ISPR Presence News

Monthly Archives: May 2010

Call: Mixed Reality and Performance special issue of International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media

Call for Papers

The International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media (IJPADM) is seeking contributions to a special issue specifically relating to Mixed Reality and Performance.

Issue Editor: Alan Chamberlain (Mixed Reality Lab – University of Nottingham)

You are invited to submit full journal papers to the International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media (IJPADM) for a special issue on Mixed Reality and Performance. Mixed Reality performances have highlighted our ability to: exist, understand and concurrently engage with both virtual and real worlds in a performative way. The development of the technologies under-pinning such Mixed Reality systems have afforded performers, directors and developers the chance to create experiences that can both spatially and temporally explore the boundaries of performance and understand where and why performance occurs in everyday life. These experiences can exist in a multitude of realities, that not only blur the boundary between the real and the virtual, but also re-define the distinction between the roles of audience and performer, creating new audience/performer-based paradigms.… read more. “Call: Mixed Reality and Performance special issue of International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media”

Posted in Calls | Comments closed

Couple let baby starve to death while raising virtual baby online

[From The Huffington Post

Couple Let Baby Starve To Death While Raising Virtual Baby Online

03- 5-10

A Korean couple allowed their child to starve to death because of their addiction to raising a ‘virtual’ child in a Second-Life-style game online known as Prius, reports say.

Kim Yoo-chul, 41, and Choi Mi-sun, 25, would feed their three-month-old baby only when not at 12-hour-online sessions in a local internet café. The pair were obsessed with raising their internet child, called Anima, resulting in the neglect of their unnamed real daughter.… read more. “Couple let baby starve to death while raising virtual baby online”

Posted in Presence in the News | Comments closed

Gamer stabs rival who killed his avatar

[From the UK’s Telegraph]

 

Gamer stabs rival who killed his avatar

Video game fanatic hunts down and stabs rival player who killed character online

A French video game fanatic hunted down and stabbed a rival player who had killed his character in an online war game.

Published: 27 May 2010

Julien Barreaux, 20, told police he wanted to see his rival player “wiped out” after his character in the game Counter-Strike died in a virtual knife fight.… read more. “Gamer stabs rival who killed his avatar”

Posted in Presence in the News | Comments closed

Call: Presence teaching materials

Call: Presence teaching materials

Have you taught others (students, clients, members of the public) about telepresence?

The International Society for Presence Research (ISPR; https://smcsites.com/ispr) is compiling materials related to teaching telepresence for possible inclusion on its web site as a service to the academic and professional presence community.

Please consider sending to ispr@ispr.info the following::

  • Your name and affiliation
  • When you began teaching about presence
  • The format of the teaching (face-to-face course, online course, single lecture or seminar, business meetings, other)
  • The audience (undergraduate students, graduate students, business clients, general public, other)
  • Any syllabi, handouts, reading lists, powerpoint files, links to online resources, and/or any other teaching materials you are willing to share (optional)
  • Any details, impressions, or advice about your experience teaching presence that you think would be useful or interesting to others (optional)

Please e-mail your information and materials (if available), and/or your questions or comments, to ISPR at ispr@ispr.inforead more. “Call: Presence teaching materials”

Posted in Calls | Comments closed

Ford assembly line optimized by gaming technology

[From Businessweek]

 

Ford assembly line optimized by gaming technology

May 24, 2010
By Nick Barber

When Glenn Harrington donned a motion capture suit complete with more than 40 reflective spheres he wasn’t being turned into the latest video game character, but helping to design car manufacturing jobs that are less physically stressful on workers.

At the Ford Motor Company Assembly Ergonomics Lab in Dearborn, Michigan, the company uses technology typically found in the gaming industry to reduce on-the-job and repetitive stress injuries on its assembly lines.

For a video report on the technology, click here.

“The cameras pick up the markers [on the suit] and create an avatar,” said Harrington, a technical specialist in the Ford Assembly Ergonomics Lab. “What we’re ultimately trying to do is confirm the assembly feasibility of the vehicle.”

During a demonstration Harrington stood in the middle of a room with more than a dozen cameras pointed toward him, shining a dull red light.… read more. “Ford assembly line optimized by gaming technology”

Posted in Presence in the News | Comments closed

Call: Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds

Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds (ISSN: 1757191X; print on demand and online) is seeking contributions to its 3(1) issue (spring 2011). Papers from all areas associated with video/computer games and virtual environments are welcome.

Deadlines: 31 August 2010 for long articles; 15th September 2010 for short articles, conference/project reports, poster abstracts, interviews and (machinima/book/game…) reviews.… read more. “Call: Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds”

Posted in Calls | Comments closed

Video gamers can control dreams, study suggests

[From LiveScience]

 

Image: The third-person shooter game “Alan Wake” stars a suspense-thriller author in a surreal, horror novel setting.

Video Gamers Can Control Dreams, Study Suggests

By Jeremy Hsu, LiveScience Senior Writer
posted: 25 May 2010 09:53 am ET

Playing video games before bedtime may give people an unusual level of awareness and control in their dreams, LiveScience has learned.

That ability to shape the alternate reality of dream worlds might not match mind-bending Hollywood films such as “The Matrix,” but it could provide an edge when fighting nightmares or even mental trauma.

Dreams and video games both represent alternate realities, according to Jayne Gackenbach, a psychologist at Grant MacEwan University in Canada. But she pointed out that dreams arise biologically from the human mind, while video games are technologically driven by computers and gaming consoles.

“If you’re spending hours a day in a virtual reality, if nothing else it’s practice,” said Jayne Gackenbach, a psychologist at Grant MacEwan University in Canada.… read more. “Video gamers can control dreams, study suggests”

Posted in Presence in the News | Comments closed

Call: Chapters for “Reinventing Ourselves: Contemporary Concepts of Identity in Virtual Worlds”

Reinventing Ourselves: Contemporary Concepts of Identity in Virtual Worlds

Provisionally to be published in 2011 in Springer’s Human-Computer Interaction Series

Editors: Anna Peachey (Eygus Ltd / The Open University) and Mark Childs (Coventry University)

Invitation to Submit:

We invite abstracts of between 500 and 650 words describing the proposed chapter. Abstracts should be supported further by up to 500 words explaining the theoretical underpinning to the chapter, and a brief summary describing how this chapter will contribute to the book. … read more. “Call: Chapters for “Reinventing Ourselves: Contemporary Concepts of Identity in Virtual Worlds””

Posted in Calls | Comments closed

What if content management were 3D?

[From Fierce ContentManagement (“a weekly content management news update, which focuses on best practices for creating, storing and managing documents and information”); a scene from the film is here

What if content management were 3D?

February 22, 2010 — 4:17pm ET | By Ron Miller

I recently saw the Michael Douglas/Demi Moore 1994 movie called “Disclosure.” In the movie (which explores sexual harassment in the workplace), Michael Douglas was working for a computer company that created a 3D virtual reality database. The user would put on special glasses and he was literally inside the database with the data. He could walk inside a library of content, interact with it and touch it.

I had coffee this week with Maria Korolov who writes extensively about virtual reality. During our conversation, I began thinking about what it would be like if someone designed a content management system in three dimensions.… read more. “What if content management were 3D?”

Posted in Presence in the News | Comments closed

Job: Researcher for Project Isis: Protecting Children in Online Social Networks at Middlesex University

Researcher
ISIS: Protecting Children in Online Social Networks Middlesex University

Researcher (Grade 6):
Salary scale £28,610 – £32,834pa
Including Outer London Weighting

Full-time fixed term appointment until 30 September 2011

An opportunity for a strong Human Factors researcher with a background in HCI to develop a series of participatory design tools that will allow the integration of ethical and social considerations in monitoring technologies.

The project is funded by the EPSRC/ESRC working with partners at Swansea University, Lancaster University, and will be co-supervised by Prof. Matt Jones at the Future Interaction Technology Lab, Swansea University.… read more. “Job: Researcher for Project Isis: Protecting Children in Online Social Networks at Middlesex University”

Posted in Jobs | Comments closed
  • 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