Computational Visualistics, Media Informatics, and Virtual Communities

In recent years there has been a rising awareness within the international scientific commu- nity that there is a need to study the various aspects of the integration of images and new me- dia both from the point of view of computer science as well as from other areas which deal with users' interface to information sources, in particular design, psychology, education, po- litical science, sociology, and philosophy. To a certain extent the view of the topic from any single one of these disciplines leads to a one-sided analysis. Indeed, interdisciplinary approaches involving two or more of them ap- plied to selected research problems have emerged. Examples of scientific conferences which embody such approaches are CHI and the German 'Mensch und Computer' Conferences, where in particular the collaboration between disciplines is furthered. Truly interdisciplinary research involving pairs of disciplines, or even triplets or quadruples of these areas, are still few and far between.