Grid Computing in the
Arts and Humanities –
The WUN Grid Vision
An infrastructure for collaborative research
in the Worldwide Universities Network
by David De Roure, University of Southampton
Outline
 Grid computing
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Myth-busting
Synergy with WUN
WUN Grid
Access Grid
Semantic Grid
 Arts and Humanities activities
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HASTAC
GGF
Demonstrators
AHRB e-Science Seminar
Examples from the US
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From e-Science to e-Research
 My e-Science background
 Southampton Regional e-Science Centre
 Global Grid Forum Steering Group and Chair of Semantic Grid
Research Group
 Open Middleware Infrastructure Institute (OMII)
 Comb-e-Chem and myGrid e-Science Pilot projects
 Collaborative Advanced Knowledge Technologies in the Grid
 Grid-Based Medical Devices for Everyday Health
 e-Science Architecture Task Force
 EU Next Generation Grids experts group
 But also…
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Hypertext, Worldwide Web and W3C
Music Information Retrieval
Social Statistics, e-Social Science
JISC JCSR e.g. Virtual Research Environment
HASTAC, AHDS
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Grid Computing
 Roots in high performance computing and specialised
scientific problem-solving
 Grid computing has emerged as a powerful general
purpose infrastructure to enable new research and
learning
 Its contemporary definition by Foster & Kesselman is
Coordinated resource sharing
and problem solving in dynamic,
multi-institutional virtual organizations
 A Grid brings together core grid computing
infrastructure services, applications and users
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Vision: The Grid
Grid computing has emerged as an important new field,
distinguished from conventional distributed computing by
its focus on large-scale resource sharing, innovative
applications, and, in some cases, high-performance
orientation...we [define] the "Grid problem”…as flexible,
secure, coordinated resource sharing among dynamic
collections of individuals, institutions, and resources what we refer to as virtual organizations
From "The Anatomy of the Grid: Enabling Scalable Virtual
Organizations" by Foster, Kesselman and Tuecke
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International Grid Scene
 The Global Grid Forum brings the
international community together
 UK and European activities emphasise the Semantic
Grid, which promotes all aspects of interoperability
 UK e-Science program attracts attention for
being applications-led and multidisciplinary
 Investment for sustainable infrastructure evident
 e.g. NSF Middleware Initiative, OMII, VRE
 In practice there are many grids
 organisational barriers impede creation of general
purpose international Grids
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Vision: e-Science
e-Science is about global collaboration in key
areas of science and the next generation of
[computing] infrastructure that will enable it
e-Science will change the dynamic of the way
science is undertaken
John Taylor, Director General of UK Research Councils
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Vision: e-Research
 Not just new Science
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e-Social Science
e-Humanities
e-Arts
e-Research
e-Business
e-Anything
…
 And new disciplines!
 Researchers working in all
disciplines are faced daily with a
wide variety of tasks necessary
to sustain and progress their
research activity
 These involve the analytical
aspects of their work, access to
resources, collaboration with
fellow researchers, and project
management and admin
 These tasks rapidly increase in
scale and complexity as
collaborations grow larger,
become more geographically
distributed and involve a wider
range of disciplines
JISC VRE
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AHRB e-Science Seminar Intro
 Using technology to do what couldn’t be done
otherwise
 Enabling global collaboration
 Grid technologies to provide access to distributed
resources of data, computing power, storage space,
and applications
 Utility computing to provide integration of remote
heterogeneous data, automated capture of metadata,
real time data capture
 Dealing with complexity - access and finding tools,
semantic web and shared vocabularies, ontologies
 The Access Grid to provide video communications,
virtual networks and collaborations
Sheila Anderson
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WUN and Grid Synergy
 WUN will benefit from new collaborative research
enabled by applications on the Grid
 The WUN Grid will benefit from the organisational
infrastructure provided by WUN
 WUN easily overcomes institutional barriers which
constrain other Grids
 WUN Grid is competitive against other Grid exercises
 Hence WUN Grid offers significant enhancement for
WUN with prospect of high impact, competitive
research
 Gives WUN an identifiable infrastructure and a unique
platform for basis of funding applications
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Excellent circumstances
 WUN partners include international leaders in Grid
computing
 e.g. San Diego Supercomputer Centre at UCSD, National
Centre for Supercomputing Applications at UIUC, key
Grid software from Wisconsin, CiteSeer at Penn State
 All UK WUN partners are major players in e-Science,
with significant international leadership
 White Rose Grid provides track record in creating a
multi-institutional grid
 Many WUN Grand Challenges will benefit from Grid
computing
 WUN Grid is itself a Grand Challenge and it supports
other WUN Grand Challenges
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Strategy
 Move towards vision of a WUN Grid which:
 Creates new, high-impact research
 Generates IP and learning enhancements
 Generates revenue
 Is sustainable
 Consult users and identify priority areas where WUN
Grid is positioned to make an impact
 Create an implementation plan for WUN Grid,
balancing data, collaboration and computation
 Implement a foundation WUN Grid and example
‘grassroots’ applications to inform the WUN Grid
roadmap
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Informatics Group Progress
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WUN researchers met
in San Francisco
December 2002,
hosted by Sun
Subsequent
discussions at Global
Grid Forum
Application priorities
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Arts and humanities
Social Sciences
Infrastructure priorities
1. Data grid
2. Collaborative Grid
3. Computational Grid
 Second meeting in
Santa Clara December
2003, hosted by Sun
 Agreed governance
structure
 Created infrastructure
and applications teams
 Have produced
 “What document”
 “How document”
 Working on prospectus
 Foundation WUN
DataGrid operational
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Foundation of the WUN Grid
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SDSC
Manchester
Southampton
White Rose
NCSA
 A functioning,
general purpose
international Grid
Manchester-SDSC mirror
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Access Grid
 Room based “videoconferencing” with large format
display
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supports group-to-group interactions across the Grid.
supports interaction and visualisation.
nodes in 150 institutions worldwide.
routine use in UK e-Science programme.
 Also available as single machine solution Personal
Interface to the Grid (PIG)
 Can also use Virtual Rooms VideoConferencing
System (VRVS)
 GGF Advanced Collaborative Environments activity
is looking at human-centred techniques and
technologies for facilitating interactive,
collaborative, and immersive access of Grid
resources from anywhere and at any time
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Access-DC
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JISC VRE Access Grid bids
 JISC Virtual Research Environment programme
 Bids involving Manchester and Southampton for
 Collaborative Stereoscopic Access Grid Environment for
Experimentation within the Arts & Humainities
 Access Grid VRE Services for Meeting Co-ordination &
Replay
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Semantic Grid
 “WUN Grid is a Semantic Grid”
 The Semantic Grid is an extension of the
current Grid in which information and
services are given well-defined meaning,
better enabling computers and people to
work in cooperation
 The full richness of the Grid ambition
depends upon realising the Semantic Grid
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Challenges: Unanticipated Re-use
myGrid
 Wish to reuse
 Data
 Services
 Software
 Knowledge
Combechem
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Two infrastructure enablers
Grid
Computing
 On demand transparently
constructed multiorganisational federations of
distributed services
 Distributed computing
middleware
 Computational Integration
Semantic
Web
 An automatically processable,
machine understandable web
 Distributed knowledge and
information management
 Information integration
Source: Carole Goble
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Origins of the Semantic Web
The Semantic Web is an extension of the
current Web in which information is
given a well-defined meaning, better
enabling computers and people to work
in cooperation.
It is the idea of having data on the Web
defined and linked in a way that it can
be used for more effective discovery,
automation, integration and reuse across
various applications.
The Web can reach its full potential if it
becomes a place where data can be
processed by automated tools as well as
people.
W3C Activity Statement
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Layers of Languages
Attribution
Explanation
You are here
Rules & Inference
Ontologies
Metadata annotations
Standard Syntax
Identity
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Resource Description Framework
 Common model for
metadata
 A graph of triples
 Query over and link
together
 RDQL, repositories,
integration tools,
presentation tools
 The Network Effect
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Graphic courtesy of Tim Berners-Lee
The Semantic Grid Report 2001
 At this time, there are a number of grid
applications being developed and there is a
whole raft of computer technologies that provide
fragments of the necessary functionality.
 However there is currently a major gap between
these endeavours and the vision of e-Science in
which there is a high degree of easy-to-use and
seamless automation and in which there are
flexible collaborations and computations on a
global scale.
www.semanticgrid.org
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Building bridges
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Scale of
Interoperability
Semantic Grid
Semantic
Web
Semantic
Grid
Classical
Web
Classical
Grid
Scale of data and computation
Source: Norman Paton
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Underpinnings of e-Research
Grid
Computing
The
Semantic
Web
The
Semantic
Grid
Web Services
Source: Carole Goble
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Advanced Grid Applications
Data
mining
Text
mining
Portal
Collaboratory
Knowledge Services
OGSA
Semantic Grid
services
Knowledge-based
information
services
Knowledge-based
data/computation
services
Computation
services
Knowledge
Grid
Data
services
Grid Middleware Fabric
Information
services
OGSA
Base Grid
services
WSRF
Source: Carole Goble
Arts and Humanities
 Emerging activity in US and UK
 Link with HASTAC – Humanities, Arts, Science, and
Technology Advanced Collaboratory
 strategic alliance of scientists, humanists, artists, social
theorists, legal specialists, and information technology
specialists
 Link with GGF
 Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Research Group
 Workshop on Social Factors, Humanities, Arts and Social
Sciences: Old Challenges and New Disciplines for Grid
Computing
 Discussion with UK Arts and Humanities Research
Board and Arts and Humanities Data Service
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HASTAC: Humanities, Arts, Science and
Technology Advanced Collaboratory
 How much the scientist can learn from the
humanist and artist and vice versa
 Humanist can add the why to the “gee whiz” part of
the technology. Historians and philosophers on one
side of campus. Computer scientist and engineers on
the other. No more build it and they will come.
 The challenge is the building of bridges among
diverse cultures and communities – technology,
humanist, artists, social scientist.
– Speak a common language
Source: Allison Clark
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HASTAC “maybe” Mission Statement
 HASTAC is an international, interdisciplinary
consortium which seeks to create, develop,
advance and utilize a broad range of leading
computing and information systems while
contributing to an understanding of the
interconnections between the human sciences,
natural sciences, arts, and technology in a
complex global society. HASTAC, in partnership
with the science and technology communities, is
dedicated to the creation and development of
humane technologies and technological
humanism.
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HASTAC Founding Members
 University of California
Humanities Research
Institute
 Maryland Institute for
Technology and the
Humanities (MITH)
 Virginia Institute for
Advanced Technology in the
Humanities
 Duke University's John Hope
Franklin Center and
Humanities Institute
 Center for Information Tech
Research in the Interest of
Society (CITRIS)
 California Digital Library
 Stanford Humanities Lab
 Florida International
University
 CAL IT²
 University of Illinois at
Urbana Champaign
 National Center for
Supercomputing
Applications at the
University of Illinois (NCSA)
 San Diego Supercomputer
Center at the University of
San Diego (SDSC)
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Cyberinfrastructure Enables People
Scientists, Engineers, Decision Makers,
Policy Makers, Media and Citizens
Engaging in discovery, analysis, discussion, deliberation,
decisions, policy formulation and communication
Collaboration Framework facilitates Idea and Knowledge Sharing,
eLearning and Multi-Objective Decision Support Processes
Analysis Framework facilitates Data and Model Discovery,
Exploration, and Analysis; via the Collaboration Framework
Data Management Framework builds logical maps of distributed,
heterogeneous information resources (data, models, tools, etc.)
and facilitates their use via the Analysis and Collaboration Frameworks
Physical Infrastructure
Courtesy of Tom Prudhomme, NCSA
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GGF Research Groups
 HASS: Humanities Arts Social Sciences Research
Group
 led by Allison Clark (NCSA) and Kevin Franklin (UC)
 Grid and Social Issues
 led by Rajesh K. Chhabra (APAC) and Atif Shahab
 Joint workshop at GGF11
 Workshop on Social Factors, Humanities, Arts and
Social Sciences: Old Challenges and New
Disciplines for Grid Computing
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GGF11 Workshop on Social Factors,
Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
This workshop will examine the social aspects of grid
computing as well as the newly emerging grid applications
in the area of the arts, humanities and social sciences.
The purpose of this workshop is two-fold:
1. Illustrate the use of grid technology into the arts, social
sciences and humanities communities. To accomplish this,
we will present exemplars of early adopters of grid
computing in the areas humanities, arts and social sciences,
as well as other disciplines that can be modeled by the
HASS grid community.
2. Address one of the most complex and fundamental issues in
the success of grid deployment – social issues. Surveys
around the globe seem to indicate there are many social
issues that hinder the successful deployment and adoption
of grid technology.
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GGF11 Workshop Agenda
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8.30am 8.45am 9.15am 9.45am 10.15am 10.45am Licensing)
11.15am 11.45am 12.15pm 12.45pm -
Introduction & Background
David De Roure (Semantic Grid)
Ashley Lloyd
Reagan Moore (Data Storage)
tea break
Rajesh Chhabra (Social Factors & Software
James Boyle (Law)
Stephen David Beck (Music)
Peter Wittenberg (Psycholinguistics)
Lunch
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Music demonstrator
 Activities underway
 Part of digital music archive (early 20th Century
Performance) on WUN Grid
 Experiments in polyphonic pitch tracking and
music information retrieval (link with UIUC)
 Access Grid being enhanced for musical
performance
 Planning to use Semantic Web collaboration
tools, including capture and replay, with
performance
Contact: David De Roure
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Accessing musical content
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AKTive Seer
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Social Sciences
 Working with georeferenced data
 links to DialogPlus (NSF/JISC)
 Urbana, UCSD, Manchester, … hold massive data
collections
 Taking advantage of the e-social science opportunities
 Demonstrator (Leeds) ‘Hydra International’
 Finds groups of similar cities across UK, US, France and
Norway
 e.g. could be used in a comparative analysis of planning
policies between similar cities across international
boundaries
Contact: Mark Birkin
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Hydra
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Video Annotation
 Would like a
demonstrator
in this area!
 e.g. Vannotea
Jane Hunter,
DSTC
Australia
Contact: David De Roure
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Earth Science Grand Challenge
 Long-term potential for using
WUN Grid
 Fibre-optic links ashore
followed by high-speed highbandwidth communications
provide live video feed from
hydrothermal vent-sites to
the classroom
 Command capability
provides pan and tilt controls
on video cameras,
continuous monitoring of
temperature changes etc.
 Remote manipulation using
robot arm
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Seeking new demonstrators
 Can you use WUN Grid to support an existing WUN
collaboration?
 Can you build a new WUN collaboration using WUN
Grid?
 Demonstrators provide a basis for funding applications
 Ideally involving international WUN partners
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Discussion – AHRB e-Science Seminar
Recommendations
1. That the e-science programme arose from scientists
identifying challenges that could not be dealt with
using current technology. In a similar vein the arts
and humanities communities need to identify the
‘grand challenges’ that are particular to arts and
humanities research, and to assess how use and
development of technology might contribute to
solving these challenges.
2. That an arts and humanities e-research agenda
should be embedded in research practice and
research needs - a research based response to
problems which could not be solved with existing
computing facilities or technologies.
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AHRB e-Science Seminar Recommendations
3. That it was essential that the arts and humanities
research community engaged with e-research, and
that in the first instance a small selection of
demonstrator projects should be identified and taken
forward.
4. That understanding of and awareness about eresearch generally was low and any e-research
agenda for the arts and humanities must address this
challenge.
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My impressions
 Visual and Performing Arts requirements exhibit
classic Grid challenges and some new ones
 Quantitative Social Science is a natural Grid app
 Qualitative Social Science is more challenging
 Archaeology requirements seem close to e-Science
 Some disciplines perhaps need Semantic Web more
than Semantic Grid
 But there are cultural differences, e.g.
 Some (deeply-held) belief in lone research over
collaborative working
 Rapid access to research results less of an issue(?)
 Relatively less sophisticated IT infrastructure and
support (smaller grant sizes!)
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Discussion - Seedbed
THE SEEDBED INITIATIVE FOR TRANSDOMAIN
CREATIVITY
Expanding Human Experience
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
See http://www.uiuc.edu/initiatives/artsintech.html
Example projects for discussion
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Scenario from Seedbed
 You enter a high-ceilinged and high-technology experimental
research and performance space: you are surrounded by high-definition,
wall-sized screens and projections flickering with computer-processed
imagery.
 Merely by speaking and gesturing, you create moving images, sounds,
or text—from your own imagination, or drawn from all of human history
or culture anywhere in the world. Side by side with students, faculty, and
artists, you manipulate those tools, adding your own interpretations and
perspectives, through commentary, selection, and juxtaposition.
 To check on a detail, you communicate instantly with an expert halfway
around the world, part of a community of artists, scientists, and scholars,
connected by a visually extended instant messenger.
 With a few quick commands the paths you have just blazed become
interactively accessible to anyone, or can be immediately shared with
collaborating performers—musicians, dancers, actors or an interacting
public—to create a new work of art . . . a new kind of art.
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Tools for the Creation of Multimedia
Works of Art and Scholarship
 This project takes as its principal concern the
technological empowerment of artists and humanists.
As our machines’ ability to manipulate data continues
to increase, so the gap between potential and actual
practice continues to widen.
 We seek to develop tools to support rich, interactive
pedagogy, performance, and scholarship in
conjunction with intelligent building spaces,
sometimes called “smart rooms.”
 The project includes artists and humanists from the
very beginning in the design process of those tools. In
this way, it will maximize the relevance of the tools for
the artistic and scholarly goals.
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The Digital Library Testbed for
Endangered Cultural Knowledge
 This project will develop new, innovative technology
for the preservation of endangered cultural
knowledge. It seeks to gather and make accessible
the vast, and extremely diverse, elements of human
culture that are not otherwise easily preserved.
 A great deal of human knowledge lies outside the
bounds of what is readily preserved in books. Such
knowledge requires alternate means of representation
and access such as through dynamic video or sound
representations as opposed to static images or text.
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The ARTGRID: A Distributed
Collaboratory for Artists and Scholars
 The ARTGRID seeks to empower artists and scholars
with new technologies. In this case, the emphasis is
on using technology to enhance collaboration across
great distances by establishing a high-performance
network to connect key technology-and-arts clusters
nationally and internationally.
 Artists and humanists will be able to access ‘natural’
computing, performance and digital presentation
creation tools to ‘observe’ and ‘invent’ using the high
tech, high-bandwidth, distributable technologies.
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Summary
 Creation of WUN Grid offers very significant benefits
to WUN partners in terms of synergising resources for
research impact
 There is considerable potential for applications in the
Arts and Humanities – and this is timely
 The key is interdisciplinary working
 Today we have a DataGrid – the vision is much more
 A grid needs applications and users, and the WUN
Grid benefits will be realised when this happens
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Contact
 David De Roure, University of Southampton
 dder@ecs.soton.ac.uk
 http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~dder
 See also www.wungrid.org
 Thanks to WUN Grid partners and especially to Alison
Allden (Bristol), Allison Clark (UIUC) and to Peter Dew
for his early work with the WUN Informatics Group
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