The 5th European and 8th Nordic Symposium on Multimodal Communication aims to
provide a multidisciplinary forum for researchers from different disciplines who study
multimodality in human communication as well as in human-computer interaction. The
multimodal communication symposium is organised by the Cluster of Excellence on Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC) at Bielefeld University.
The symposium follows up on a tradition established by the Swedish Symposia on
Multimodal Communication held from 1997 till 2000, and continued by the Nordic
Symposia on Multimodal Communication held from 2003 to 2012. Since 2013 the
symposium has acquired a broader European dimension, with editions held in Malta,
Estonia, Ireland, and Denmark. This year the symposium will be held in Germany for the first time.
Multimodal communication as a research area is growing rapidly. There is indeed an
increased interest in embodied and situated communication – how humans interact with
each other using different modalities, as well as how technological artifacts affect
communicative activities. Work places as well as school environments, health care and
other services increasingly involve complex multimodal communication. The
development in innovative computer interfaces, mobile media and robotics makes new
multimodal technical solutions to communicative challenges possible while at the same
time creating new challenges for communication research.