Welcome to Manufacts,
the new ISGS newsletter!

As a service to the gesture community and anyone who is interested, ISGS will bring you news and updates from the society and the community of gesture research. Look here for information on what people are doing in the field of gesture studies, and submit your information to share with your colleagues. Please send all news items (including information on conferences, new books, etc.) to ISGS' public relations officer,
Mandana Seyfeddinipur. You do not have to be a member to submit a link or notice to Manufacts.

ISGS news

July 2008

Three gesture conferences in 2009!!!

The gesture community is growing. In 2009 three conferences/workshops will take place in Europe all dedicated to the study of gesture.

The 8th International Gesture Workshop Gesture in Embodied Communication and Human-Computer Interaction: GW 2009

GW 2009 aims to bring together people from different research strands that concern themselves with gesture-based communication, but tend to take different perspectives in doing so. For researchers in computer science, engineering, or human-computer interaction, the workshop will provide a well-known forum to present recent approaches to using gesture or sign language as a means of interacting with machines. In addition, GW 2009 addresses researchers from Linguistics as well as the cognitive, neuro and computer sciences to bring to bear their new theoretical insights into the embodied bases of human verbal and nonverbal communication. We thus invite researchers from both realms to come and meet at GW 2009 in order to exchange ideas, connect discoveries, and further the advancement of gesture-based human-machine interaction (http://www.gw2009.de/)

International Conference on Multimodality of communication in children: gestures, emotions, language and cognition: MULTIMOD 2009

The MULTIMOD 2009 conference is being organized jointly by psychologists and linguists from the Universities of Toulouse (Toulouse II) and Grenoble (Grenoble III) and will take place in Toulouse in July 2009. The aim of this international conference will be to assess research on theories, concepts and methods relating to multimodality in children (http://w3.eccd.univ-tlse2.fr/multimod2009/index.php?pg=acc&lg=en).

International Conference on Gesture and Speech in Interaction: GESPIN 2009

The Centre for Speech and Language Processing at the Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland is organising an international conference on speech and gesture in interaction; GESPIN 2009. The conference will take place in September 2009. The aim of the conference is to promote interdisciplinary perspectives to allow for the most efficient understanding of the complexity of multimodal communication. Therefore, linguists, psychologists, phoneticians, speech technologists and language engineers as well as researchers from all other fields who share the interest in speech and gesture-based communication are invited to participate in the GESPIN conference (http://www.ifa.amu.edu.pl/~gespin/).

May 2008

Call for papers for panel Gestures in communication: Processes of concretization and abstraction

Ellen Fricke, Irene Mittelberg, and Sedinha Teßendorf are organizing a panel titled Gestures in communication: Processes of concretization and abstraction at the 12^th International Congress of the German Society for Semiotics (DGS) “The concrete as a sign” (“Das Konkrete als Zeichen”) in Stuttgart, Germany, October 9-12, 2008 (http://www.dgs-stuttgart-2008.de).  A special focus of the panel will be on the topics of deixis and indexicality, metonymy and metaphor, ritualization and stylization, as well as on specification and concretization of lexical meaning and mental imagery via gestures (call: doc , pdf).

April 2008

Special Issue on Gesture and Communicative Development

The Special Issue of the Journal First Language: Gesture and Communicative Development edited by Michèle Guidett and Elena Nicoladis is published (http://fla.sagepub.com/content/vol28/issue2/).

Febuary 2008

ISGS electronic sign up and payment possible now

Members of the ISGS who want to renew their membership and people who want to become members can now sign up and pay electronically via PayPal (join).

Workshop: Gesture: A comparison of signed and spoken languages

There will be a workshop on the comparison of signed and spoken languages at 30. Jahrestagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft fuer Sprachwissenschaft (DGfS) (homepage), Bamberg, Germany, 27-29 Febuary 2008 . The workshop program and the abstracts are now available.

Call for papers for a workshop within the Sixth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2008): "Multimodal corpora: From Models of Natural Interaction to Systems and Applications", 27 May 2008, Marrakech (Morocco)

This workshop continues the successful series of similar workshops at LREC 00, 02, 04 and 06 (http://www.lrec-conf.org/lrec2008/ )Also documented in a special issue of the Journal of Language Resources and Evaluation due to come out in spring 2008. There is an increasing interest in multimodal communication and multimodal corpora as visible by European Networks of Excellence and integrated projects such as HUMAINE, SIMILAR, CHIL, AMI, CALLAS. Furthermore, the success of recent conferences and workshops dedicated to multimodal communication (ICMI, IVA, Gesture, PIT, Nordic Symposia on Multimodal Communication, Embodied Language Processing) and the creation of the Journal of Multimodal User Interfaces also testifies to the growing interest in this area, and the general need for data on multimodal behaviours. The focus of this LREC'2008 workshop on multimodal corpora will be on models of natural interaction and their contribution to the design of multimodal systems and applications (pdf).

January 2008

Submission deadline for the AISB Symposium on Multimodal Output Generation is extended to January 18, 2008

The organizers of the Mog 2008 decided to extend the submission deadline. For details see below (November 2007).

New version of the annotation tool ANVIL released

A new version of the annotation tool ANVIL was realeased. The software if free and can be requested here (homepage). The documentation of the new features can be downloaded here. The new version has a number of new features:

* Multiple videos
* Spatial annotation
* Relative path names
* Fixed PRAAT import
* Images in the coding manual
* Switching on/off + zooming tracks
* Improved export function (project tool)
* Improved waveform loader
* Refurbished plugin interface

In cases of question and support please contact the developer Michael Kipp (support@anvil-software.de).

Two research positions (PhD) at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligance (DFKI)

The German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) is the leading German research institute in the field of innovative software technology. Based in Kaiserslautern, Saarbrücken, Bremen and Berlin, the DFKI ranks among the important "Centers of Excellence" worldwide.

The DFKI at Saarbrücken, Germany, is seeking 2 RESEARCHERS (full-time) for a research position in the area of intelligent user interfaces. The earliest start date is March 2008. The duration of the contract will be 2 years with a potential extension of one year. Candidates are expected to work towards a PhD degree in this time.

The positions will be affiliated with the independent research group "Embodied Assistants for Multimodal Interaction", established as part of the Cluster of Excellence "Multimodal Computing and Interaction", a co-operation between Saarland University, DFKI, MPI Informatik and MPI Softwaresysteme. The group's research vision is a natural interaction between human users and autonomous embodied agents in 3D worlds. Current topics comprise artificial intelligence methods for controlling virtual humans, realistic character animation and innovative 3D interaction techniques.

We are looking for international applications from students with a finished computer science degree (Diplom, MSc or equivalent) and a research background in AI and/or computer graphics. Solid practical programming skills are desirable, knowledge in computational linguistics and cognitive psychology is highly welcome. Good knowledge of written and spoken English is required (info).

November 2007

Call for papers for the AISB Symposium on Multimodal Output Generation
(submission deadline extended to January 18, 2008)

The MOG 2008 Symposium is part of the AISB 2008 Convention on Communication, Interaction and Social Intelligence, April 1-4, 2008, Aberdeen, Scotland. The AISB symposium MOG 2008 aims to bring work on multimodal output generation from different disciplines together to establish common ground and discuss possible future collaborations. Besides contributions from research fields such as multimodal language generation and embodied conversational agents, we would like to bring in an additional angle by investigating how research on multimodal output generation can benefit from a non-engineering perspective on multimodality. For example, how can research done in psychology and cognitive sciences, related to understanding how humans perceive and process multimodal information, be properly formalized for the purposes of intelligent multimodal output generation? And to what extent is it possible to formalize existing theories about how meaning is made in multimodal communication and use that for generating more meaningful multimodal output in the context of intelligent systems? The interdisciplinary approach and persepective is reflected in our guest speakers: Justine Cassell (Northwestern University), Eija Ventola (University of Helsinki) and Michelle Zhou (IBM T. J. Watson Research Center). Thus, contributions are invited that are technically oriented as well as work in the area of human communication, such as cognitive models of multimodal communication and interaction. This way, we hope to combine an AI/engineering perspective with input from other disciplines such as linguistics and psychology, providing a forum where international researchers from different disciplinary backgrounds can exchange ideas on multimodal output generation and engage in scientific research collaboration (call).

September 2007

Postdoc position at National University of Singapore

The Language and Gesture Laboratory is a new laboratory in Department of Psychology at National University of Singapore (www.fas.nus.edu.sg/psy). It studies how adults and children speaking in different languages use gesture to communicate and the role of gesture in reflecting thinking. We are looking for a two-year postdoc. The topic is relatively open as long as it relates to speech and gesture communication in adult and children. Postdocs are also encouraged to collaborate with other research clusters at the University. More information on Language and Gesture Laboratory can be found at http://wingchee.googlepages.com/>. Applicants should go to http://www.fas.nus.edu.sg/research/pfp.html for details.

Call for papers for a special issue on Gesture in Multimodal Systems

This special issue of the International Journal of Semantic Computing (www.worldscinet.com/ijsc) is concerned with models of gesture that can contribute to semantics for multimodal systems. We see this as ranging from simply using gesture to help understand the most salient part of another modality, e.g., speech, to full-blown gestural interfaces, to the building of data/corpora to support this research (call).

June 2007

The third conference of the ISGS in Chicago was a great success

The third conference of the ISGS took place at Northwestern University in Chicago, USA. The conference was organized with great success by Ric Ashley, Justine Cassell, Susan Duncan, Susan Goldin Meadow, David McNeill and Gale Stam. Scientists from all around the world presented their research over a course of 4 days (program and abstracts). The conference was featured in an article by the Chicago Tribune (pdf).

May 2007

Special about Adam Kendon in Semiotic Bulletin 9

The recent issue of the Semiotic Bulletin 9 includes a special about Adam Kendon. The artcile written by Cornelia Müller gives an overview of his life and work (http://www.semioticon.com/semiotix/semiotix9/index.html).

The Berlin Gesture Center opens at the Museum for Communication in Berlin

As of June 1st the Berlin Gesture Center organizes  trainings, a lecture series, and a monthly colloquium in cooperation with the Museum of Communications in Berlin, Germany. The opening event "HANDS, LANGUAGE, GESTURES" will take place on Friday, June 1st , 4 pm with a series of three lectures by Hedda Lausberg, Ellen Fricke and Cornelia Müller (http://www.berlingesturecenter.de/museumfuerkommunikation/eroeffnung1juni07.html).

April 2007

Call for papers for the International Conference Language, Communication and Cognition

The University of Brighton (UK) hosts the conference "Language, Communication and Cognition" in August 2008. The conference includes a theme session "The role of gesture in communication and cognition" with Sotaro Kita and Alan Cienki as discussants (http://www.languageandcognition.net).

John Benjamins Publishing Company is launching the new book series Gesture Studies to accompany its journal Gesture.

Gesture Studies aims to publish book-length publications on all aspects of gesture. Topics may include, but are by not limited to: the relationship between gesture and speech; the role gesture may play in communication in all the circumstances of social interaction, including conversations, the work-place or instructional settings; gesture and cognition; the development of gesture in children; the place of gesture in first and second language acquisition; the processes by which spontaneously created gestures may become transformed into codified forms; the documentation and discussion of vocabularies of ‘quotable’ or ‘emblematic’ gestures; the relationship between gesture and sign; studies of gesture systems or sign languages such as those that have developed in factories, religious communities or in tribal societies; the role of gesture in ritual interactions of all kinds, such as greetings, religious, civic or legal rituals; gestures compared cross-culturally; gestures in primate social interaction; biological studies of gesture, including discussions of the place of gesture in language origins theory; gesture in multi-modal human-machine interaction; historical studies of gesture; and studies in the history of gesture studies, including discussions of gesture in the theatre or as a part of rhetoric
(http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_seriesview.cgi?series=GS).

The first volume in the series is in honor of David McNeill: "Gesture and the Dynamic View of Language. Essays in honor of David McNeill" edited by Susan Duncan, Justine Cassell and Elena Levy (http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_bookview.cgi?bookid=GS%201).

January 2007

From 2007 on the journal GESTURE will appear 3 times a year!

Due to the success of the Journal GESTURE, Benjamins has increased the publication rate from two times to three times a year!

Call for papers for the special issue, "Speech-accompanying gestures", in Language and Cognitive Processes

The guest editor will be Sotaro Kita (Univ. of Birmimgham, UK, s.kita@bham.ac.uk). The special issue aims to provide the state-of- the-art papers on the rapidly developing field of speech-accompanying gestures. The journal seeks papers reporting quantitative studies on any aspects of speech-accompanying gestures, including developmental, neuropsychological, and neuroscientific studies. The submission deadline is June 30th, 2007. The papers should be submitted from the journal's on-line submission facility to be found on the journal's home page (http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/01690965.asp). Please specify the name of the special issue in the Step 5 of the submission procedure. Please see the "Instructions for Authors" for further details of the manuscript preparation.

November 2006

New gesture group at Stony Brook

A burgeoning community of young gesture researchers has emerged at Stony Brook in the last three years. The Stony Brook Gesture Group is an interdisciplinary forum for addressing current directions in gesture research. Their weekly meetings draw a consistent and lively set of participants from the Departments of Psychology, Linguistics, and Computer Science (http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~adaptation/gesturegroup/)

September 2006

Call for papers for the 2nd International AFLiCo Conference: Typology, Gesture and Sign

The second international AFLiCo conference on typology, gesture, and sign will trake place in Lille, France (Université Lille 3), 10-12 May 2007 (http://aflico.asso.univ-lille3.fr/Events/colloque2007/).

Conference at Bielefeld University

The concluding Conference "Embodied Communication II: An Integrated Perspective" of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF): Research Group 2005/2006 "Embodied Communication in Humans and Machines" took place at Bielfeld University, Bielefeld, Germany. The organizers were Ipke Wachsmuth (Bielefeld) and Günther Knoblich (Newark)
(http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/(en)/ZIF/AG/2006/09-04-Wachsmuth.html).

July 2006

Call for papers for the 3rd Conference of the ISGS

Workshop at Bielefeld University

As part of the research year "Embodied Communication in Humans and Machines", the workshop "The Forward-Looking Nature of Embodied Communication: Projection, Participation, and Time-Scales in Social Interaction" took place at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) at Bielefeld University, Bielefeld. The workshop was organized by Jürgen Streeck (Austin, TX) and Scott Jordan (Normal, IL),
(http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/(en)/ZIF/AG/2006/07-10-Streeck.html).

Workshop at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences

The Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences held a workshop on the neurocognition of gesture processing. The workshop was organised by Thomas C. Gunter and Henning Holle (http://www.cbs.mpg.de/files/Projects/Workshop_gesture/).

June 2006

Call for papers for a special issue of First Language

Michèle Guidetti (Université Toulouse II, France) and Elena Nicoladis (University of Alberta, Canada) are editing a special issue of First Language (Gesture and Communicative Development). The two guest editors have issued the call for papers (call (pdf))

October 2005

Gesture Studies in Southern Europe: A Conference on the Island of Procida

Between the 20th and 23rd of October 2005 the Island of Procida in the Bay of Naples was the site for a small meeting in which research in gesture studies from Italy and elsewhere in Europe was presented and discussed (program and abstracts (pdf)). It was appropriate that this meeting should be held on Procida, since this is the birthplace of Andrea de Jorio (1769-1851), the Neapolitan pioneer of gesture studies. The meeting was organized by Adam Kendon (University of Naples “Orientale” and University of Calabria) and Tommaso Russo (University of Calabria), together with Daniele Gambarara (University of Calabria) and Arturo Martone (University of Naples “Orientale”) under the title: "Il gesto nel Mediterraneo: studi recenti sulla gestualità nel sud d’Europa - Gesture in the Mediterranean: Recent Research in Southern Europe". It was sponsored by the University of Naples “Orientale” and the University of Calabria, with funds from the Italian Ministry for Universities and Research (MUIR), with additional support from the Comune of Procida, the Province of Naples and the Italian Institute for Philosophical Studies of Naples. The aim of the conference was to bring together leading workers on gesture in Italy and elsewhere in Europe, as well as some younger workers, to create an opportunity in which recent developments in gesture studies could be presented and discussed in the relatively intimate atmosphere that the island of Procida provides . There were eighteen invited speakers and about twenty other participants. The invited speakers were encouraged to present surveys of their work and to discuss their general approach to problems in gesture research. The following papers were presented and discussed (for revised texts of these papers click here )

Marino Bonaiuto (Univeristy of Rome “La sapienza”):
Structure and functions of manual gestures in conversation: Conceptual problems and possible future developments.
Genevieve Calbris (CNRS - Université René Descartes):
Gesture in Speech: a symbolic system.
Olga Capirci (Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies (ISTC) and National Research Council (CNR) - Rome):
Gesture and speech: the emergence and development of a strong and changing partnership,
Sabina Fontana (University of Palermo):
Gestures and Signs: What are the boundaries between them?
Daniele Gambarara (University of Calabria):
Between gesture and oral expression: systematicity and the faculty of language
Maria Graziano (University of Naples “Orientale” and Suor Orsola Benincasa University, Naples):
A contrastive and comparative analysis of gestures of the family “Open Hand Supine”.
Adam Kendon (University of Naples “Orientale” and University of Calabria):
Fifteen years of research on gesture in Naples and elsewhere: a personal account.
Arturo Martone (University of Naples “Orientale”):
Between Voice and Gesture, the Sign: J.M. de Gérando interpreter of E.B.Condillac.
Cornelia Müller (Free University of Berlin):
Metaphors in speech and gesture: A dynamic view
Lluís Payrató (University of Barcelona):
Past and present in the research on emblems in the Hispanic tradition. Methodological considerations and future projects.
Elena Pizzuto (Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies (ISTC) and National Research Council (CNR) - Rome):
Is Pointing "just" Pointing? Unraveling the Complexity of Indexes in Human Spoken and Signed Communication
Isabella Poggi (University of Rome III):
Gestures and beyond.
Tommaso Russo (University of Calabria):
Metaphors in Sign Languages and in co-verbal gesturing.
Jürgen Streeck (University of Texas at Austin and Institute for Interdisciplinary Research, Bielefeld):
Gesture and illusion: Methods of depicting the world by moving the hands.
Jocelyne Vincent (University of Naples “Orientale”):
A 'gesture' towards a (poly-)focus on links and loose ends between culture, context and communication goals, styles and modalities.

Plans for eventual publication of the proceedings are being explored.

Embodied Communication, Bielefeld, Germany

In October (October 5-8,2005) the conference "Embodied Communication" took place in Bielefeld, Germany. The conference was organized by Ipke Wachsmuth (Bielefeld) and Günter Knoblich (Newark) (website). Among the presenters were Michael Arbib, Janet Bavelas, Charles Goodwin, Adam Kendon, and David McNeill, and Wolfgang Prinz (program (pdf)).

JUNE 2005

Interacting Bodies, Lyon, France

The second conference of the ISGS "Interacting Bodies" (Corps en Interaction), organized by Lorenza Mondada, took place in Lyon, France (website). At the conference Adam Kendon was conferred Honorary Presidency of the ISGS to honor his major contribution in the field of gesture research. During the second general assembly of the ISGS a new executive board was elected and the by-laws were amended. It was also decided that Richard Ashley will be organizing the third conference of the ISGS. The conference will be held in Chicago, USA, in early summer 2007.

OCTOBER 2004

Announcement: establishment of "Gesture Centers"

As a grass-roots way of promoting and conducting the study of gesture, local Gesture Centers are beginning to emerge. The Nijmegen Gesture Center was soon followed by the Berlin Gesture Center, and soon there will be the Austin Gesture Center. These centers represent the conduct of work on gesture in a place by a kind of sign-post. It is hoped that there will be further such centers. What kind of entity of what size is indexed by the label will vary: there will be at least one or two people working on gesture; but there may be an entire division of a research institute.

Nijmegen Gesture Center
http://www.mpi.nl/world/projects/Gesture.html
(Marianne Gullberg, Asli Ozyürek)

Berlin Gesture Center
http://www.berlingesturecenter.de/
(Ellen Fricke, Hedda Lausberg, Cornelia Müller)

FEBRUARY 2004

ISGS was incorporated as a non-profit corporation in Austin/Texas and it was granted tax-exempt status by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, both in 2003.

The “McNeill Fest”, honoring David McNeill’s work on the occasion of his retirement from teaching, was celebrated at the University of Chicago in June 2003. To see the program and pictures taken at the event, click here :
http://mcneilllab.uchicago.edu/events/fest/fest.html

ISGS co-sponsored the workshop „Gestural communication in nonhuman and human primates“ during the 5th International Conference on the Evolution of Language at the Max Planck Institut für evolutionäre Anthropologie, Leizpig (Germany), March 28 - 30, which was organized by Cornelia Müller (Berlin) and Katja Liebal (Leipzig). Among the presenters were Michael Arbib, Luigia Camaioni, Susan Goldin-Meadow, Barbara King, Cornelia Müller, and Michael Tomassello. To see the full program click here:
http://email.eva.mpg.de/~liebal/gesture_workshop/index.htm