio.us as the auxillary outreach
secondary Social Space. Protégé Editor with
OWL-DL provides the support for the bridge from
keyimage to the formal ontology. The primary end
user application domain is the keyimage tagging
of paintings in an online art gallery.

Keywords: accessibility, art, folksonomy, keyimage, ontology.

Posted at 07:50 a.m. Read More

Mon - June 19, 2006

Ambiguity and Ontologization presented Thursday, 2006-06-15, Sofia, Bulgaria

Ambiguity informs all of human activity, even that within the imagined exact sciences such as Mathematics. So-called “imaginary” numbers (first complex numbers, and then quaternions, to the cognoscendi), the stumbling block for most of the young, was and is ontological stumbling. These numbers are natural for dancing (of people on earth or satellites in space), a three-dimensional body movement in “normal” 3-D space. This is Mathematics at play. From the point of view of play as culture progenitor, all of which is intrinsically ambiguous, it would appear natural that any ontological mirroring must also be fruitfully ambiguous. To ontologize is to be human, to act in a humanitarian way. It is only in the last forty years or so that we have adjoined the mechanical precision of the computer to (re-)inforce the precise logical understanding of humanity through ontology. We have seen the past. It is known. The future, embracing what has been, dictates a logical computable view of all subsequent ontologization, as long such a machine-era shall last. Within the reality of this framework ontological choice is computably pre-determined. The real choice is therefore, sociological and psychological, and perhaps even strictly cultural. The paper focuses on the attempt to formalize ambiguity.

Posted at 06:42 a.m. Read More

Mon - May 8, 2006

Images and Ontology

Posted at 07:39 a.m. Read More

Thu - April 20, 2006

JCMC: Digital re-Discovery of Culture & Physicality of Soul

We focus on religious issues in Europe: Northern Ireland, Bulgaria and Macedonia. The religions in question are Western European Christianity (Roman Catholic and Anglican), Eastern European Christianity (Bulgarian, Serbian and Macedonian Orthodox), and Islam. Issues of conflict which we considered were schism and its resolution or at least cohabitation, the coercion by the State to give a common identity to all its citizens based on common language or common religion. A game of inquiry is chosen as the means to conduct an investigation into these issues. For this purpose we introduce the avatar, an American of Turkish background from Chicago who wishes to find out more about grandfather Habib who emigrated from Debre, Macedonia in 1923. This kind of game of the digital re-discovery of culture, usually begins with a personal narrative called a Backstory. Being played out on the Internet the playing needs physical grounding, a physicality of soul. The game was designed and played and Macedonia experienced as outcome. Following the search of the avatar we are led to discover positive surprises that bode well for religion on the Internet.

Posted at 07:50 a.m. Read More

Thu - April 13, 2006

Hamburg 2006 New Sowa Top 12 Category Diagram

Sowa presents his Top 12 Categories in a Diamond-shaped complete Lattice diagram (p.72). In addition, he presents the 12 in a neat Tabular arrangement. The author imagined that it would be possible to arrange the 12 like the hours of a clock or the months of the year. This was achieved after 2 weeks work and the result presented in Hamburg. Only the pdf form is given here.

Posted at 08:17 a.m. Read More

Hamburg 2006 Slide Presentation in pdf format

The primary goal of the presentation was to inspire the attendees to read the paper. The presentation itself was constructed as a sort of 3 Act monologue like a play. Each act was separated by a slide. The raising and lowering of the curtain was indicated by a 3-fold picture slide. The raising (Slide 1) shows the Бухал (Eagle-Owl); the lowering (Slide 37) shows the co-author of the paper. Slides 38 to 41 are hyperlinked from the original KeyNote 2 Slide presentation and are included here to gave some idea of the type of material used.

Posted at 07:14 a.m. Read More

Sun - March 19, 2006

Hamburg 2006

Digital MultiCulture in Practice

Semantic Web ontologization, within the context of the Humanities, proceeds from the definite physical experience of the text, the performance, the human in self-expression, as narrator/performer, for an audience present, or at a distance in time and/or space. We demonstrate practical ontologization by focusing on the rhetorics of play, embracing culture in general, and by choosing to confine our terminology within the rigorous formal framework of Sowa's top 12 central categories. Specific play is addressed in the context of the digital re- discovery of culture (DrDC) game.

All of our results are bilingually expressed (English/Bulgarian) in the description logic form of the Semantic Web Ontology Language (OWL-DL). Practicality is ensured within the freely available Protégé Editor. For us, Ontology must be practical! We design DrDC games to be played. Such games must be recorded. They are played out, in reality, on the World-Wide Web (WWW).

Posted at 06:26 a.m. Read More

Fri - March 17, 2006

GARGARIN

Once upon a time ...

Posted at 07:34 a.m. Read More

Tue - February 28, 2006

SEEDI 2005, Охрид, Final Paper for Publication

Physicality of Soul, Физика на Душа,  Fisic an Anama

Abstract: The idea of Physicality of Soul was born in South Eastern Europe in 2004. The very strangeness of the phrase, using old words in unusual combination, suggests something very new and of its time. The Bulgarian, Физика на Душата, tries to capture the sense of this idea from a local cultural perspective. At the other extreme Western Region of Europe, Fisic an Anama, translates the Bulgarian. Physicality of Soul speaks of the spirit of the Digital re-Discovery of Culture made alive in the playful person, (s)he who is at play in the game of life. The World-Wide Web provides the modern cultural medium by which one begins to know the Other. Such knowledge in becoming is only fully realized in and by the body. This is Physicality of Soul. Dancing typifies Physicality of Soul. So does play-acting and singing and running. There is play to be found everywhere. How can such playing be conjoined with the digital world? How can the digital world be humanized? This paper explores the possible.
Key words: blog, digifoto, edutainment, games, google, ontology, Физика на Душата, physicality of soul, playing, world-wide web

Posted at 03:45 p.m. Read More