Substrates-25

An increasing number of researchers see their work as interactive authoring tools or software substrates for interactive computational media. By talking about “authoring tools”, we remove the divide between programmers and users; “software substrates” let us look beyond conventional programming languages and systems; and “interactive computational media” promises a more malleable and adaptable notion of tools for thought we are striving for.

The aim of this meeting is to bring together researchers who share our vision and provide a venue for discussion about how to establish a research program around interactive authoring tools or software substrates, find concerns and problems interesting and worthwhile, and collaborate more productively toward the vision.

Call for Contributions

Abstract

An increasing number of researchers see their work as interactive authoring tools or software substrates for interactive computational media. By talking about “authoring tools”, we remove the divide between programmers and users; “software substrates” let us look beyond conventional programming languages and systems; and “interactive computational media” promises a more malleable and adaptable notion of tools for thought we are striving for.

The aim of this meeting is to bring together researchers who share our vision and provide a venue for discussion about how to establish a research program around interactive authoring tools or software substrates, find concerns and problems interesting and worthwhile, and collaborate more productively toward the vision.

We expect participants in the meeting to submit brief position statements in advance. While some of those statements might be merely provided to help with our understanding of the breadth and depth of the field ahead of us, others are intended for academic peer review to be published in our formal proceedings in ACM DL. (If accepted, both categories of material will be shared with the participants.)

The meeting will then likely consist of brief presentations of the visions (in the morning), followed by a collaborative working session in the afternoon.

Call for Vision Statements

We ask researchers interested in participating in the workshop to write and submit a vision statement of 2-4 pages that outlines their vision for a research field, research directions, or research projects related to the topic of interactive authoring tools and software substrates. The topics that we are interested in seeing in the vision statements so far include:

What do we mean by interactive authoring tools, software substrates, and interactive computational media and how is this different from more conventional notions of programming languages and systems as we know them? What can we learn from past attempts to create such tools, substrates, or media? What are the research methodologies that can be employed to productively exchange ideas on those topics in ways that let us “stand on the shoulders of giants”? What are the key problems we can collaborate on?

The vision statements will be shared with participants in the meeting prior to the event and we expect that authors will actively engage in discussions and reviewing of statements submitted by others.

We ask researchers interested in writing a vision statement to contact one of the organizers informally before submitting. This first meeting is by invitation.

Additional Information

The objective of the meeting is to take the first step towards establishing a new research field. To do this, we expect participants to actively engage in discussions already prior to the meeting.

The intended audience for the meeting are primarily researchers working in fields such as software substrates, computational media, authoring tools, interactive programming systems, image-based systems, direct manipulation, live programming etc. We will actively seek contributions.