ISPR Presence News

Monthly Archives: September 2023

ISPR News / Call: PRESENCE 2024 – Help choose location and timing

ISPR News and Call for Participation:

Help choose the location and timing of PRESENCE 2024

As those who’ve attended them know, ISPR’s PRESENCE conferences, held in cities from Suffolk, England in 1998 to Prague in 2018 and most recently online during the pandemic, have always been productive and enjoyable professional and social events. They’re single-track, informal and everyone there is interested in presence. The panels are organized and scheduled to take advantage of our physical copresence (!) and encourage interesting, useful, unrushed discussions that continue during breaks and meals.

We’re now planning the first in-person PRESENCE conference since before the pandemic, PRESENCE 2024, and we’d really appreciate your input. Please take literally just a few minutes to fill out a short web survey to tell us your preferences for where and when the presence community will meet next year. And please forward this to anyone you think might be interested in attending!… read more. “ISPR News / Call: PRESENCE 2024 – Help choose location and timing”

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Call: The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy

Call for Submissions

The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy
Issue 24: General Issue
https://cuny.manifoldapp.org/read/jitp-call-for-submissions

Issue Editors:

  • Elizabeth Alsop, CUNY School of Professional Studies
  • Cen Liu, The Graduate Center, CUNY
  • Sarah Silverman, University of Michigan-Dearborn

Submission deadline for full manuscripts: December 1, 2023

The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy (JITP) seeks scholarly work at the intersection of technology with teaching, learning, and research. We are interested in contributions that creatively take advantage of the affordances of digital platforms and critique their limitations. We invite both textual and multimedia submissions employing interdisciplinary and innovative approaches in the humanities, sciences, and social sciences. Besides scholarly papers, the submissions can consist of audio or visual presentations and interviews, dialogues, or conversations; creative/artistic works; manifestos; or other scholarly materials, including work that addresses the labor and care considerations of academic technology projects.

BRIEF GUIDELINES FOR SUBMISSIONS

Research-based submissions should include discussions of approach, method, and analysis.… read more. “Call: The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy”

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Hologram runway wows crowds at Amsterdam Fashion Week

[The story below from Decrypt reports that over a thousand people recently attended a runway fashion show that featured only holographic figures, and “numerous audience members” were moved to tears “despite the fact that nothing they had seen, technically speaking, physically existed.” See the original story for four more pictures and two videos, and for more information see the event’s press release via FashionUnited. –Matthew]

Hologram Runway Wows Crowds at Amsterdam Fashion Week

Future Front Row seeks to chart an immersion-first path forward for the digital fashion industry after packing the house in Amsterdam.

By Sander Lutz
September 11, 2023

Beside the Keizersgracht canal in the heart of Amsterdam, inside the 18th-century cultural house Felix Meritis, more than 1,000 total attendees recently packed in to watch a fashion show starring no one.

Attendees of the event, which closed Amsterdam Fashion Week last weekend over four performances, filed into a room featuring a large catwalk bifurcated by a translucent screen.… read more. “Hologram runway wows crowds at Amsterdam Fashion Week”

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Call: Broadcast Education Association (BEA) 2024 Special Call: AI

Call for Papers

Broadcast Education Association (BEA) 2024
Media-Related Research, Creative Work, Panels & Workshops
April 13-16, 2024
Las Vegas, Nevada USA
https://www.beaweb.org/conv/

Submission deadline: December 1, 2023

The Broadcast Education Association (BEA) is the premiere international academic media organization driving insights, excellence in media production and career advancement for educators, students and professionals.  BEA’s annual convention traditionally produces over 250 sessions on media pedagogy, collaborative networking events, hands-on technology workshops, research and creative scholarship and the Festival of Media Arts.  Co-located with NAB Show, where the broadcast, media and entertainment industry converged to experience innovation in action and harness the power of possibility. Everything from creation through consumption — the entire content lifecycle in one exhilarating journey.

[More information and specific Calls at the link above]

BEA Research Committee Special Call: AI
https://www.beaweb.org/conv/bea-research-committee-special-call/

Submission deadline: December 15, 2023

The BEA Research Committee invites submission of original, non-published research papers to be considered for presentation at the BEA Conference April 13-16 in Las Vegas.… read more. “Call: Broadcast Education Association (BEA) 2024 Special Call: AI”

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Cars As Social Actors: A driverless car company is using chatbots to make its vehicles smarter

[The self-driving car company Wayve is using conversational large language model-based artificial intelligence to “talk” to its cars and ask them questions about what they see and how they make decisions as they drive. The company also is training the AI by having expert human drivers explain their perceptions and decisions as they drive. While this article from MIT Technology Review focuses on the important practical benefits of the approach, which has already been used with robots but not cars, the experience of conversing with embodied AI in both cases seems very likely to evoke an increasingly compelling form of medium-as-social-actor presence as the human-technology interface becomes more natural, intuitive and effortless. See the original version of the story for a short video.  –Matthew]

This driverless car company is using chatbots to make its vehicles smarter

Large language models are the next big thing for robotics, making cars and other robots quicker to train and easier to control (if you trust them).read more. “Cars As Social Actors: A driverless car company is using chatbots to make its vehicles smarter”

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Call: “Rethinking human-technology relations” for Humanities and Social Sciences Communications Collection

Call for Papers

“Rethinking human-technology relations”
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications Collection

https://www.nature.com/collections/fabejegiac

Guest Editors:
Orsolya Friedrich (FernUniversität in Hagen)
Sebastian Schleidgen (FernUniversität in Hagen)
Johanna Seifert (FernUniversität in Hagen)

Submission deadline: November 13, 2023

Human-technology relations (HTR) are of crucial interest in the humanities and social sciences. In sociology, philosophy, cultural studies, media studies, and psychology, the implications, effects, and dynamics of human-technology relations are controversially debated and analysed.

This Article Collection aims to address these debates and provide a systematic overview of different disciplinary approaches to the topic of human-technology relations by shifting the focus from human-machine interactions to human-machine relations. Thus, we ask how relations, interactions and relationships between humans and technical systems can be distinguished at the conceptual level and how these distinctions are reflected in practice. On the other hand, different modes of human-technology relations and their preconditions are addressed and analysed: How does, e.g.,… read more. “Call: “Rethinking human-technology relations” for Humanities and Social Sciences Communications Collection”

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Despite companies’ return-to-office mandates, the shift to remote work is here to stay

[Another incisive column from technology writer Mike Elgan in Computerworld predicts that despite some companies’ mandates that their employees return to full-time office work, the shift to flexible work-from-home schedules established during the pandemic will continue: “Remote work is the future of work” (which means that presence-evoking technologies will be increasingly vital). –Matthew]

[Image: A reception desk at Amazon offices in downtown Seattle, Washington. Credit: Glen Chapman/AFP/Getty Images. Source: CNBC]

Amazon’s return-to-office mandate won’t work out

No matter how many companies demand that their employees return to the office, the shift to remote work that occurred during the pandemic isn’t going anywhere.

By Mike Elgan, Contributing columnist, Computerworld
September 8, 2023

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy recently told Amazon employees who refuse to come into the office at least three days a week that “it’s probably not going to work out for you” — threatening to fire those employees (or invite them to engage in a “voluntary resignation”).… read more. “Despite companies’ return-to-office mandates, the shift to remote work is here to stay”

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Call: Cognitive Ecologies, Values, and Disruptive Technologies Workshop

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

Cognitive Ecologies, Values, and Disruptive Technologies
November 8–9, 2023
NOVA University Lisbon
Portugal
https://ifilnova.pt/en/cognitive-ecologies-values-and-disruptive-technologies/

Submission deadline: September 23, 2023

Confirmed speakers to include:

  • David Spurrett (University of Kwazulu-Natal)
  • Gloria Andrada (NOVA University Lisbon)
  • Jesus Vega-Encabo (Universidad Autónoma da Madrid)
  • John Sutton (University of Stirling & Macquarie University)
  • Lucy Osler (Cardiff University)
  • Robert W Clowes (NOVA University Lisbon)

The Lisbon Mind, Cognition and Knowledge Group, in collaboration with the GENAI Project, is excited to announce the workshop on Cognitive Ecologies, Values, and Disruptive Technologies. This intellectually stimulating event will take place on the 8th and 9th of November 2023 at NOVA University Lisbon.

WORKSHOP FOCUS

The concept of cognitive ecology has found diverse applications, offering valuable insights into the interplay between human cognition, affect and agency and its relationship and dependence on technology, and the environment (Tribble and Sutton 2011, Hutchins 2010).… read more. “Call: Cognitive Ecologies, Values, and Disruptive Technologies Workshop”

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Chat2024: AI-powered avatars of US presidential candidates answer user questions and debate

[This story from Politico describes the fast-evolving use of artificial intelligence trained on internet sources including political candidates’ video appearances and writings to simulate the candidates’ responses to questions from voters and debates with each other, with results increasingly likely to evoke presence and be at turns entertaining (as in the TrumpOrBiden2024 parody) and educational. Is this the future of political campaigns? –Matthew]

[Image: Screenshot of AI avatars of Joe Biden and Donald Trump “debating” on TrumpOrBiden2024 on Twitch]

Prepare yourself. A Donald Trump chatbot is about to be unleashed.

A project called Chat2024 will officially unveil the AI-powered avatars of 17 leading presidential candidates.

By Ben Schreckinger
September 11, 2023

Watch out! The AI “clones” of politicians are coming. And they’re not half bad.

In June, the AI avatars of Joe Biden and Donald Trump engaged in a marathon session of profane trash-talking broadcast on Twitch, offering a surreal glimpse at one potential future of political debate.… read more. “Chat2024: AI-powered avatars of US presidential candidates answer user questions and debate”

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Call: The 2024 Digital Worlds Workshop

Call for Proposals

The Digital Worlds Workshop
Online
April 19-21, 2024
https://digitalworldsworkshop.wordpress.com/

Extended abstracts submission deadline: January 15, 2024

The Center for Collaboration and Ethics at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley invites submissions for a virtual workshop to be conducted remotely on April 19-21 2024. We seek papers that interrogate the way modern digital technology enhances, hampers, or alters our experience of our lived worlds.

The distinction between “being on the internet” and “being in the real world” is eroding. People can increasingly be said to “live on their phones” or other devices. This workshop aims to interrogate the meaning and structure of the world and the self as mediated by such devices. This year, our theme is DIGTAL LACUNAE. We are especially interested in papers addressing under explored questions raised by new technologies. For instance, questions surrounding the security and privacy of our information are widely discussed.… read more. “Call: The 2024 Digital Worlds Workshop”

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