International Society
for Presence Research

Author: Matthew Lombard

  • Call: A Letter to Video Games: The Mechanisms of Emotions (online conference)

    Published:

    Call for Papers: A Letter to Video Games: The Mechanisms of EmotionsAn international, interdisciplinary online conferenceAugust 28-29, 2026 (via Zoom)https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eeAvnB1FuET4nZsdgjTDKRFYVBOOBnC0/view Deadline for submission of abstracts: July 5, 2026 This conference explores how video games evoke, construct, and regulate emotional experiences. As an interactive medium combining narrative, audiovisual design, and player agency, video games offer unique ways of engaging emotions—from joy and empathy to fear, nostalgia, and moral tension. We approach this theme from two interrelated perspectives: Player reception and subjective emotional experience Game design mechanisms that produce and shape emotional responses We welcome contributions from a wide range of disciplines…

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  • Blade Runner returns in 2027 with immersive experience

    Published:

    [Stories about presence continue to be popular. As reported here by Polygon, the stories and world of the Blade Runner films and television series, which all originated in the Philip K. Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, will return in an immersive experience. For more details see the press release via PR Newswire. In related news, SyFy reports that a new film version of Westworld is in the works. –Matthew] Blade Runner returns in 2027 with a new way to experience it Dry your eyes and experience new moments in North America this 2027 By Aimee HartMay 11,…

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  • Call: Resonant Worlds: Sound, Matter, and Environmental Design in Games

    Published:

    Call for Papers: Resonant Worlds: Sound, Matter, and Environmental Design in GamesEdited CollectionEdited by Michael Austin and Kate Galloway[From the Gamesnetwork mailing list] Deadline for submission of abstracts: August 15, 2026 Resonant Worlds: Sound, Matter, and Environmental Design in Games  is an edited collection that examines how video games render environments through sound, with particular attention to the sonic expression of materiality. While game studies has long emphasized visual worldbuilding and environmental storytelling, this volume foregrounds how sound communicates the textures, behaviors, and affordances of virtual matter, including water, ice, stone, wind, vegetation, and more, as dynamic, interactive systems.…

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  • Study: After VR training, the brain began treating virtual wings more like real limbs

    Published:

    [The results of a new study reported in Science News won’t be surprising to those familiar with previous work on homuncular flexibility in virtual reality (e.g., by Andrea Stevenson Won et al.), but the results are intriguing and have important implications. See the original version of the story below for a nine second video (also on YouTube) and follow the link to the new article in Cell Reports for more details. –Matthew] 25 people learned to fly with virtual wings. Here’s how the brain changed After flight training, the brain began treating wings more like real limbs By Yujia HuangMay…

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  • Call: 4th Workshop on NeuroDesign in Human-Robot Interaction

    Published:

    Call for Participation: 4th Workshop on NeuroDesign in Human–Robot InteractionAt ICRA 2026, IEEE International Conference on Robotics & AutomationJune 5, 2026Hybrid Event: Vienna, Austria and onlineWorkshop: https://neurodesign-in-hri.webflow.io/ICRA 2026: https://2026.ieee-icra.org/ Deadline for submissions: May 17, 2026 (extended) Dear Colleagues, Researchers, Students, and Early-Stage Start-up Teams, We are excited to invite you to participate in the NeuroDesign in Human–Robot Interaction EXPO & Competition and Poster Paper Track, held as part of the 4th Workshop on NeuroDesign in Human–Robot Interaction at IEEE ICRA 2026. Due to popular demand and the strong interest we have received, we are pleased to announce that the submission…

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  • British Airways transforms NYC subway into one of its planes

    Published:

    [British Airways recently created a presence-evoking immersive experience in which it transformed a New York subway into one of its airplanes. The installation, part of a larger campaign, is described in this story from DesignTAXI – see the original version for two more images, a 2:48 minute video (also available on YouTube), and three embedded social media posts. An excerpt from the British Airways press release follows below – see the original version of the release for more images. –Matthew] British Airways transforms NYC subway into one of its planes May 1, 2026 Your daily commute rarely comes with a…

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  • Call: Generative AI and Cultural Heritage Conference

    Published:

    Call for Papers: Generative AI and Cultural HeritageInternational ConferenceOctober 29-30, 2026Ferdinando Rossi School of Advanced StudiesUniversity of Turin, Italyhttp://commlist.org/archive/all/2026-all/msg00678.html Sponsored by Global Media and China (Sage Journals) Organisers:Simone Natale (University of Turin, Italy)Deqiang Ji (Communication University of China)Anthony Fung (The Chinese University of Hong Kong)Dianlin Huang (Communication University of China) Deadline for the submission of abstracts: June 30, 2026 Cultural heritage – defined as the tangible and intangible legacy that is passed down from generation to generation – has always been sensitive to technological innovation. From photography to film, from computing to the Internet, from social media to virtual reality,…

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  • China trend of AI replicas of exes sparks debates about emotional cheating, attachment

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    [The prospect of creating AI chatbots that simulate specific human beings almost always raises interesting and important questions. The latest example, described in this story from the South China Morning Post, is an AI that simulates a person’s former romantic partner. See the original version of the story for four more images. Tech writer Mike Elgan writes about this in his Machine Society substack and concludes with this: “My beef with this concept is the same I have with any kind of relationship AI. It’s delusion-inducing for many users (who may believe the digital twin is actually a copy of…

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  • Call: Sensing Immersion: Video passthrough, bodily technologies and sense coupling in co-extensive reality

    Published:

    Call for Participation: “Sensing Immersion: Video passthrough, bodily technologies and sense coupling in co-extensive reality”A talk by Chris Salter (Zurich University of the Arts)May 19, 2026, 16:00 – 18:00University of Siegen, Germany and onlinehttps://www.mediacoop.uni-siegen.de/en/events/talk_-by_chris_salter_en/ Registration: https://my.liberaforms.org/talk-registration-sensing-immersion ABOUT THE TALK The introduction of worn mixed reality devices such as the Meta Quest 2 or the Apple Vision Pro marks an important shift towards re-centering virtual experience back onto the human body as a mediator between self, others and the world. Yet, as optical sensing technologies and their associated algorithms transform virtual reality headsets into camera-based sensing systems that “passthrough” the outside…

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  • London schools use VR to relieve pupils’ stress

    Published:

    [This widely cited story from The Guardian reports that schools in London are using presence-evoking virtual reality to reduce student anxiety around exams and other stressors. See the original version of the story for a second image, and the Phase Space website for more details and a 1:51 minute video (also available on Vimeo). –Matthew] [Image: A pupil using a Phase Space VR headset. Credit: Phase Space] London schools trialling VR to relieve pupils’ stress Phase Space pilot programme with NHS mental health trust used to calm anxiety around exams, ADHD and home troubles By Denis Campbell and Sinéad CampbellMay…

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  • Call: Space, Urban Studies, Cityscapes, and Virtual/Digital Spaces

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    [NOTE: The post of this Call in the Virtual-Reality listserv includes this from the journal’s assistant editor: “We would like to read about experience working on the topics related to virtual reality and educational technology, and believe that the perspectives and journeys of this group, through research, academia, and practice, can illustrate how theory and lived experience are intertwined, and add a unique dimension to the discourse we are trying to create through this Volume.” –Matthew] Call for Papers: Space, Urban Studies, Cityscapes, and Virtual/Digital SpacesFor the Forum section of a special volume in the journal Language, Literature, and Interdisciplinary…

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  • Rethinking AR for children: USF study finds key design gap

    Published:

    [Motivated by the fact that children are increasingly using presence-evoking technologies in school (and elsewhere), researchers at the University of South Florida are investigating differences between how adults and children use augmented reality. The original version of this story includes five more images and this quote from USF Assistant Professor Julia Woodward: “If we are going to design for children, we need to consider all the elements. Children think about AR in terms of real-world objects and try to interact with them like physical items, with weight and force. We need to design with those expectations in mind.” –Matthew] Rethinking…

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