ISPR Presence News

Monthly Archives: March 2018

Call: Haptic Technologies for Healthcare – Workshop at Eurohaptics 2018

Call for Papers

Haptic Technologies for Healthcare is a one-day workshop to be held as part of the Eurohaptics 2018 conference.

It will be held on Wednesday, June 13, 2018 in Pisa, Italy.

Website: https://hapticsforhealthcare.wordpress.com

Deadline for extended abstracts: April 30th, 2018

About the workshop:

Recent technologies allow for novel classes of wearable and holdable devices that make use of forms of haptic communication and interaction that go beyond elementary uses such as simply attracting attention. This can give rise to an expanded design space that raises many research issues, as this workshop will explore.

The goal of this workshop is to spark interest in the topic of haptic technologies for healthcare, with a specific focus on using haptic technologies for assisting, enhancing and extending current practices, both in the hospital and home setting.

The workshop is open to students, researchers, engineers, clinical and rehabilitation practitioners, and industry experts interested in research issues raised by novel or complex haptic interactions for wearable and holdable devices for healthcare.… read more. “Call: Haptic Technologies for Healthcare – Workshop at Eurohaptics 2018”

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Presence as perceived realism: Two cautionary examples

[Two recent examples vividly illustrate the increasing use of technology to manipulate our perceptions of reality. Business Insider introduces the first example this way:

“’Question everything’ is the Instagram influencer and blogger Carolyn Stritch’s latest message to her followers. And to encourage people to do just that, she conducted an experiment to show people just how easy it is to fake ‘perfection’ on the photo-sharing platform.

Stritch, who is from the UK, is the 32-year-old lifestyle blogger and freelance photographer behind The Slow Traveler. She has amassed 190,000 followers on her Instagram account @theslowtraveler through sharing perfectly poised photos of cosy-looking settings involving copious cups of coffee and stacks of books […].

But as we should all know by now, not everything is as it seems on Instagram.

In a post titled ‘Why I hacked my own Instagram account,’ Stritch reveals how she fooled people into believing she had taken a trip to Disneyland.”… read more. “Presence as perceived realism: Two cautionary examples”

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Call: Playable Cities: The City As A Digital Playground (at ArtsIT 2018)

Call for Workshop Papers

3rd International Workshop
PLAYABLE CITIES: THE CITY AS A DIGITAL PLAYGROUND

This workshop will be held as part of the 7th EAI International Conference: ArtsIT 2018, Interactivity & Game Creation, October 24-26, 2018, Braga, Portugal (http://artsit.org/)

Workshop Date: 24 October 2018

Paper Submission Deadline: 1 July 2018

BACKGROUND

After the success of the first (Utrecht, 2016), the second (Funchal, Madeira, Portugal) we now organize the third one-day workshop on Playable Cities in the beautiful town of Braga.

PLAYFULNESS AND THE (PLAYABLE) CITY

The Playable City is a term, introduced a number of years ago in Bristol, UK and imagined as a counterpoint to ‘A Smart City’. From the Playable City website (https://www.playablecity.com/background/): “A Playable City is a city where people, hospitality and openness are key, enabling its residents and visitors to reconfigure and rewrite its services, places and stories.”… read more. “Call: Playable Cities: The City As A Digital Playground (at ArtsIT 2018)”

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Where presence happens: Virtual reality for all

[Reading this story made me feel good. It’s from the Boise Weekly (in the Rocky Mountain state of Idaho) and it’s about the real work and real benefits of bringing VR and presence to diverse members of the public. –Matthew]

[Image: By Adam Rosenlund]

Virtual Reality for All

“We have helped people with all ranges of body limitations, stress or anxiety, autism, social skills, and even if you are fully paralyzed, we have found relaxing VR videos or music experiences to be effective.”

By Harrison Berry
March 21, 2018

Ted, a resident of the assisted living center The Terraces, was the first of a group of seniors waiting in line to don a virtual reality headset, and he gripped the hand controls as if they were poisonous snakes. Prompted by Danielle Worthy, a library assistant for the Bown Crossing branch of the Boise Public Library, Ted said he saw some fish and a stingray.… read more. “Where presence happens: Virtual reality for all”

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Call: “Speculative Futures for Artificial Intelligence and Educational Inclusion” (Book Chapters)

Call for Chapters:

Speculative Futures for Artificial Intelligence and Educational Inclusion
Springer Nature – AICFE Future Schools 2030 book series

https://jeremyknox.net/call-for-chapters-speculative-futures-for-artificial-intelligence-and-educational-inclusion/

Abstract submissions due: March 30, 2018

We are inviting experts and practitioners from around the world to write chapters for a book that will help to advance our understanding of education. The book is an outcome of the Future School 2030 research project supported by the Advanced Innovation Centre for Future Education, Beijing Normal University. The publisher for the book will be Springer Nature, an international publisher.

This book seeks to bring together the fields of ‘artificial intelligence’ (often known as A.I.) and ‘inclusive education’ in order to speculate on the future of educational practice. Heretofore, there has been little in the way of direct association between research and practice in these domains: A.I. has been predominantly a technical field of research and development, and while intelligent computer systems and software are being increasingly applied in many areas of industry, economics, social life, and education itself, a specific engagement with the idea of inclusion appears lacking.… read more. “Call: “Speculative Futures for Artificial Intelligence and Educational Inclusion” (Book Chapters)”

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Study: 360-degree VR ads outperform 2D ads

[A new industry study suggests that presence-evoking media are effective venues for advertising. This story is from Retail Dive, and see the short OmniVirt report for more information. –Matthew]

360-degree VR ads have 300% higher click-through rates

Dan Alaimo
March 13, 2018

Dive Brief:

  • A recent study from OmniVirt revealed that 360-degree virtual reality ads perform appreciably better than regular advertising across metrics such as click-through rates, viewability, and video completion. The data was derived from over 700 million ads served.
  • In click-through rates, OmniVirt found that VR photos performed 300% better than regular two-dimensional photos, and 14% better than regular photos in viewability.
  • In video completion rates, 360-degree videos were 46% higher than regular videos, with an 85% video completion rate for 360-degree video versus 58% for two-dimensional videos.

Dive Insight:read more. “Study: 360-degree VR ads outperform 2D ads”

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Call: User Modeling for Personalized Interaction with Music – Special issue of UMUAI

[Presence isn’t mentioned here but could be usefully applied in this topic area.  –Matthew]

Call for Papers

User Modeling for Personalized Interaction with Music
Special Issue of User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction: The Journal of Personalization Research (UMUAI)
http://www.cp.jku.at/journals/umuai_si_music.html
Flyer (PDF)

Submission deadline for extended abstracts: June 1, 2018
Submission deadline for full papers (for accepted abstracts): July 31, 2018

SCOPE OF THE SPECIAL ISSUE

Music search, retrieval, and recommendation systems have experienced a boom during the past few years due to streaming services providing access to huge catalogs anywhere and anytime. These streaming services collect the user behavior in terms of actions on music items, such as play, skip, playlist creation and modification. As a result, an abundance of user and usage data has been collected and is available to companies and academics, allowing for user profiling and to create personalized music search and recommendation systems.… read more. “Call: User Modeling for Personalized Interaction with Music – Special issue of UMUAI”

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Synthetic humans: New tech further closes gap between real and CGI

[Epic Games is leading a group of companies in making significant strides in “crossing the uncanny valley” to create more convincing, less creepy presence illusions of people. The short story below from Slashgear summarizes one of the developments demonstrated at the recent Game Developers Conference; more details follow in a story from VentureBeat. The original versions of both contain more images and videos, and more information is available in coverage by The Verge and the Unreal Engine blog. Note especially this prediction in the VentureBeat story: “By 2024, we may all be interacting with digital humans in some way or other, whether it’s via headsets, films, TV, games, live performances and broadcasts, or by directing digital assistants in our homes in real-time.” –Matthew]

[Image: Source: Engadget]

Epic Games’ Siren demo is both amazing and super-creepy

Eric Abent
Mar 22, 2018

Epic Games is no stranger to incredibly detailed motion capture technology.… read more. “Synthetic humans: New tech further closes gap between real and CGI”

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Call: ACM UMAP Workshop on Intelligent User-adapted and Context-aware Applications and User Interfaces (IUadapt 2018)

Call for Papers

ACM UMAP Workshop on Intelligent User-adapted and Context-aware Applications and User Interfaces (IUadapt 2018)
in conjunction with the 26th ACM Conference on User Modelling, Adaptation and Personalization – UMAP 2018 (http://www.um.org/umap2018/)
July 8-11, 2018, Singapore

Workshop website: http://teldh.dibris.unige.it/iuadapt/

IMPORTANT DATES

Paper Submission: 20 April 2018 (23:59 AoE – Anywhere on Earth)
Notification to authors: 15 May 2018
Camera-ready version due: 27 May 2018

DESCRIPTION

The evolution of social semantic environments and content personalization, along with the adoption of context-aware techniques, the spread of handheld devices together with always connected IoTs, and of cloud computing are deeply changing the way people are using the Web and digital devices for a variety of purposes. This change is also pushing application providers to offer a new wave of services and calls for intelligent user interfaces to support users in their interactions.… read more. “Call: ACM UMAP Workshop on Intelligent User-adapted and Context-aware Applications and User Interfaces (IUadapt 2018)”

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Artist’s “Parallax View” app creates 3-D illusions using iPhone X’s Face ID

[Artist Peder Norrby has created a free app that produces impressive optical illusions, as briefly described in this story from DesignTAXI. For a detailed explanation of the illusions, see the artist’s blog. For more interesting examples of presence, see the (free, public) ISPR Presence Community Facebook group. –Matthew]

3-D Optical Illusion Uses iPhone X’s Face ID To Imagine The Gadget’s Interior

By Mikelle Leow, 22 Mar 2018

Face ID is to the iPhone X as ‘Snake’ is to the Nokia 3310—both are catalysts to keeping you entertained. Apart from Animoji, the iPhone X’s front-facing camera sensors allow for the making of trippy optical tricks that create the illusion of depth.

Recently, you saw a mind-blowing effect that transforms iPhone X’s 2D display into a hollow, unending 3D labyrinth. The creator behind the animation—Peder Norrby—fashioned the illusion through an app he made, ‘TheParallaxView’.… read more. “Artist’s “Parallax View” app creates 3-D illusions using iPhone X’s Face ID”

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