Foreword ACII 2013

Welcome to Geneva and to ACII 2013, “the‿ conference in Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction. After Beijing in 2005, Lisboa in 2007, Amsterdam in 2009, and Memphis in 2011, researchers from all over the world will converge to Geneva on 2-5 September 2013 for the 5th biannual ACII conference. Since 2005 and under the auspices of the Humaine association, the ACII conference series has become the premier international forum for research on affective human-machine interaction and intelligent affective systems. Affect is a phenomena of substantial importance in most if not all of human activities. This ACII edition therefore strives to emphasize the humanistic side of affective computing by promoting research at the cross-roads between engineering and human sciences (including biological, social and cultural aspects of human life). This will be exemplified by the papers in these proceedings, with topics as varied as computerized emotional modelling, literary and cinema studies, art, gaming, learning, stress and anxiety, avatars and virtual worlds, social computing, pattern recognition, advertisement, and real-time implementations to name a few. All have in affect and emotions in common, with an emphasis on a computational view of emotion. Despite some anxiety in the organizers when there were only about 40 submissions two days before the deadline, in the end we received a record high number of articles: in total, we received 268 submissions (175 regular papers and 93 papers for workshops, the Doctoral Consortium, and demos). In keeping with ACII’s rigorous standards, each paper was reviewed by at least two experts in various subdomains (most papers received three reviews) and vetted by members of the Senior Program Committee and organizers of various events. 55 out of the 175 regular papers were accepted as oral presentations (31 percent acceptance rate), and an additional 48 papers were accepted for poster presentations (an overall acceptance rate of 59 percent). These figures clearly establish the prominent role of ACII in the field.