ISPR Presence News

Monthly Archives: March 2015

Call: “Digital Animals: Inhabiting the Intersections of Nature, Culture, and Technology” (for TRACE journal)

Call for Papers – Digital Animals: Inhabiting the Intersections of Nature, Culture, and Technology

The University of Florida’s TRACE journal publishes online peer-reviewed collections in ecology, posthumanism, and media studies. Providing an interdisciplinary forum for scholars, we focus on the ethical and material impact of technology. We welcome submissions in a variety of media that engage cultures, theories, and environments to “trace” the connections across and within various ecologies.

The first issue of TRACE explores current conversations at the intersection of animal studies and digital media studies. Animal studies scholars argue that animals influence the ways we engage with philosophy, critical theory, literature, and filmic technologies. Moreover, posthumanist theorists, such as Cary Wolfe and Donna Haraway, challenge how humans relate to animals–decentering humans as the reference for understanding relationships between nature and technology. TRACE’s Digital Animals: Inhabiting the Intersections of Nature, Culture, and Technology extends conversations by examining the role of digital media in animal lives and representations.… read more. “Call: “Digital Animals: Inhabiting the Intersections of Nature, Culture, and Technology” (for TRACE journal)”

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Are virtual reality headsets too immersive for their own good?

[The author’s answer to the question in the headline is no. This is from Forbes. –Matthew ]

Oculus Rift

Are Virtual Reality Headsets Too Immersive For Their Own Good?

3/23/2015
Seth Porges

In the burgeoning world of virtual reality, to use is to believe. With few exceptions, I’ve found it takes but a quick demo on an Oculus Rift (or one of its growing number of competitors) for skeptics to realize how awesome—and awesomely immersive—the tech can be. Five minutes, and all your held-over-from-the-nineties notions of VR (and, as the show Community recently pointed out, its disastrous effect on nineties cinema) are likely to dissolve into wide-jawed yelps of “Awesome”.

But a tech that rises on its promise of immersion also opens itself up to a similarly grounded liability. The problem: These days, people tend to multitask their media. We watch TV while tapping a tablet while texting on our phones while browsing on our laptops.… read more. “Are virtual reality headsets too immersive for their own good?”

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Call: 14th Intl. Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia (MUM 2015)

Announcement and Call for Papers

14th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia (MUM 2015)
30.11. – 2.12., 2015 in Linz, Austria

www.mum-conf.org

Organized by University of Applied Sciences
Upper Austria and Johannes Kepler University Linz
in-cooperation with ACM SIGCHI

MUM 2015, the 14th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia, will be held on 30.11. – 2.12.2015 at the Ars Electronica Center Linz in Austria.

Import Dates:

Paper submission deadline: August 21, 2015
Notification of review decisions: October 9, 2015
Conference dates: November 30 – December 2, 2015

MUM is a distinguished forum for advances in research and technologies that drive innovation in mobile and multimedia systems, applications, and services. At MUM academics and practitioners gather to discuss challenges and achievements from diverse perspectives, in a single track conference format. This year’s conference aims to continue the tradition of innovation and excellence in research established by previous MUM conferences.… read more. “Call: 14th Intl. Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia (MUM 2015)”

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Widerun brings virtual reality to indoor cycling

[If they can solve the motion sickness issues, biking in VR has great potential – watch just a little of the video included in this story from VentureBeat to see how it’s different than current screen-based biking exercise equipment; the story also includes a photo gallery of virtual environments. –Matthew ]

Widerun with Oculus Rift

Widerun brings virtual reality to indoor cycling

March 20, 2015
Paul Sawers

Virtual reality (VR) is creeping into just about every orifice of our lives, across music, gaming, sports broadcasting, and more. There’s even a dedicated accelerator for VR startups. Now, an Italian company is making moves to embed virtual reality firmly in the fitness realm, with a device designed to bring the great outdoors to indoor cycling.

Bike trainers, or “turbo trainers”, are already fairly common contraptions among cycling enthusiasts, allowing them to use their actual bike (as opposed to an exercise bike) indoors — this can be useful for winter training.… read more. “Widerun brings virtual reality to indoor cycling”

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Call: Internet of the Future – Challenges of Human Interaction (Communicar special issue)

CALL FOR PAPERS

COMUNICAR JOURNAL
Special Issue, n46
The Internet of the future
The challenges of human interaction

Internet del futuro
Los desafíos de la interacción humana

Subject Editors

  • Carina S. González. University of La Laguna, Spain
  • César A. Collazo. University of Cauca, Colombia

FOCUS

This issue is intended to promote and disseminate recent advances in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI in the USA, IPO in Spain). In particular, we will focus on the problems facing the internet of the future or the internet of things, and the challenges present in this field involving interacting and communicating with the user.

Among the academic disciplines interested in the area of human-computer interaction we find not only the technical disciplines, but education, sociology, audiovisual communication, fine arts, cognitive psychology, and many others.

Human-computer interaction is present in any software and technical device, and interface design has become a critical aspect in their development, as it is one of the main factors influencing the success and competitiveness of software applications.… read more. “Call: Internet of the Future – Challenges of Human Interaction (Communicar special issue)”

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Telepresence robots help the bedridden visit museums and more

[Here’s an inspiring story about the potential of presence to improve people’s lives; it’s from CNN Money, where it includes another picture; see also a related story, “Bedroom-bound quadriplegic develops drone to see the world,“ posted in ISPR Presence News last November. –Matthew ]

Kavita Krishnaswamy visits Seattle Art Museum via Beam

[Image: Kavita Krishnaswamy virtually visits the Seattle Art Museum.]

Will robots help the bedridden see the world?

By Heather Kelly,
CNNMoney (San Francisco)
March 12, 2015

Kavita Krishnaswamy hasn’t left her house in six years, but that hasn’t stopped her from wandering around the Seattle Art Museum and taking in concerts at the National Music Museum in South Dakota.

A PhD candidate at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Krishnaswamy has spinal muscular atrophy and requires assistance 24 hours a day. She was able to make the museum trips using a Beam telepresence robot — a remotely controlled 16-inch screen mounted five feet above motorized wheels.… read more. “Telepresence robots help the bedridden visit museums and more”

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Call: Principles and Practices in Multi-Agent Systems – Special issue of Scalable Computing: Practice and Experience

CALL FOR PAPERS
Scalable Computing: Practice and Experience
(www.scpe.org)
Special Issue: Principles and Practices in Multi-Agent Systems

Agent-based Computing addresses the challenges in managing distributed computing systems and networks through monitoring, communication, consensus-based decision-making and coordinated actuation. As a result, intelligent agents and multi-agent systems have demonstrated the capability to use intelligence, knowledge representation and reasoning, and other social metaphors like “trust”, “game” and “institution”, to not only address real-world problems in a human-like way but to transcend human performance. This has had a transformative impact on many application domains, particularly e-commerce, but also on planning, logistics, manufacturing, robotics, decision support, transportation, entertainment, emergency relief & disaster management, and data mining & analytics. As one of the largest and still growing research fields of Computer Science, agent-based computing today remains a unique enabler of inter-, multi- and trans-disciplinary research.… read more. “Call: Principles and Practices in Multi-Agent Systems – Special issue of Scalable Computing: Practice and Experience”

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Facebook, Oculus and the future of virtual reality

[In this vision for the future, “Facebook doesn’t just create the big social network for virtual reality (the ‘metaverse’ as it is sometimes called). It also makes Oculus Rift into the fully realized platform it deserves to be… far more like an evolved Second Life than it is like a VR Newsfeed.” This is from TechCrunch, where the post includes another image. –Matthew ]

Oculus-Facebook logo

Facebook, Oculus And The Future Of Virtual Reality

Posted Mar 15, 2015 by Dan Kaplan

Editor’s note: Dan Kaplan helps startups tell their stories. He’s done marketing for Twilio, Asana and Salesforce and blogs about marketing, growth, and storytelling at Threadling.

Imagine a scene:

You’re in your chair at home, the latest Oculus VR headset encircling your head, and you use its voice recognition feature to access Facebook.

Facebook’s virtual reality newsfeed appears in front of you — a three-dimensional, horizontally-scrolling wall of cards.… read more. “Facebook, Oculus and the future of virtual reality”

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Call: Robot & Gran: Would You Leave Your Ageing Parent or Grandparent in the Care of a Robot? (Free symposium)

There is still opportunity to reserve your free place at this exciting afternoon symposium:

ROBOT & GRAN: WOULD YOU LEAVE YOUR AGEING PARENT OR GRANDPARENT IN THE CARE OF A ROBOT?

Wednesday 25th March 2015, 3:30pm
Committee room 3, House of Lords
Palace of Westminster
United Kingdom

This event is kindly hosted by Lord McColl of Dulwich

For the first time in history, there are 11 million people aged 65 or over in the UK with 3 million people aged 80 or over. By 2050, estimates predict that the elderly will account for 16 percent of the global population.

Research suggests that about three-quarters of elderly people will develop a social care need, which can include anything from help getting up in the morning to round-the-clock support in a residential home. The number of younger, disabled adults is also predicted to rise, as medical advances mean many people with disabilities are living longer.… read more. “Call: Robot & Gran: Would You Leave Your Ageing Parent or Grandparent in the Care of a Robot? (Free symposium)”

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VR experience puts you right in the audience at SNL 40

[Despite the uniqueness of the SNL 40 event, it seems likely that this or related technology will be applied to other television programming; this story is from AdWeek; a video of the SNL segment is on YouTube. –Matthew ]

SNL 40 Seinfeld Q&A in VR

Wild Virtual Reality Experience Puts You Right in the Audience at SNL 40

Chris Milk’s latest project comes to SXSW

By Tim Nudd
March 15, 2015

It remains mostly unclear what kinds of virtual reality experiences will be most compelling to people. But NBC, Samsung and director Chris Milk presented one VR experience at South by Southwest this weekend that everyone could agree was pretty cool—as it put the user right in the audience at Saturday Night Live’s recent 40th anniversary show.

Unfortunately, we don’t have any video to show you that even approximates the experience. But what happened was this: Milk recorded Jerry Seinfeld’s monologue with a VR camera mounted on top of Camera 1—the camera right in front of the SNL main stage.… read more. “VR experience puts you right in the audience at SNL 40”

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