ISPR Presence News

Monthly Archives: March 2021

Call: GHItaly21 – 4th Workshop on Games-Human Interaction (with CHItaly 2021)

Call for Papers

GHItaly21 – 4th Workshop on Games-Human Interaction
11 to 13 of July 2021
Online
http://ghi.di.unimi.it/

In Conjunction with CHItaly 2021 –
The biannual Conference of the Italian ACM SIGCHI Chapter
https://chitaly2021.inf.unibz.it/

Submission deadline: April 23, 2021

The 4th Workshop on Games-Human Interaction – GHItaly21 is the fourth edition of a series of workshops focused on the multifaceted issues related to the design and development of human-game interfaces. GHItaly21 aims at establishing a common venue for scholars and industry practitioners, where they can exchange ideas on all the topic related to this multidisciplinary field, and possibly create new collaborations. The main goal of the event is to spur discussion on the development of new ways of researching, teaching, and working on HCI applied to design and production of video games. The application range of video games has to be intended in its broadest sense: from entertainment and to “serious” applied finalities (health, education, etc).… read more. “Call: GHItaly21 – 4th Workshop on Games-Human Interaction (with CHItaly 2021)”

Posted in Calls | Leave a comment

Presence after death: William Shatner creating conversational AI of himself with StoryFile

[All of the news stories about William Shatner teaming with the company StoryFile to create a version of himself that future generations can interact with are based on the company’s press release below via GlobeNewswire (which for some reason doesn’t mention its work with astronauts, Civil Rights leaders and Holocaust survivors – see the StoryFile website for more details). Here’s how the company promotes their service:

“StoryFile uses a mobile native cloud-based AI-driven conversational video technology. THIS is what differentiates StoryFile from everything else!

Have you ever interacted with a life-sized hologram of an astronaut and asked him what it’s like being in space? How spectacular would it be if you could ask Stephen Curry to teach you his jump shot? Our proprietary technology, Conversa™, makes these dreams possible.

Our technology allows StoryFile to go where conversational video has never been before.… read more. “Presence after death: William Shatner creating conversational AI of himself with StoryFile”

Posted in Presence in the News | Leave a comment

Call: 3/25 talk: Immersed in Restoration, with Glen Fraser, John Harrison and Jacki Morie

Call for Participation

Immersed in Restoration: With Guest Speakers Glen Fraser, John Harrison and Jacki Morie
Thursday March 25th, 2021 at 9 am PST
Museum of Other Realities (MOR) – Online (https://www.museumor.com/)
https://www.museumor.com/blog/immersed-in-restoration-with-guest-speakers-glen-fraser-john-harrison-and-jacki-morie

Our next talk event on March 25th, 2021 at 9 am PST stirs up the pressing question concerning the temporality of VR art. We’re honoured to host and extend the perspective of VR long-timers Glen Fraser, John Harrison and Jacki Morie as our guest speakers for ‘Immersed in Restoration’.

While it might surprise contemporary VR artists in 2021 to hear about the first three decades of VR art history, the question to also raise is why don’t people know about these early works? Can they still be experienced now, and where? What would it take to resurrect them? In this MOR Salon event moderated by Jacki Morie, we’ll look at a famous 1995 VR artwork by Char Davies, and hear from its guardians what efforts have been made to keep it alive and running for future audiences to enjoy.… read more. “Call: 3/25 talk: Immersed in Restoration, with Glen Fraser, John Harrison and Jacki Morie”

Posted in Calls | Leave a comment

IBM Project Debater takes AI to a new level

[As all the coverage including this Scientific American story makes clear, IBM’s newest AI isn’t as persuasive as the best human debaters, but it’s getting close (and represents a big step toward effective medium-as-social-actor presence). ExtremeTech notes that “The question of who wins a debate will always be subjective, and humans still clearly outperform IBM’s Project Debater. For now, we’re still a long way from Data — but we’ve come a long way from Eliza, too.” See the original Scientific American story for a different image and watch the nearly one hour debate video on YouTube. The Jerusalem Post provides examples of how Project Debater uses Aristotle’s “three fundamental pillars of Ethos, Pathos and Logos – appealing to authority, emotion and logic.” Interesting Engineering notes that “Scientific American has done a great podcast episode with the research’s lead Noam Slonim which tackles amongst other things whether the AI actually understands the arguments it presents and what that means for the future of debating.”… read more. “IBM Project Debater takes AI to a new level”

Posted in Presence in the News | Leave a comment

Call: “Narratives of Temporality: Continuities, Discontinuities, Ruptures” International Conference

Call for Paper Proposals

“Narratives of Temporality: Continuities, Discontinuities, Ruptures”
International Conference
24-25 July 2021
Cambridge/Online
Organised by London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research
http://spatiality.temporality.lcir.co.uk/

Proposals up to 250 words due by 30 April 2021

This conference will provide a deeper look into the dynamic and complex relation between construction, codes, language, expression, on one side and the crisis of representations, traumas, discontinuities and tensions in discourses, on the other. This will be conducted according to three research areas:

  1. The anachronism
  2. Narratives and discourse
  3. The temporality of trauma and subjectivity

The aim of this conference is to develop a multidisciplinary reflection on the complex relationship between narrative and temporality. The central topics concern the multiple and articulated ways in which narrative practices and forms of temporality dynamically interact, by developing a multifaceted space of concepts, theories, practices and knowledge, in a dynamics of cross-disciplinary thinking.… read more. “Call: “Narratives of Temporality: Continuities, Discontinuities, Ruptures” International Conference”

Posted in Calls | Leave a comment

Virtual reality giving Cleveland neurosurgeons a chance to ‘pre-do’ brain surgery

[This and the two related Brain Awareness Week stories from Cleveland.com it mentions describe the evolution of technologies that together enhance presence and help neurosurgeons obtain greater success in locating the source of brain conditions and practicing for and performing surgeries that help improve and save patients’ lives. See the original version of the story for a second image. –Matthew]

[Image: MetroHealth neurosurgeon Dr. Deven Reddy uses a virtual reality system developed by the Chicago company ImmersiveTouch to view and work on a virtual model of a patient’s brain to prepare for a complex surgery. Credit: Evan MacDonald, cleveland.com]

Virtual reality giving MetroHealth neurosurgeons a chance to ‘pre-do’ brain surgery: Brain tech in Cleveland

By Evan MacDonald
March 18, 2021

CLEVELAND, Ohio — If you walk into the office of MetroHealth neurosurgeon Dr. Deven Reddy at the right moment, you might think he’s playing a virtual reality video game.… read more. “Virtual reality giving Cleveland neurosurgeons a chance to ‘pre-do’ brain surgery”

Posted in Presence in the News | Leave a comment

Call: Chapters for “Clash of Realities – Playful Materialities”

Call for Chapters

“Playful Materialities”- A Clash of Realities edited volume

Timeline: By May 1, 2021 selected abstracts will be invited to submit full chapters, which will be due by September 30

Gaming culture has always been closely linked to material culture. This applies both to analog forms of rule-based play (ludus), which would hardly be conceivable without dice, cards, and game boards (Clüver 2020), and also to the act of free play (paidia) we can observe in children who transform simple objects into multifaceted toys in an almost magical way (Herron/Sutton-Smith 1971, Giddings 2014). Furthermore, materiality also affects digital play to a remarkable degree (Apperley 2012): Games are not only mediated by technical interfaces, which we access with hardware and tangible peripherals (Mauger 2013), but are also subject to material hybridization (Kultima/Mäyrä/Timy 2013), paratextual framing (Beil/Freyermuth/Schmidt 2021) and processes of de-, and re-materialization.… read more. “Call: Chapters for “Clash of Realities – Playful Materialities””

Posted in Calls | Leave a comment

Presence and the sublime: VR helps solve a century-spanning Philosophical mystery

[I’ve always been particularly interested in the ‘big questions’ presence raises; this story from Inverse describes an intriguing new study that suggests even today’s immersive media can be used to evoke a sense or emotion philosophers and other scholars have labelled the sublime, and that presence plays a role. See the original story for a third image and see coverage in The Academic Times for more details and comments from the first author, including this:

“’Nature and art are equally god at evoking or bringing about the experience of the sublime,’” [first author] Clewis told The Academic Times. ‘But [in the study] art and nature did it in a little bit of a different way. Nature brought more of a physical threat to people’s security, and also a sense of presence – when they were looking through the VR goggles at the actual panorama, they think they’re more there.’”… read more. “Presence and the sublime: VR helps solve a century-spanning Philosophical mystery”

Posted in Presence in the News | Leave a comment

Call: 6th International Conference on Smart Learning Ecosystem and Regional Development (SLERD 2021)

Call for Papers

SLERD 2021: 6th International Conference on Smart Learning Ecosystems and Regional Development – SLERD Reload
Smart Learning Ecosystems and the Regional Development after the pandemic
June 24-25, 2021
Bucharest, Romania (blended)
slerd2021.uniroma2.it
Paper submission deadline (EXTENDED): March 31, 2021

SLERD 2021 will feature:

keynotes by:

  • Inger Birkeland (University of South-Eastern Norway) – June 24
    Place-conscious education and regional development: Facilitating ecologies of place
  • Danielle McNamara (Arizona State University) – June 24
    Interdisciplinary Behavioral Science: Enhancing Literacy from a Multidimensional Perspective
  • Sébastien Turbot (eko6 and WISE research fellow) – June 25
    Accelerating Learning Ecosystems: a Living Lab Approach

the Student Scientific Video Contest
call for contributions
with the award of the “BEST SCIENTIFIC VIDEO DOCUMENTS” (three prizes: 500,00 €, 300,00 €, 300,00 € and free participation to the conference)

two Open Debates – June 25 – on

  • Smart Learning Ecosystems as Engine of the “new normality”
  • Towards Learning Ecosystems Based on Competences: the promise of the micro-credentials

and a Satellite Event – June 23 – the round table on “Social inclusion at school: new perspectives for a smart learning ecosystem”

orgnized by the PLEIADE partnership

SLERD 2021 is proud to invite colleagues – researchers and practitioners – from all over the world to share the efforts concerning the development of smart learning ecosystems and, contributions on how to build together a brilliant post pandemic future, where smart learning ecosystems and smart education will be even more central in the education of future citizens, and in the promotion of social innovation and territorial development.… read more. “Call: 6th International Conference on Smart Learning Ecosystem and Regional Development (SLERD 2021)”

Posted in Calls | Leave a comment

Augmented reality art: Where your home becomes the gallery

[This BBC News story describes how and why many contemporary artists are using augmented reality to let viewers experience their creations in their own homes (and elsewhere) during the pandemic; see the original story for 10 more images of the virtual works and a video. –Matthew]

Augmented reality art: Where your home becomes the gallery

By Anna Bailey, Reporter, The Cultural Frontline, BBC World Service
23 February 2021

Ever dreamed of hanging artworks by leading artists around your home? Well now you can for free, thanks to augmented reality or AR as it is known.

Images such as Olafur Eliasson’s Solar Friend and Tomas Saraceno’s Peacock Spider are among some of the works that can be displayed in your home – the only catch is they will not physically be there but can be seen virtually via an app on your smartphone.… read more. “Augmented reality art: Where your home becomes the gallery”

Posted in Presence in the News | Leave a comment
  • Find Researchers

    Use the links below to find researchers listed alphabetically by the first letter of their last name.

    A | B | C | D | E | F| G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z