1. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Soft Ontologies and Meaning dimensions of the City Mauri Kaipainen, PhD Knowledge Environments Research Group Tallinn University

2. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 My institution Tallinn University, Department of InformaticsTallinn University Interactive Media and Knowledge Environments (IMKE) international MA programInteractive Media and Knowledge Environments Knowledge Environments Research Group (KERG)Knowledge Environments Research Group Tallinn Media Cluster (TMC)Tallinn Media Cluster

3. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 My background and approach Backgrounds: Cognitive science New Media Semiotics Education Musicology => Talking about a city as A medium An environment of joint sense-making (semiosis)

4. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Aim To Point out the omnipresence of ontologies Spatialize and de-textualize the idea of ontologies De-cartesianize ontologies of the city => Propose a hybrid ontological space as a bridge between textual and spatial ontologies

5. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 OUTLINE About modeling Ontology and ontologies Soft ontologies Multi-perspective media Taggin’ Tallinn

6. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 ABOUT MODELS

7. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Models Can be, e.g. Miniatures Visualizations Spatializations Dynamic system models Mathematical models Algorithmic and generative models Conceptual models... Big picture: Digital modeling of the whole world ongoing!

8. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Models Explain objects, processes, activities (and sequences) Simplify rather than complicate Help understanding Structure ways of managing the objects of modeling (as in digital systems)

9. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 ONTOLOGY AND ONTOLOGIES

10. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Ontologies as conceptual models Models of How a domain is conceived to exist What a domain is conceived to consist of What relationships its constituents have with each other and the external world

11. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Ontology in Philosophy ”Study of being or existence” (WP)WP Discipline of philosophy Ontologies ”Bad” reputation in postmodern thinking: Associated with na ï ve realism postmodern thinking

12. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Ontologies in Computer science ” Ontology is a data model that represents a domain and is used to reason about the objects in that domain and the relations between them” (WP)WP ” An ontology is a specification of a conceptualization.” (Gruber)Gruber

13. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Roles of Ontology Functions of ontology discussed: Conceptual model of sense-making within a domain Spatial model(!) Backbone of Multidimensional Database media

14. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Premise 1: Ontologies are always there Each message, text, or narrative assumes an ontology, either implicit (usually), or explicit City as a text (Lotman) or a story.

15. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Premise 2: Ontologies reflect perspectives Not neutral but reflect someone’s: priorities, preferences values meanings of the author or owner of the medium.

16. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Premise 3: Ontologies are (typically) hard Hard = Built into structure or technical implementation of the medium (here city) Typically assumed to represent static ”reality” of the domainreality Example: City as a system of coordinates, system of electricity, plumbing, law & order etc.-> Truth?

17. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Premise 4: Ontologies are monoperspectival Conventional ontologies are Monoperspectival, representing the perspective of the author or owner of the medium

18. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Premise 5: Ontologies are means of power Means of top-down top-down media power

19. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Premise 6: Ontologies are text-based Text based Not natively spatial Not natively visual

20. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Hard and soft ontologies Hard ontologies (conventionally) Soft ontologies (proposed!)

21. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Implicit hard ontologies Embedded in the structure, presentation order or hierarchy Language, vocabularies, terminology, concepts Stories: cinema, theatre, etc. Search engines, e.g. Google City conceptualization and planning(?)

22. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Explicit hard ontologies Taxonomies: Linnaean botanical taxonomyLinnaean botanical taxonomy Library systems Database architectures Metadata systems, often hierarchical: Semantic Web Semantic Web Hypertext link structure (flat): web pages, sites, hypertext City infrastructure, administrative structure,, web presence etc. (?)

23. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Key issues about ontologies of a city What kind of story do I/you/we/they want to tell about a city? Who/what defines a city and for whom? Can there be a single truth about a city? Whose own the (conceptualization of )the city?

24. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 SOFT ONTOLOGIES

25. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Soft ontologies Dynamically multidimensional conceptualizations, by means of... Open sets of descriptive feature dimensions applicable to all items of the domain. explicit open ended

26. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Purposes of soft ontology To define a domain of information without a single fixed perspective Support multiple perspectives to an ontological space Allow open (accumulating) conceptualization of a domain

27. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Implementation of soft ontologies Numeric: Each item takes a value between 0 and 1 on each ontological dimension => Spatial organization! Dimensionality open: New features can be added and existing ones may be ignored at will

28. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Example of soft ontology as table Ontological dimension Ontology Add data! Add dims!

29. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Ontological space of a city Defined by: Geographical dimensions (latitude, longitude, altitude) Dimensions of meaning, experiential dimensions Searches Measurement dimensions: statistics, weather, measurements etc.  Dimensionality growing ad infinitum How can such an ambiguous space be made sense of?

30. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 MULTI-PERSPECTIVE MEDIA A concept for future media Demand created by two-way communication

31. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Multi-Perspective Media Media particularly designed to support multiple equally right/true perspectives to a domain Media based on multi-dim databases (Manovich) Supports interactive exploration of multiple perspectives, established by Bottom-up media, public contribution of ontological dimensions (e.g. folksonomies) for Web 2.0folksonomies

32. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Exploring multiple perspectives A sketch for implementation (among alternatives): Slider interface to manage perspectives (can be replaced by other interfaces) Realtime projection, e.g. by means of multi-dimensional scalingmulti-dimensional scaling Browser and search functionalities

33. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Choosing perspective

34. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 One dimension taken into account (Trivial case) Orthogonal display of data with respect to the viewer See the whole distribution with respect to a dimension

35. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Two dimensions taken into account Two dimensional matrix

36. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Several dimensions taken into account Nonlinear projection (here online multi- dimensional projection) Analog to cortical projections (color maps, tonotopies, retinotopies, somatotopies) Real-time exploration made possible Challenging visualization Requires active exploration and movement! How to facilitate this by means of design?

37. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Softness? Ontological dimensions can be Taken into account or ignored Added at will (next example), open endedness, ∞ - dimensionality Graded degrees of relevance allowed Implies spatial organization

38. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Short course of geo- semiotics One case/utilization/example (just a point) does not yet constitute a meaning but A meaning dimension is needed to establish a meaning (line) A dimension makes sense only from near-orthogonal perspective Making sense = projection from multi-perspective ontological space Understanding = being able to see multiple perspectives Knowledge = sharing perspectives within a community

39. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 TAGGIN’ TALLINN

40. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Taggin’ Tallinn Blending virtual and physical presence in the city

41. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Partners Tallinn University Eesti Kunstiakadeemia EMT Urban Mark Tallinn City(?!) RAK more...

42. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Project nature Framework and lab of: locative media & urban presence public contributions of content, software and ontologies social software new mobile technologies mobile interfacing

43. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Spraying graffiti not encouraged

44. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Add a virtual tag MMS + SMS GPS + Online connection Map-click (at home) X Mauri was here! 59°43.7’N 24°74.3’

45. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Associate content with your tag X Via mobile or web

46. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Establish a new content collection Tag content not fitting to any existing collection?

47. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Content communityes Each content community Elaborates a particular dimension of meaning. Has community of peers a moderator rules of e.g. membership, acceptance, priorization and evaluation -> game!

48. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Tags, blogs and communities Content community & ”game” = ontological dimension of the city Tag = X was here... Individual presence Coordinates Place Content link Community Blog = individual track

49. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Hybrid coordinate system of Tallinn Blend: Geographical coordinates tracked by GSM, GPS, or manually clicked Meaning coordinates Locative media Community software Collaborative environment

50. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Explore own perspectives to the city Multi-perspective view Hybrid geo-experiential map Mobile and web interfaces

51. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Community and social software New tags are distiributedto the community peer-evaluated moderated accepted/rejected priorized (competition) elaborated jointly Immediate p2p communication facilitated

52. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 CONCLUSIONS

53. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 About Soft Ontologies Define domain of information without fixing a single perspective Support exploration of multiple perspectives to an ontological space Allow open (accumulating) conceptualization of a domain =>Native of Web 2.0!

54. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Multi-perspective Media: Presentations of information in such a way that allow a number of alternative perspectives No priorized perspective or truth Native to bottom-up content Allow cool stuff!

55. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 What is multiperspective media good for? Modeling individual sense-making in ambiguous spaces Modeling community sense-making Visualization of similarity- dissimilarity Search and match functionalities

56. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 More application areas Narrative spaces: Obsession enactive cinema projectObsession enactive cinema project Politics: Political maps Ethics Education: Knowledge building by joint MPM exploration Graphical search engines Matchmaking (partners, cars, homes...)

57. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 What is Taggin’ Tallinn about? Multidisciplinare researc framework Collaborative meaning-building Locative and explorative media Soft ontology as a backbone

58. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Workshop Constituting meaning dimensions of the city Collaboratively Non-verbally with images More in the evening. Instructions in http://lin2.tlu.ee/~mkaipain/presentations/urban.html

59. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Papers on soft ontologies Aviles Collao, Jazmin; Diaz-Kommonen, L.; Kaipainen, M.; Pietarila, J. (2003). Soft Ontologies and Similarity Cluster Tools to facilitate Exploration and Discovery of Cultural Heritage Resources. IEEE Computer Society Digital Library. Proc. DEXA 2003. September 1.- 5.2003, Prague Czech Republic.Aviles Collao, Jazmin; Diaz-Kommonen, L.; Kaipainen, M.; Pietarila, J. (2003 Kaipainen, M.; Niglas, K.; Laanpere, M.; Kikkas, K.; Normak, P.; Sillaots, M. (2006). Knowledge environments with soft ontologies and multiperspective explorability. Interactive Learning Environments (submitted).Kaipainen, M.; Niglas, K.; Laanpere, M.; Kikkas, K.; Normak, P.; Sillaots, M. (2006).

60. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Locative media projects Positium Tallinn project Katumuisti (Street memory) Yellow Arrow Visby Under Merkitys - Meaning many more...

61. Mauri Kaipainen 10.01.2007 Thank you! mauri.kaipainen@tlu.ee http://www.tlu.ee/~mkaipain/