Towards Ontology-driven Discourse:
From Semantic Graphs to Multimedia Presentations
Joost Geurts, Stefano Bocconi, Jacco van Ossenbruggen, Lynda Hardman
CWI, P.O. Box 94079, 1090 GB Amsterdam, The Netherlands,
Firstname.Lastname@cwi.nl
Abstract. Traditionally, research in applying Semantic Web
technology to multimedia information systems has focused on using
annotations and ontologies to improve the retrieval process. This paper
concentrates on improving the presentation of the retrieval results.
First, our approach uses ontological domain knowledge to select and
organize the content relevant to the topic the user is interested in.
Domain ontologies are valuable in the presentation generation process,
because effective presentations are those that succeed in conveying the
relevant domain semantics to the user. Explicit discourse and narrative
knowledge allows selection of appropriate presentation genres and creation
of narrative structures, which are used for conveying these domain
relations.
In addition, knowledge of graphic design and media
characteristics is essential to transform abstract presentation structures
in real multimedia presentations. Design knowledge determines how the
semantics and presentation structure are expressed in the multimedia
presentation. In traditionalWeb environments, this type of design
knowledge remains implicit, hidden in style sheets and other document
transformation code. Our second use of Semantic Web technology is to model
design knowledge explicitly, and to let it drive the transformations
needed to turn annotated media items into structured presentations.