GESTURE WORKSHOP 2003

The 5th International Workshop on Gesture and Sign Language based Human-Computer Interaction


WELCOME AND THANKS


Welcome to Gesture Workshop 2003, the 5th International Workshop on Gesture and Sign Language based Human-Computer Interaction!

The International Gesture Workshop is a forum where researchers working on gesture-based interfaces and gestural interaction present and exchange ideas and research currently in progress, with a cross-disciplinary focus. GW2003 is the 5th workshop after the 1996 Gesture Workshop in York (UK) considered as the starting event. Henceforth, International Gesture Workshops have been held roughly every second year, with fully reviewed post-proceedings typically published by Springer-Verlag.

As an indicator of the continuously growing interest of the scientific community toward gesture-mediated human-computer interaction and human-language technology, a large number of high quality submissions have been received. The program includes invited talks, oral presentations of long and short papers, presentations of posters, and demonstrations: around 90 contributes from 20 different countries will offer a broad overview of the state-of-the-art in many research fields related to gesture-based communication.

In conclusion, we wish to thank Gennaro Di Benedetto, Sovrintendente of the Teatro dell'Opera Carlo Felice and the Staff of the Theatre, APT Genova and Agenzia Regionale per la Promozione Turistica della Liguria, the invited speakers Frank Pollick (Department of Psychology, University of Glasgow, UK) and Shuji Hashimoto (Department of Applied Physics Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan), the Scientific Committee, the session chairs, Barbara Mazzarino and the other members of the Local Organizing Committee (Roberto Chiarvetto, Roberto Dillon, and Paolo Coletta), the staff and the students of the DIST - InfoMus Lab who helped in the organization, and all the presenters and attendants. We thank also Martino Musso (Lever) for the support to the organization of the event, Eidomedia and NumenSoft.
This event has been partially supported by the EU-IST Project MEGA (Multisensory Expressive Gesture Applications, www.megaproject.org)

We look forward to working at the preparation of a high quality post-proceedings Springer book aiming at providing a valuable and interesting contribution to this community.

                                                                         Antonio Camurri and Gualtiero Volpe
                                                                           Gesture Workshop 2003 co-chairs