[As this story from Futurism does, all or nearly all the press coverage of this technology advance with implications for presence begin by referring to science fiction portrayals (e.g., in Star Wars, Iron Man, and Avatar). The original Futurism story includes links to coverage in Nature News, the Nature article and the BYU press release as well as a 2:24 minute BYU video. –Matthew] [Image: One of Smalley’s students, wearing a lab coat and posed like Princess Leia. Image Credit: Smalley et al., Nature] Physicists Just Made Star Wars-Style 3D Projections a Reality By Dom Galeon January 26, 2018 IN…

[The new Space 360 spherical theater in Gwangju, South Korea (about 3 hours by train south of Seoul) is designed to evoke a strong sense of spatial presence. The original version of this story from urdesignmag includes 7 more images and a 3 minute video; more information is available from the Front Pictures blog, including this from the (admittedly biased) sponsor: “The feedback from the audience is great. They say that they have never experienced anything like this before. And they feel like they have travelled into another dimension!” –Matthew] Inside South Korea’s First Spherical Projection Theater The Gwangju National…

[This short piece from Open Culture is about how experts were fooled into thinking that music composed by artificial intelligence in the style of Bach was composed by Bach himself (i.e., they experienced presence, misperceiving the role of technology in the experience). The story references a more detailed article on the project from December 2016 and comes as “Hello World, the first album composed with AI,” is being released. For an interesting discussion of the implications of all of this, see a September 2017 article in Playboy titled “Will Artificial Intelligence Elevate Pop Music or Pervert It? (The Answer is…

[I often hesitate to post stories on this topic, despite its obvious relevance to presence, in part because of the juvenile and prurient tone of the press coverage, but this story from CNET that describes the latest fascinating but ethically murky step toward effective presence illusions in the context of sexuality stands out as responsible and thoughtful. See the original story for many more photos, a video and links to related information. –Matthew] Sex dolls, live models make ‘virtual intercourse’ feel real Camming site CamSoda calls itself a “virtual strip club.” Now new integrations with VR, connected toys and sex…

[This column from Forbes suggests that as the technology of virtual assistants like Alexa and Siri evolves and they become more capable of evoking effective medium-as-social-actor presence, they’ll take on bigger roles in our lives and disrupt the mundane but important interactions of our human-human relationships (a prospect thoughtfully expanded on in the film Her). ––Matthew] [Image: An Amazon Echo. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)] Will Virtual AI Assistants Create Real Relationship Troubles? Kalev Leetaru, Contributor – I write about the broad intersection of data and society. January 9, 2018 As they say in relationship counseling, communication is everything in nurturing a successful…

[Predictions about the future of virtual reality and presence from two culture contributors are in the news and featured in stories below from The Art Newspaper and Gamespot. –Matthew] [Image: A screenshot from the upcoming film Ready Player One] Douglas Coupland says Virtual Reality could replace ‘overrated’ books in post-millennial age Generation X author and artist was among 100 cultural leaders to convene at the Verbier Art Summit on digital art Anny Shaw 22nd January 2018 “Virtual Reality [VR] is this asteroid that’s going to hit the planet in 2023,” said the Canadian novelist and artist Douglas Coupland, citing Google’s…