Goldsmiths - University of London

Dr Marian Ursu

Role

Deputy Head of Department

Research interests

My research interest is in developing new technologies for Interactive and Narrative Media.

My research team - the Narrative and Interactive Media group - together with other research teams in Computing from BT (UK), Joanneum Research (Austria), and Telefonica (Spain), and in Media Productions from Illuminations Media (UK), University of Cambridge (UK), University of Arts and Design Helsinki (Finland), University of Malmo (Sweden), and University of Ulster (UK), have develooped a new type of media: ShapeShifting Media (for further details please refer to www.ist-nm2.org and www.shapeshift.tv). The bulk of this work was carried out within the EU funded project NM2.

I am now working on developing new technologies for seamless audio-visual interactions between groups of people. This work is carried out within the EU funded TA2 project (further details will follow).

Current research

Currently, I am involved in the following research projects.

• TA2, Together Anywhere, Together Anytime. TA2 is an Integrated Project (IP) of the European 7th Framework Programme. TA2 has 13 partners from 7 European countries. It is running from November 2007 to October 2011. Its total budget is over 18 Million Euros.
• Tate Intelligent Archive of Online Events. This work is currently being supported by an AHRC grant of approximately 120 Thousand Pounds. It is a collaboration between the Tate and Goldsmiths College.

Recent projects I worked on include:

• NM2, New Media for a New Millennium. NM2 was an Integrated Project (IP) of the European 6th Framework Programme. NM2 had 13 partners from 8 European countries. It was running from 1 September 2004 to 31 August 2007. Its total budget was about 7.5 Million Euros.
• DISTARMS: Distributed Resource Allocation via a Combination of Local and Global Strategies (together with the Artificial Intelligence Lab from BT). This project was partly funded by BT Exact

Selected publications

Ursu, M.F., Kegel, I., Williams, D., Thomas, M., Mayer, H., Zsombori, V., Tuomola M.L., Larsson, H., Wyver, J., and Zimmer, R., 2007, "ShapeShifting TV - Interactive Programmes", to be published in the ACM/Springer Multimedia Systems Journal, special issue on Interactive Television (will appear in December 2007 or January 2008).

Ursu, M.F., Thomas, M., Tuomola M.L., Wright, T., and Zsombori, V., "Interactivity and Narrativity in Screen Media", to be published in the Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Multimedia Systems, Taichung, Taiwan, R.O.C, December 10-12, 2007.

Ursu, M.F., Cook, J.J., Zsombori, V, and Kegel, I., "A Genre-Independent Approach to Authoring Interactive Screen Media Narratives", to be published in the Proceedings of the AAAI Fall Symposium on Intelligent Narrative Technologies, Westin Arlington Gateway, Virginia, USA, November 9-11, 2007.

Ursu M.F., Cook J.J., Zsombori V., Kegel I., Williams D., Hausenblas M., and Tuomola M.L. "ShapeShifting Screen Media: A Declarative Computational Model for Interactive Reconfigurable Moving Image Narratives", in the Proceedings of the AAAI Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference (AIIDE 07), Stanford, USA, pp. 101-104.

Ursu, M.F., Cook, J.J., Zsombori, V., Zimmer, R., Kegel, I., Williams, D., Thomas, M., Wyver, J., and Mayer, H. 2007. "Conceiving ShapeShifting TV: A Computational Language for Truly-Interactive TV". In P. Cesar et al. (Eds): EuroITV 2007, LNCS 4471: 96-106.

Williams D., Ursu M.F., Cook, J.J., Zsombori, V., Engler, M., and Kegel, I.C, 2006. "ShapeShifter TV: Enabling Multi-Sequential Narrative Productions for Delivery over Broadband". In the Proceedings of "The 2nd Institution of Engineering and Technology Multimedia Conference 2006: From IT to HD" London, UK, 29-30 November, 2006.

Williams, D., Cook, J.J., Engler, M., Kegel, I.C., Lohse, L.C., Stevens, T.S., Ursu, M.F., Wyver, J., Zsombori, V., 2006. "Shape Shifted TV: A Real Opportunity for Broadband", International Broadcast Convention (IBC) 2006, pp. 401-409, IBC06 Conference Publication.

Ursu, M.F., Virginas, B., Owusu, G., and Voudouris, C, 2005. "Distributed Resource Allocation via Local Choices. A Case Study of Workforce Allocation", International Journal of Knowledge-Based and Intelligent Engineering Systems, Vol 9, Number 4, pp. 293-302, IOS Press, Netherlands.

Virginas, B., Ursu, M.F., 2005. "Distributed versus Centralised Resource Allocation: An Interplay of Power in an Agent-Based System", in the proceedings of the IASTED International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Applications, Innsbruck, Austria, February 14-16, 2005.

Williams, D., Kegel, I., Ursu, M.F., et. al., "NM2, New Media for a New Millenium", In Hobson P., Izquierdo E., et al. (Eds.): Knowledge-Based Media Analysis for Self-Adaptive and Agile Multi-Media, Proceedings of the European Workshop for the Integration of Knwoledge, Semantics and Digital Media Technology, EWIMT 2004, November 25-26, 2004.

Ursu, M.F., Virginas, B., 2004. "Distributed Resource Allocation via Local Choices: General Model and a Basic Solution". In (eds. M.Negoita, R.J.Howlett and L.C.Jain) Eigth International Conference on Knowledge-Based Intelligent Information and Engineering Systems (KES04) Wellington, New Zealand, 22-24 September 2004, Lecture Notes in AI (3215), pp. 764-771, Springer-Verlag.

Rosengard, J.M., Ursu, M.F., 2004. "Ontological Representations of Software Patterns". In (eds. M.Negoita, R.J.Howlett and L.C.Jain) Eigth International Conference on Knowledge-Based Intelligent Information and Engineering Systems (KES04) Wellington, New Zealand, 22-24 September 2004, Lecture Notes in AI (3215), pp. 31-37, Springer-Verlag.

Ursu, M.F., Zimmer, R., 2002. "On the Notion of Compliance in Critiquing Intelligent Design Assistants: Representing Duty and Contrary-to-Duty Statements". The Sixth International Conference on Information Visualisation; Symposium on Computer Aided Design, London, UK, 10-12 July 2002, pp. 644-649, IEEE Computer Society.

Ursu, M.F., Zimmer, R., 2002. "Compliance in Critiquing Intelligent Design Assistants: Isomorphic Representation of General Norms and Exceptions". The Sixth International Conference on Knowledge-Based Intelligent Information and Engineering Systems (Eds: Damiani, E., et al) Crema, Italy, 16-18 September 2002, pp. 98-104, IOS Press.

Ursu, M.F. and Hammond, P., 2000. "Expressing Regulatory Design Knowledge for Critiquing Intelligent Design Assistants - Spatial Representations", Artificial Intelligence in Design - AID00 (Ed: Gero, J. S.), Worcester, USA, 26-29 June, pp. 103-126, Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Ursu, M.F., 1998. "Towards the Standardisation of Intelligent Design Assistants", The 13th Biennial European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, ECAI98 (Ed: Prade, H.), Brighton, UK, August 23-28, pp. 104-105, John Wiley & Sons.

Ursu, M.F. and Hammond, P., 1998. "Representing Expressed Design Knowledge", Association for Information Systems 1998 Americas Conference, AIS98 (Ed: Benbasat, I.), Baltimore, Maryland, USA, August 14-16, pp. 393-395.