IHM -- recursive semantic hypermedia archive

Robin Gareus

CiTu, Université Paris 8; linuxaudio.org

• IHM needs a spiffy media archive :)
• There is no appropriate non-commercial solution.
• joomla or drupal could be customized; yet that path would require non-sustainable development effort.

Why another content-management system ?

Content means “some sort of information”, management in this context means “doing something with it.”

Most of the CMS are web-site revisioning systems with emphasis on social networks.

We want a system to contain abstract items or objects (i.e. image, article, movie, person, location, comments,..) and be able to define semantic relations between them.

Potential applications, existing projects, collaborations:

• IHM - archive about history of man-machine interfaces
• TheArtCollider - platform for connected creation (CiTu, Paris8)
• MMDB - MyMovieDatabase (GNU project)
• Ozalid - upcoming social network and archive of the Bibliothèque nationale de France
• zeega.org - interactive documentaries and new forms of storytelling (Meta-Lab, Harvard)

• Freesound.org - collection of audio-samples
• newscoop/superdesk - newsroom production system (sourcefabric.org)
• airtime - radio station system (sourcefabric.org)
• mmTeX - fan-fiction layout and book publishing engine.

• Complete language-set to define relations
• Modular system (extended by plugins)
• Publish/subscribe architecture
• Social network integration
• Pluggable front-ends:
  • n-dimensional navigation, timeline
  • interoperability with existing authoring tools, apps and data-sets.
  • integrated XHTML engine

The datamodel is a language based on triplets:

“Subject” + “predicate” + “Object”

Where subject and objects are an noun for an item/thing/frame/object and predicate is a verb.

Both, items and predicates are modular types and each of them may optionally have have dynamic attributes or adverbs.

“Mona Lisa” + was presented [from date to date] at + “the Louvre [website]”.

“Mona Lisa” + was authored [on date] by + “L. da Vinci.”.

Legend:

• “subject, object”
• + predicate +
• [attribute]

• Each item in IHM has a canonical resource-URI (aka. UUID) - which can be used to universally reference the content (similar to a permalink).
• Edges are directional (parent/child) links between two resource-URIs using a predicate.
• A matrix defines the potential relations.

http://theartcollider.org/ihm-test/?viz=vis_form_admin_typematrix

• PHP/JavaScript/XHTML5, REST-API
• Model/View/Controller
• OAuth/OpenID for access control and authentication.
• Atom/XML is the main data-format for content.
• uses existing RDF templates (SOAP, DOAP, FOAF, etc)
• modular system: the layout/architecture is defined in the core but the actual visualization, rendering and [interaction + graphic] design is handled by plugins.

• Each object may be aggregated or synchronized with an external resource URI.
• Items may reference read-only sources (media archive on disk, 3rd party information) - synchronisation.
• Changes to the data-set are published (push) and can be subscribed to. Asynchronous updates.

• Site: http://theartcollider.org/ihm-test/

• API: http://theartcollider.org/ihm-test/api_rest.php

• Proper front-end (web and interaction design[er])
  • Item visualization
  • Project specific customizations
• Backend-parts:
  • Authentication & access-control
  • Pub/Sub API
  • Query filtering on edges.
  • …
• Community management

• Publicly usable prototype: after x-mas
• Freeze APIs: spring 2012