ISPR Presence News

Monthly Archives: June 2014

Call: 3rd Workshop on Games and NLP (GAMNLP-14)

Call For Papers

The 3rd Workshop on Games and NLP (GAMNLP-14)

http://sites.google.com/site/gamnlp14/

to be held at the Tenth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence
and Interactive Digital Entertainment (AIIDE-14).

OBJECTIVE:

This workshop aims at promoting and exploring the possibilities for research and practical applications involving Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Games. The main objective is to provide a forum for researchers and practitioners to discuss and share ideas regarding how the NLP research community can contribute to games research and vice versa. For example, games could benefit from NLP’s sophisticated human language technologies in designing natural and engaging dialogues to bring novel game experiences, or in processing texts to conduct formal game studies. Conversely, NLP could benefit from games in obtaining language resources (e.g., construction of a thesaurus through a crowdsourcing game), or in learning the linguistic characteristics of game users as compared to those of other domains.… read more. “Call: 3rd Workshop on Games and NLP (GAMNLP-14)”

Posted in Calls | Leave a comment

First U.S. 4D theaters open in Los Angeles

[From The Wrap, where the story includes other pictures. For more on the two 4D theaters that opened this weekend see The Hollywood Reporter and a 2:52 minute video new report from WEAR-TV]

4-D Experience Theater

4D Theaters Buck, Jerk, Spray and Hurtle Their Way Into America

Bring a towel and witness what may be the future of film

By Brent Lang on April 13, 2014

It bucks, it mists, it hurtles. It smells.

No this is not an amusement park ride and yes, the smells part is accurate. It’s 4D, the latest effort by cinema owners to offer something on the big screen that moviegoers can’t find on their tablets, mobile devices or gaming consoles.

4D enabled theaters have become popular attractions in Latin America, South Korea, China, Mexico and other foreign markets and they’ve begun to crop up stateside in recent years.… read more. “First U.S. 4D theaters open in Los Angeles”

Posted in Presence in the News | Leave a comment

Call: The 21st Multimedia Modelling Conference (MMM 2015)

The 21st Multimedia Modelling Conference (MMM 2015)
Jan 5-7, 2015, Sydney, Australia

http://www.mmm2015.org/

MMM 2015 is a leading international conference for researchers and industry practitioners for sharing new ideas, original research results and practical development experiences from all MMM related areas. The conference calls for research papers reporting original research and investigation results as well as demonstrations in all areas related to multimedia modelling technologies and applications. The conference also calls for proposals of special sessions.

The conference proceedings will be published as series of Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) by Springer. There will be best submission awards. Authors of selected papers will be invited to publish extended versions in special issues of various leading/major international journals.

TOPICS OF INTEREST

The topics of interest for MMM 2015 include, but are not limited to:… read more. “Call: The 21st Multimedia Modelling Conference (MMM 2015)”

Posted in Calls | Leave a comment

Google’s incredibly clever cardboard VR headset

[From TechCrunch, where the story includes more images and a 2:52 minute video; see also the follow-up stories, How To Make Your Own #Cardboard VR Goggles, Buy A Google #Cardboard Clone For $20, and The Story Behind Google’s Cardboard Project]

Google cardboard VR headset

Hands On With Google’s Incredibly Clever Cardboard Virtual Reality Headset

Posted June 25, 2014 by Greg Kumparak

Each year at I/O, Google gives all of the developers in the audience a gift. Some years it’s a tablet. Some years it’s a laptop.

This year? It was a piece of cardboard. Yeah, yeah, they gave attendees some other stuff, too — but that cardboard!

Once you tear the seal on Google’s lil’ slab of cardboard, it becomes clear that this is no mere corrugated fiberboard. This is something more!

If you can bust out the skills you picked up at the University of Ikea and work your way through the not-so-intuitive folding process, you end up with something wonderful.… read more. “Google’s incredibly clever cardboard VR headset”

Posted in Presence in the News | Leave a comment

Call: Game Studies, Culture, Play, and Practice at Southwest Popular/American Culture Association conference

Call for Papers: Game Studies, Culture, Play, and Practice Area
36th Annual Southwest Popular / American Culture Association Conference

February 11-14, 2015
Hyatt Regency Hotel and Conference Center
Albuquerque, NM

http://www.southwestpca.org

The Game Studies, Culture, Play, and Practice Area welcomes papers, panels, and other proposals on games (digital and otherwise) and their study and development. The Area is also offering a three hour workshop titled “Empathy Game Design: A Quick Introduction” on the first day of the conference.

PROPOSAL SUBMISSION

Possible topics include (but are in no way limited to):

  • Advertising (both in-game and out)
  • Alternative reality games
  • Archiving and artifactual preservation
  • Competitive/clan gaming
  • Design and development
  • Economic and industrial histories and studies
  • Educational games and their pedagogies
  • Foreign language games and culture
  • Game art/game-based art (including game sound)
  • Haptics and interface studies
  • Histories of games
  • Localization
  • Machinima
  • MOGs, MMOGs, and other forms of online/networked gaming
  • Performance
  • Pornographic games
  • Religion and games
  • Representations of race and gender
  • Representations of space and place
  • The rhetoric of games and game systems
  • Serious games
  • Strategy games
  • Table-top games and gaming
  • Technological, aesthetic, economic, and ideological convergence
  • Theories of play
  • Wireless and mobile gaming

For paper proposals: Please submit a 250 word abstract and brief biographical sketch to the conference event management site:  http://conference2014.southwestpca.org/read more. “Call: Game Studies, Culture, Play, and Practice at Southwest Popular/American Culture Association conference”

Posted in Calls | Leave a comment

“Tell Me Dave”: Program your robot by casually talking to it

[From Phys.org, where the story includes a different picture and two videos. More information is available on the “Tell Me Dave” web site]

Tell Me Dave graphic

Robot can be programmed by casually talking to it (w/ Video)

Jun 23, 2014

Robots are getting smarter, but they still need step-by-step instructions for tasks they haven’t performed before. Before you can tell your household robot “Make me a bowl of ramen noodles,” you’ll have to teach it how to do that. Since we’re not all computer programmers, we’d prefer to give those instructions in English, just as we’d lay out a task for a child.

But human language can be ambiguous, and some instructors forget to mention important details. Suppose you told your household robot how to prepare ramen noodles, but forgot to mention heating the water or tell it where the stove is.… read more. ““Tell Me Dave”: Program your robot by casually talking to it”

Posted in Presence in the News | Leave a comment

Call: Human Work Interaction Design for Pervasive and Smart Workplaces – NordiCHI’14 workshop

Call For Papers
Human Work Interaction Design for Pervasive and Smart Workplaces
http://sites.google.com/site/hwid2014

At NordiCHI’14 (Helsinki, Finland; October 26-30)
http://nordichi2014.org/

Pervasive and smart technologies have pushed workplace configuration beyond linear logic and physical boundaries. As a result, workers¹ experience of and access to technology is increasingly pervasive, and their agency constantly reconfigured. While this in certain areas of work is not new (e.g., technology mediation and decision support in air traffic control), more recent developments in other domains such as healthcare (e.g., Augmented Reality in Computer Aided Surgery) have raised challenging issues for HCI researchers and practitioners. The question now is: how to improve the quality of workers¹ experience and outputs?

This workshop focuses on answering this question to support professionals, academia, national labs, and industry engaged in human work analysis and interaction design for the workplace. Conversely, tools, procedures, and professional competences for designing human-centered technologies for pervasive and smart workplaces will be discussed.… read more. “Call: Human Work Interaction Design for Pervasive and Smart Workplaces – NordiCHI’14 workshop”

Posted in Calls | Leave a comment

eleVR: The first web video player for virtual reality

[From CNET, where the story includes a different image and a 1:25 minute video]

Vi Hart of eleVR

[Image: Vi Hart]

eleVR: the first web video player for virtual reality

Why should gaming get all the fun? eleVR is like YouTube for your virtual reality headset — and anyone can jump in and create videos.

by Michelle Starr
June 24, 2014

You may be able to control a quadcopter with an Oculus Rift — but what about just kicking back and watching some videos from your favourite creators? That’s what the newly launched eleVR is for.

The website, a collaborative effort between ‘mathemusician’ Vi Hart, software developer and mathematical artist Andrea Hawksley, and vlogger, artist and media producer Emily Eifler, offers the first open source web video player compatible with the Oculus Rift, with all videos produced by the team available for download and all code available on github so that anyone can implement their own ideas.… read more. “eleVR: The first web video player for virtual reality”

Posted in Presence in the News | Leave a comment

Call: Help with facial expression detection study

Dear virtual agent enthusiast,

Automatic facial expression detection is becoming increasingly robust and accurate. We envision the reproduction of a user’s facial expressions, captured with a webcam, on the user’s avatar in a computer game. Currently, we are conducting a series of studies to investigate the feasibility of this scenario. In particular, we are interested in the factors that affect the perceived quality of the facial animations.

To this end, we’d like to invite you to participate in a brief (10 minutes) online study:  www.zkshao.com/survey.php

We thank you for your participation! Should you have any questions about the study, please let us know.

Best regards,
Ronald Poppe (R.W.Poppe@uu.nl) and Zhi Kang Shao… read more. “Call: Help with facial expression detection study”

Posted in Calls | Leave a comment

“Breathing Wall” installation explores environment as extension of our body

[From Fast Company’s Co.Exist, where the story includes more pictures and a 2:33 minute video; see also Behnaz Farahi’s web pages for this version and the earlier version of the project]

Woman in Breathing Wall 2.0 installation‘s

When You Move Your Hand, This Room Changes Shape

By covering walls in Spandex and using a motion sensing game controller, a designer has created a magical place that is an extension of the human mind and body.

Adele Peters
June 23, 2014

We’re used to using gestures like swiping and tapping to control smartphone apps. But could we use the same movements to change the physical world around us? In a project called Breathing Wall, University of Southern California student Behnaz Farahi experiments with what it might look like if walls in a room changed shape whenever we moved our hands.

“I am exploring what the future of our living environment could look like,” Farahi says.… read more. ““Breathing Wall” installation explores environment as extension of our body”

Posted in Presence in the News | Leave a comment
  • Find Researchers

    Use the links below to find researchers listed alphabetically by the first letter of their last name.

    A | B | C | D | E | F| G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z