[This story from Next Reality describes what I think is a clever idea: Using augmented reality to create presence experiences of tourist sites – in this case Big Ben – while they’re under renovation (I wish it had been in place for the 600 year old Astronomical Clock in Prague that was being restored during the PRESENCE 2018 conference and is now back in service). See the original Next Reality story for animated gifs and a 13 second video of Snapchat’s Cat Lenses (also available via YouTube), and see a 21 second video of the Big Ben AR on YouTube.…

[The new virtual reality experience described in this story from Smithsonian sounds impressive; see the original story for two other images, and the Vive website (or YouTube) for a 4:50 minute video that includes many indirect references to presence as it describes the project. –Matthew] Step Into Claude Monet’s World With This Immersive VR Exploration of ‘Water Lilies’ New VR experience whisks participants from Paris museum to Impressionist’s Giverny garden and studio By Meilan Solly November 19, 2018 Visiting the Musée de l’Orangerie’s “Water Lilies” rooms—an oblong pair of galleries fitted with eight panoramic panels from Claude Monet’s seminal series—is…

[The creator of the new Lovot robot and his team have made a series of design choices likely to increase medium-as-social-actor presence, as described in this story from Bloomberg (where it includes two more pictures). Excerpts from coverage in The Verge and Quartz follow below and provide more details, and see the English version of the Lovot website for much more information. –Matthew] This New Japanese Robot Is Designed to Hack Your Emotion By Pavel Alpeyev December 18, 2018 With large attentive eyes and a plush body that’s warm to the touch, a new robot developed in Japan is designed…

[This opinion piece from The Next Web offers the kind of big picture perspective on presence that I find particularly interesting and important. The author makes logical if depressing predictions about how we will use and be impacted by presence-evoking technologies (she uses the term explicitly) in the year and years ahead. Note: This version is very lightly edited for typos. –Matthew] 2018’s political mess is a boon for VR escapism in 2019 By Alice Bonasio December 25, 2018 As the late screenwriting legend William Goldman famously said; “nobody knows anything” so predictions – especially about technology – always run…

[Here are three short stories about how people are using technology to celebrate Christmas virtually this year. I wish you all a wonderful, restorative Christmas and holiday season, mediated by technology and otherwise! –Matthew] [The first story, from Patch, is about a “virtual Santa sleigh ride” attraction in Chicago; for more details see ABC7 TV’s 3:37 minute news report. For coverage of other attractions see “Mindful of Amazon, malls take the Santa experience high-tech” in the Chicago Tribune.] [Image: Source: O The Places We Go, where you can watch the 1:23 minute sleigh ride video] Water Tower Place Debuts First…

[The story below is about a depressingly necessary application of presence-evoking technology; it’s from CBS News, where it includes a 3:56 minute video report from CBS Morning News. For more on STRIVR, see the company’s website. –Matthew] Companies use VR to train employees for hostage situations, robberies December 20, 2018 Virtual reality is often associated with video games. But well-known companies are now using it as a tool to train for potentially dangerous situations. Major companies like Walmart, Chipotle and Verizon are using VR to prepare employees for what they could see on the job. Verizon has more than 1,600…