ForMoRe Workshop

Chairs

• Chiara Bassetti, Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento
• Stefano Borgo, Laboratory of Applied Ontology, ISTC-CNR

Organizers

• Social Pattern Recognition Lab (SPaRe Lab), Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento
• Hans Schadee Methods Center (HSC), Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento
• Laboratory of Applied Ontology, Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, Italian National Research Council (LOA, ISTC-CNR)

Description

ForMoRe is an interdisciplinary workshop on the methods and techniques of formalization, modellization, and representation of micro-sociological theories and analyses for a varied set of scientific and technological applications.
Qualitative social research —particularly interactionist and ethnomethodological approaches (e.g., conversation analysis and video-based field studies)— generates rich data and offers detailed, in-depth analysis, yet it often fails in formalising them (e.g. via ontological analysis), in providing a synthetic model, in making datasets statistically inspectable and/or computable (e.g. for social signal processing, or robot architectures). This reduces the potential impact, circulation, and exploitation —across disciplinary communities— of those analyses.

The communication, understanding, and use of these knowledge basis and its empirical analytical potential is however crucial. Whereas social research, and qualitative methods in particular, are by now recognised, studied and used in Human-Computer Interaction, other areas within the computer and information sciences still remain partially unaware of the potentialities of micro-sociological theories, analyses and findings. Too often, both cognition and (social) behaviour —not to mention culture— are conceptualized as individual-based phenomena (to which, e.g., a social robot should adapt, as in personalization), thereby missing the inter-actionist layer of human life as much as of human-machine cooperation.

The ForMoRe workshop aims at creating an interdisciplinary space of mutual exchange and collaboration among those who are interested in developing and pushing the boundaries of what we mean by:
- social pattern recognition
- social signal processing
- social robotics
- trustworthy AI
- industry 5.0
- experimental ethnography and ethnomethodological experiments
- mixed symbolic and data-driven models and machine learning
- any combination thereof
- … (we are pushing boundaries, please feel free to contribute your own border-to-be-(re)moved).

A few examples of what we tried to do towards this direction

• Bassetti, C., Blanzieri, E., Borgo, S., Marangon, S. (2023), ‘Towards socially-competent and culturally-adaptive artificial agents. Expressive order, interactional disruptions and recovery strategies’, Interaction Studies, Special Issue on Social Behaviour and Communication in Biological and Artificial Systems.
• Setti, F., D. Conigliaro, P. Rota, C. Bassetti, N. Conci, N. Sebe, M. Cristani (2017), ‘The S-HOCK Dataset: A new benchmark for spectator crowd analysis’, Computer Vision and Image Understanding, 159, pp. 47-58.
• Setti, F., C. Russel, C. Bassetti, M. Cristani (2015), ‘F-formation Detection: Individuating Free-standing Conversational Groups in Images’, PLOS One, 10, 5, e0123783.
• Bassetti, C. (2017), ‘Social interaction in temporary gatherings. A sociological taxonomy of groups and crowds for computer vision practitioners’, in M. Cristani, V. Murino, S. Savarese, S. Shah (eds.), Group and Crowd Behavior for Computer Vision, Elsevier, pp. 15-28. 

Workshop Programme

9.30 Opening

Giuseppe Sciortino, University of Trento – Head of Department

Chiara Bassetti, University of Trento – SPaRe Lab Coordinator

10.00 Keynote Talk

Alessandro Vinciarelli, Glasgow University
The “Joys” of Interdisciplinary Research

The talk proposes a reflection on 20+ years of research at the crossroad between Computing Science and Psychology. After an attempt to define interdisciplinarity, the talk will describe efforts aimed at building a research community in which Computing Science contributes to improve Psychology and, in turn, this latter helps to do better Computing Science. Special attention will be paid to the impact on the professional trajectory of the many Early Career Researchers (now mature and established) involved in the efforts. Whenever possible, the talk will include actionable suggestions.

11.00 Coffee Break

11.30 Panel presentations

Hannah Pelikan, Linköping University
Translating insights on human vocalizations to robot sound design

Francesco Setti, University of Verona
Interpreting human behaviour: a computer science viewpoint

Daniele Porello, University of Genova
Hybrid collective intentionality

Ludger Jansen, Philosophisch-Theologische-Hochschule Brixen
The Logic of (Acting on One's) Identities

Enrico Blanzieri, University of Trento & Stefano Borgo, ISTC-CNR
Interacting agents and culture: how to represent the social world?

13.30 Lunch Break

14.30 Panel presentations 

Benedetta Carlotti, Free University of Bozen/Bolzano
The Experience of Democracy: arts and creativity as catalyst of active and inclusive citizenship

Camilla Perrone & Giulia Guadagnoli, University of Firenze
A planet to live-in: What multi-agent interaction for socio-technical systems in the twenty-first century (?)

Chiara Bassetti, University of Trento & Stefano Borgo, ISTC-CNR
Endowing artificial agents with interactional competences

15.30 Open discussion and future plans

Chiara Bassetti (University of Trento), Teresa Bertotti (University of Trento), Enrico Blanzieri (University of Trento), Stefano Borgo (ISTC-CNR), Emanuele Bottazzi (ISTC-CNR), Benedetta Carlotti (Free University of Bozen/Bolzano), Enzo Falco (University of Trento), Mattia Fumagalli (ISTC-CNR), Giulia Guadagnoli (University of Firenze), Helena Haxvig (University of Trento),  Ludger Jansen (Philosophisch-Theologische-Hochschule Brixen), Claudio Masolo (ISTC-CNR), Oliver Kutz (Free University of Bozen/Bolzano), Iuris Mocchiutti (University of Padova), Hannah Pelikan (Linköping University), Camilla Perrone (University of Firenze), Daniele Porello (University of Genova), Francesco Setti (University of Verona), Daniela Veronesi (Free University of Bozen/Bolzano), Alessandro Vinciarelli (Glasgow University)

16.30 Closing