[This story from New Scientist highlights negative consequences of presence-based advertising; while it focuses mostly on competition between advertisers, the larger concern is unwanted clutter in augmented/mixed reality, as illustrated in the Kevin Matsuda short film Hyper-Reality. The original story includes a 0:35 minute video and a different image. –Matthew]

Augmented reality graffiti will lead to advertising ambush wars

By Matt Reynolds
4 August 2017

Imagine looking up at the sky and seeing every cloud crammed full of adverts. High above a fast food restaurant, a competitor has scrawled its own cheeky pitch, urging shoppers to eat their burgers instead.

This future is nearer than you might think: last month saw the launch of the first augmented reality app that lets anyone write on the sky. And, according to a report released this week by a global law firm, advertisers are worried.… read more. “Augmented reality graffiti will lead to advertising ambush wars”

[This disturbingly timely story from Yale News describes a new exhibition about the blurring of the real and artificial in our representations and understanding of war. The original includes five more images, and more information and images are available at the Gallery’s website. –Matthew]

[Image: A detail from An-My Lê’s Film Set (“Free State of Jones”), Battle of Corinth, Bush, Louisiana, 2015. Inkjet print. Courtesy STX Entertainment]

Exhibit features photographic portrayals of war, real and staged

July 21, 2017

“Before the Event/After the Fact: Contemporary Perspectives on War,” an exhibition that brings together a range of contemporary approaches to the visual representation of conflict, is on view at the Yale University Art Gallery through the end of the year.

The works in the exhibit depict not only combat zones but also training sites, forensic reconstructions, and popular entertainment. Encompassing conceptual, documentary, and architectural imaging techniques, the exhibition investigates the visual relationships between staged images and real events, and between factual data and their digital representations.… read more. “Exhibit explores realism and artifice in photographic portrayals of war”

[In addition to describing the company’s new brain-controlled VR game, in this interview from IEEE Spectrum the CEO of Neurable argues that the brain-computer interface will “be the interaction method that allows for ubiquitous VR and AR”; the original story includes four different pictures and a 0:42 minute video. –Matthew]

[Image: From Diorama, where coverage includes a 2:08 minute demonstration video]

Startup Neurable Unveils the World’s First Brain-Controlled VR Game

By Eliza Strickland
Posted 7 Aug 2017

Imagine putting on a VR headset, seeing the virtual world take shape around you, and then navigating through that world without waving any controllers around—instead steering with your thoughts alone.

That’s the new gaming experience offered by the startup Neurable, which unveiled the world’s first mind-controlled VR game at the SIGGRAPH conference this week.

In the Q&A below, Neurable CEO Ramses Alcaide tells IEEE Spectrum why he believes thought-controlled interfaces will make virtual reality a ubiquitous technology.… read more. “Startup Neurable unveils the world’s first brain-controlled VR game”

[The tools available to creators allow increasingly sophisticated manipulations of mediated reality; this story from the UC Santa Barbara Current describes an interesting new one; follow the links at the end for more information, examples and a 5:18 minute video, and see coverage in DIY Photography for an explanation of how this new tool compares to others. –Matthew]

Picture Perfect

UCSB and NVIDIA researchers develop a new technique that enables photographers to adjust image compositions after capture

By James Badham
Monday, July 31, 2017

When taking a picture, a photographer must typically commit to a composition that cannot be changed after the shutter is released. For example, when using a wide-angle lens to capture a subject in front of an appealing background, it is difficult to include the entire background and still have the subject be large enough in the frame.… read more. “‘Computational zoom’ lets photographers adjust image compositions after capture”

[From Roomba to Kuri to sophisticated and adorable future companion robots that take care of us, we can’t help perceiving machines as independent, sentient social actors – i.e., experiencing media-as-social-actor presence. This interesting story from Wired considers some key design choices and ethical challenges. See the original for a 5:12 minute video. –Matthew]

Companion Robots Are Here. Just Don’t Fall In Love With Them

Matt Simon
August 2, 20.17

“Hey, Kuri,” I say. “I love you.”

Pause. I brace for rejection, but then the robot lets out a balooop and shimmies back and forth. This, I am to presume, means Kuri loves me too.

Interacting with Kuri, a robot set to hit the market in December, is at once fascinating, delightful, and puzzling. Kuri’s creators call it a “companion robot,” but this is no Furby. Kuri belongs to a new class of machines that actually are intelligent, and actually make useful assistants at home.… read more. “Companion robots are here. Just don’t fall in love with them”