ONT General design
Greetings,
I've been working with ontology building for a few weeks now,
and think I have a basic foothold - just kidding - long way to go!
I know some of you are 'Classes' yourself.
I've compared the SUMO and Cyc ontologies - though I haven't
been able to load the Cyc upper ontology (daml file) into Protege
because
of problems with the file itself - according to a daml verification.
Thanks
for providing a Protege project file for the SUO on the suo ieee web
page.
My problem is now of course building my micro and meso
ontologies and suturing the ganglia carefully to the upper ontology.
This is a daunting task at first glance. What were apparently neat
discipline or topic areas have now become (happily) a major
deconstruction effort.
Take 'Sound' for example, my present task. I am trying to reorganize
my computer music class to be OC (ontological correct) (just
for fun). In other words - we begin at RadiatingSound and then
might jump over to InformationBearingContent to look at techniques
to visualize a sound wave. Then I need to have quick access to such
classes as Hertz, Signal, Theory/Cybernetics, DSP, Russolo - Art of
Noise,
Hearing, Pattern, Phenomenology, Music, etc. Linking to resources,
examples, images, sounds, or movies is a problem. What I need
is a cross between Protege and Power Point :)
My question is:
1. General - any advice from experience - how to construct from the
bottom up. For example, in Protege, it isn't easy to reorganize the
class structure by adding a super class or inserting a mid-level class.
You can do this, but it doesn't change the class hierarchy, it will
just insert
the symbol for multiple superclasses. Optimally, I would like to make
small projects and merge them into meso structures later. But then
I might not have access to inherited class properties.
2. Here's my first candidate for a micro-ontology.
'Sample' -> aSample (instance)
A Sample is the elemental atom of DigitalSound. It is a number in
ComputerMemory. It is assembled into an Array in a ComputerBuffer
from a DataFile (many different instances or Formats of DataFile).
A Sample has one dimension - magnitude = 0...1. The magnitude
is also limited in resolution depending on 16 or 24 Bit systems.
The width (timeDuration) of the Sample is later dependent upon
parameters of SamplingFrequency.
So every noun and verb is important and requires a separate field
trip to some branch of the ontology tree - which I am hoping
will be the main 'feature' of this teaching method.
Thanks for your comments and let me know if I am barking
up the wrong ontology tree - listServes. You might refer me to a
more appropriate discussion list for lower ontology building -
downtown as it were.
Dr. Kenneth Fields
Professor Media Arts/Computer Music
CEMC - China Center for Electronic Music
Central Conservatory of Music
43 BaoJia Street
XiCheng District
Beijing, China, 100031