[A February 2021 ISPR Presence News post described ARHT Media’s holographic technology (the company’s website boasts of “A Sense Of Presence You Need To See”). This Fast Company story from May reports on a new ARHT partnership with coworking company WeWork to implement the technology in many of its “800+” locations around the world (the press release is available via Intrado GlobeNewswire). –Matthew] Your next meeting at WeWork could be with life-size holograms The coworking company is equipping some of its workspaces with holographic gear so that people thousands of miles away can participate in events. By Mark Sullivan May…

[The pandemic has caused many more of people to think about how to use technology and configure spaces to create a sense of being together, i.e., spatial and social presence. This Fast Company story examines some of the considerations that will be important in the new post-pandemic world of remote and hybrid meetings. See Diginomica for an interview with the author Phil Simon who is quoted here. –Matthew] [Image: Meeting room illustration by Marc_Osborne/iStock] We still need conference rooms. Here’s what they should look like post-pandemic A big table, a bunch of chairs, and a speakerphone are no longer enough.…

[Road to VR reports on the Sense Arena hockey trainer. The original version of this story includes another image and three 3 videos, and the NHL.com story mentioned includes more videos and images and quotes goalie Antoine Bibeau of the Carolina Hurricanes saying “You put it on and you basically appear in the net in an NHL arena and you look around and it’s really like being in an NHL arena. I’m shocked by how realistic the whole thing is.” –Matthew] ‘Sense Arena’ is a VR Hockey Trainer That’s Being Adopted by NHL Teams By Ben Lang June 9, 2021…

[This Museum Association story uses the VR component of a new V&A exhibition about Alice in Wonderland to comment on the larger shift towards the use of immersive media at museums, which has been accelerated by the pandemic. As FashionUnited UK’s coverage notes, the exhibit also includes other elements to create immersion and presence: “Described as one of the museum’s ‘most ambitious’ exhibitions by its director Dr Tristram Hunt, ‘Alice: Curiouser And Curiouser’ aims to transport visitors into the otherworldly experiences shaped by theatrical sets, immersive environments and playful displays, including the museum’s first virtual reality experience.” The original version…

[Researchers at Columbia University Engineering have created EVA, a blue-faced robot that uses deep learning to mimic the subtle changes in facial expressions of the humans around her and evoke medium-as-social-actor presence, as reported in this news release. See the original version for a different image and a 2:24 minute video (also available on YouTube) and see the project’s website for much more information. –Matthew] The Robot Smiled Back Columbia Engineering researchers use AI to teach robots to make appropriate reactive human facial expressions, an ability that could build trust between humans and their robotic co-workers and care-givers By Holly…

[This story from Forbes earlier this year describes a study that reinforces the ideas that presence-evoking technology amplifies at least some of the impacts of media content (as in early studies of screen size) and that media content and form interact in important ways. Experiencing driver training messages in virtual reality produced increased risk-taking for fear appeal messages and reduced risk-taking for positive messages compared to viewing the messages in 2D film conditions. Here’s an excerpt from the published study: “As VR is designed to provide a more realistic experience of driving collisions (Lin, 2017; Parsons & Rizzo, 2008), it…