The cognitive interpretation of perceptual data (e.g., from video, depth, motion sensors) requires the representational and inferential mediation of commonsense and qualitative abstractions of space, actions, events, change, and interaction. General methods and benchmarks for high-level cognitive interpretation, and their seamless integration and access within large-scale projects concerned with cognitive vision, robotics, hybrid-intelligent systems are necessary. We present the Rotunde initiative as a particular instance of a challenging smart meeting cinematography concept primarily concerning human activity interpretation. The Rotunde initiative aims to release general tools (e.g., for reasoning and control), methodological and performance benchmarks, and developmental aids (e.g., management and visualisation of complex spatio-temporal data) for the cognitive interpretation of interaction.