[This story from The Daily Beast is about efforts to simulate near death experiences and replicate some of the insights and perspective changes they can bring. See the original version for a seven minute video (also available via YouTube). For related stories about presence and death see “People Are Going Full ‘Black Mirror’ to Bring Back the Dead: What these businesses are doing for grieving and loss is what Uber did for taxis and buses: disrupting, innovating, and making things a whole lot more complicated” also from The Daily Beast, and “Technology that lets us “speak” to our dead relatives…

[A new room at the University of California, Davis is designed to evoke (spatial) presence to more accurately measure reactions to food and other products; see the original version of the story below from the University for more pictures and a 1:41 minute video (also available on YouTube).  –Matthew] [Image: Julien Delarue, associate professor in sensory and consumer science, in the new multi-sensory immersive room at UC Davis] New Sensory Immersive Room at UC Davis Simulates Real-Life Environments for Product Testing Space Features 360-Degree Video Experience With Variable Sounds, Smells and Air Conditions By Tiffany Dobbyn October 18, 2022 What…

[Deepfake videos are increasingly likely to cause viewers to overlook the role of technological manipulation in their media experience (i.e., experience presence), with dangerous consequences, but as this opinion piece from The Hill notes, shallowfakes – ”videos shared with misleading contexts or small edits” – pose a more immediate danger, and learning how to blunt their negative impacts will help prepare us to address the more sophisticated media manipulations to come. For much more information about this see a 90-minute video of a talk by the author on YouTube.  –Matthew] [Image: A woman in Washington, DC views a manipulated video…

[This story from Vice’s Motherboard reports on a political party in Denmark that is using artificial intelligence, personified by a (presence-evoking) chatbot called Leader Lars, to generate its policy platform. The idea goes beyond having a chatbot as a political candidate to allowing party members and others to shape the party’s platform by interacting with the AI. In addition to advocating political positions, a key goal is “raising more awareness about the role of AI in our lives and how governments can hold AI accountable to biases and other societal influences.” There are plans to expand the Party internationally. See…

[This Wired analysis of Meta’s latest virtual reality headset and the company’s plans to incorporate less immersive means of accessing shared virtual spaces considers two problems: The still-limited quality of nascent VR technologies and the metaverse (however it’s defined) means that only a minority of consumers and even workers want to use them, and when the minority of people who do use VR meet and collaborate in virtual spaces with the majority who don’t, it produces an undemocratic and potentially dysfunctional distribution of immersion and presence. Theoretically the first problem will be solved when the technology is (finally) ready for…

[The Toronto Star reports on how large-scale projection-mapped images and accompanying soundtracks are providing popular immersive entertainment experiences and challenging the definition of art. As one of the experts who hope the sector will turn to original, contemporary and even narrative-based source material says, “They’re barely touching on what this technology can do right now — the level of illusion and how it can create this sense of presence.” See the original story for a second image. –Matthew] Disney signs deal with Toronto’s Lighthouse Immersive to develop new projection art experience Projection-driven immersive exhibitions are revolutionizing the arts world and…