Call for paper: 12th Symposium on Virtual reality Archaeology and Cultural Heritage

Call For Papers

VAST 2011: 12th Symposium on Virtual reality Archaeology and Cultural Heritage

Prato, Tuscany, Italy, October 18th-21st 2011
Submission Deadline: 5th July 2011


The VAST 2011 Conference had originally been planned to take place in Alexandria, Egypt, but, with the agreement of the local organizers, in recognition of the difficult situation in the North African Region that might discourage a wide attendance, the Symposium has been relocated to Prato (Italy), at the local university, on the same dates as originally planned, i.e. from 18 to 21 October 2011.
Prato is a town in Tuscany, 20 km from Florence and well connected to it and to the international airports of Florence, Bologna and Pisa (hubs of low-cost airlines), and via the High-Speed main Italian train line to the intercontinental airports in Rome and Milan. The Conference organization has secured a sufficient number of rooms in Prato at favorable prices for conference attendees.

We are seeking contributions that advance the state of the art in the information technologies available to support cultural heritage. In particular:

Data Acquisition and Processing
* 2/3/4D data capture
* Geometry processing and representations
* On-site and remotely sensed data
* Digital capture of intangible heritage (performance, audio, dance, oral)

Metadata Handling
* Classification schemas, ontologies and semantic processing
* Long-term preservation
* Annotations
* Digital libraries, data management and archiving
* Multilingual applications, tools and systems

Presentation
* Augmentation of physical collections with digital presentations
* Interactive environments and applications
* Multi-modal interfaces and rendering
* Storytelling and design of heritage communications
* Usability, effectiveness and interface design

Practitioners’ Experience
* Professional and ethical guidelines
* Standards and documentation
* Requirements and policies
* Methodological issues and research paradigms
* Tools for education and training
* Serious games

Other relevant works concerning the application of information technologies to Cultural Heritage, not explicitly included in the above categories, are also welcome for submission.

Accepted papers will be presented in the form of:
Full research papers presenting new innovative results: these papers will be published by Eurographics in the EG Symposium Series (ISSN 1881-864X). The contributions should not exceed 8 pages, including bibliography and illustrations.
Short papers presenting preliminary results and works-in-progress or focusing on on-going projects, the description of project organization, use of technology, and lesson learned. These papers will have an oral and poster presentation and will be published in the "Projects & Short Papers" proceedings volume. The contributions should not exceed 4 pages, including bibliography and illustrations.

The best papers of the Conference will be proposed for an extended submission to ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage (http://jocch.acm.org/).

Tutorials and Workshops: the conference will host also half-day and full-day working sessions that provide an opportunity to educate and share on key topics of interest face-to-face. Suitable tutorial documentation will be published in the "Projects & Short Papers" proceedings volume. Workshops that provide supplementary material in time for the CD-ROM printing will also be included. Authors of accepted tutorials and workshops who wish to produce suitably complete material may be given the option of producing a separate publication if funding can be secured. Please contact the Conference Chairs for any Tutorial/Workshop proposal.

VAST will use the EG paper submission system. Submission will be available in short from the VAST2011 web site.

All submissions will be reviewed and feedback given to the authors. See detailed information on the VAST 2011 website.

Important dates

· Paper submission (full/project/short/workshops/tutorials): 5th July 2011
· Author notification: 26th July 2011
· Camera-ready copies: 3rd August 2011

To have the paper published in the proceedings, at least one of the authors must register to the Conference after being notified of acceptance but before submitting camera-ready copies.

The Conference Chairs:

Franco Niccolucci
Holly Rushmeier
Luc Van Gool
Matteo Dellepiane
Sebastian Pena Serna