International Society
for Presence Research

Month: January 2024

  • Call: Screen Studies in the Age of Extended Reality & Synthetic Media Conference

    Published:

    Call for Abstracts Screen Studies in the Age of Extended Reality & Synthetic Media An international conference as part of the Irish Research Council Laureate Award project “From Cinematic Realism to Extended Reality: Reformulating Screen Studies at the Precipice of Hyper-reality” (2022-2026) June 4-5, 2024 Trinity College Dublin, Ireland https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wRg-s4bwWFVdPN4hQRRDdpjRpac3TedM/view Keynote speaker: Professor Jenna Ng, Head of Creative Technologies and Professor of Digital Media and Culture and the University of York Deadline for abstracts: February 20, 2024 The world is increasingly grappling with an existential crisis of what constitutes the real. Contemporary “post-truth” societies are mired by so-called fake news…

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  • Love a TV show? Now you can live it.

    Published:

    [Although it doesn’t focus on all the intriguing parasocial and other presence-related motivations and responses to the growing number of live, participatory immersive experiences based on TV series and films and “designed to lever an imaginary world into our real one,” this story from The New York Times provides an interesting, link-filled primer on the phenomenon (and see the original version for seven more pictures). For more on the “academic” Sarah Bay-Cheng and her work, see the York University website.  –Matthew] [Image: TV brand extensions increasingly include live interactive events inspired by series, like a “Squid Game” competition. Credit: Jamie…

    Read more: Love a TV show? Now you can live it.

  • Call: Free INTERACT! Zoom lecture “On attitudes towards AI” January 11, 2024

    Published:

    [Note: See the INTERACT! website for information on many other upcoming presence-related talks. –Matthew] Call for Participation INTERACT! ZOOM LECTURE “On attitudes towards AI” Christian Montag (Ulm University) January 11, 2024, 4pm CET via Zoom We would like to announce our first Zoom lecture in 2024 in the context of our project INTERACT! – New forms of social interaction with intelligent systems at Ruhr-University Bochum: Thursday, January 11th., 16:00 (Amsterdam, Berlin, Rom, Stockholm, Wien) Christian Montag (Ulm University) “On attitudes towards AI” Abstract: Since the rise of generative AI people around the globe discuss how AI will impact societies. In…

    Read more: Call: Free INTERACT! Zoom lecture “On attitudes towards AI” January 11, 2024

  • World’s first immersive Elvis AI show to open in London

    Published:

    [There’s a lot of press coverage this morning about a new entertainment project that will use a combination of presence-evoking technologies to recreate concert and other experiences with Elvis Presley. The story below from BroadwayWorld provides the key details. Reuters adds this context: “Global interest in the singer, widely acclaimed as the best selling solo music artist of all time with more than 500 million records sold, is undimmed 46 years after he died aged 42. Baz Luhrmann’s biography ‘Elvis’, released in 2022, created a new generation of fans, while Sofia Coppola’s 2023 ‘Priscilla’ explored his complex relationship with his…

    Read more: World’s first immersive Elvis AI show to open in London

  • Call: Philosophy of Avatars: Avatars that represent humans: Moral, legal, and social considerations (workshop)

    Published:

    Call for Abstracts Philosophy of Avatars: Avatars that represent humans: Moral, legal, and social considerations March 2, 2024 University of Aberdeen Aberdeen, Scotland [and online] https://philevents.org/event/show/117733 Submission deadline: January 19, 2024 DESCRIPTION Increasingly, avatars represent humans in ways that differ importantly from the familiar avatar/gamer relation. For example, ‘continuing bonds’ representations of deceased people and Hollywood replicas present as being the represented person, in a way that a gaming avatar does not. This workshop explores questions arising from avatar/human representation: around the nature and limits of avatar representation, avatar ownership, responsibility for avatar’s actions and the potential impact of increased…

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  • At ground level: New virtual reality exhibit showcases October 7 atrocities

    Published:

    [In the aftermath of the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023, the founders of Treedis, an Israeli company that produces virtual and augmented reality media to “advertise properties and other assets,” began documenting some of the events and experiences of that day using virtual reality. The story below from Ynetnews provides details about the project (warning: some content is very disturbing); see the original version of the story for two more images and a 1:38 minute video. More details and the immersive 3D material is available on the Treedis website. Coverage from All Israel News notes that “The purpose of…

    Read more: At ground level: New virtual reality exhibit showcases October 7 atrocities

  • Call: Shifting Natures Symposium at ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry

    Published:

    Call for Papers Symposium: SHIFTING NATURES March 14-15, 2024 ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry https://www.ici-berlin.org/call-for-papers-symposium-shifting-natures/ Deadline to send an abstract: January 28,2024 The very concept of nature has been the subject of thorough critique for quite a while. From a Western deconstructive perspective, nature is a signifier standing for naive immediacy or reactionary normativity. Poststructuralist and queer paradigms have shifted from an idea of nature as a being and of the natural as a given to a conception of them as effects of discursive, performative practices. These critiques marked a turning point in the centuries-long debate on the concept…

    Read more: Call: Shifting Natures Symposium at ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry

  • Presence implications: AI can make art that feels human. Whose fault is that?

    Published:

    [This critical essay from The New York Times argues that rather than being concerned about technologies that produce presence-evoking simulations of human cultural artifacts, we should be concerned about the formulaic and unimaginative nature of the actual artifacts. See the original version for four more images. –Matthew] [Image: “Hello Vincent,” at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, allows you to converse with an A.I. Van Gogh. Credit: Elliott Verdier for The New York Times] A.I. Can Make Art That Feels Human. Whose Fault Is That? A fake Drake/Weeknd mash-up is not a threat to our species’s culture. It’s a warning: We…

    Read more: Presence implications: AI can make art that feels human. Whose fault is that?

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