Month: October 2024
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Call: “Beyond Anthropocentrism: Non-human Agents and Objects in Science” issue of Spontaneous Generations
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Read more: Call: “Beyond Anthropocentrism: Non-human Agents and Objects in Science” issue of Spontaneous GenerationsCall for Abstracts Beyond Anthropocentrism: Non-human Agents and Objects in ScienceFor 2025 issue of the journal Spontaneous Generationshttps://www.acpcpa.ca/articles/call-for-abstracts-beyond-anthropocentrism-non-human-agents-and-objects-in-science Deadline for submission of abstracts: December 31, 2024 Spontaneous Generations graduate journal for the history and philosophy of science and technology at the University of Toronto, invites abstract submissions for 2025’s issue on non-human agents and objects in science. We invite submissions from the history of science, philosophy of science, and science and technology studies broadly construed. A description of the issue’s topic and submission details follows. Traditional studies of science focus on human theorizing and human actions while viewing non-human factors…
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‘Comfortable, fun, familiar’: Why Microsoft is trying to turn its AI chatbot into a digital friend
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Read more: ‘Comfortable, fun, familiar’: Why Microsoft is trying to turn its AI chatbot into a digital friend[Although it doesn’t use academic terminology, this CNN story reports that Microsoft wants its AI technology to evoke medium-as-social-actor presence in the company’s billion-plus users. Microsoft’s CEO says Copilot should be a “companion” with a “personality” and have a “warm tone and a distinct style, providing not only information but encouragement, feedback, and advice as you navigate life’s everyday challenges.” But he also says AI companions “should give us enough of a sense that they’re comfortable and fun and familiar to talk to, while still being separate and distant [from humans] … that boundary is how we form trust.” Finding…
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Call: “Reframing Togetherness” at Canadian Communication Association (CCA) Annual Conference
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Read more: Call: “Reframing Togetherness” at Canadian Communication Association (CCA) Annual ConferenceCall for Papers Canadian Communication Association (CCA) Annual ConferenceTheme: “Reframing Togetherness”June 3-6, 2025George Brown College, Toronto, ONhttps://acc-cca.ca/index.php/conference/cca-2025-june-3-6-toronto/https://www.federationhss.ca/en/congress2025 Deadline for submissions: December 2, 2024 The Canadian Communication Association invites submissions for its annual conference, to be held from June 3 to 6, 2025 as part of the Congress of the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences (CFHSS; https://www.federationhss.ca/en/congress2025), at George Brown College in Toronto, Ontario. The conference will feature a keynote talk by Professor Sarah Sharma (https://sarahsharma.com/) from the University of Toronto. The theme for Congress 2025 is Reframing Togetherness. CFHSS writes: “As the first college to host Congress,…
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Meta Hyperscape lets users scan environments and then explore 3D 360 images of them in VR
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Read more: Meta Hyperscape lets users scan environments and then explore 3D 360 images of them in VR[As it announced its Quest 3S mixed reality headset, a Meta blog post mentioned a potentially exciting new tool: “Anything your computer can do, our MR headset can do better—thanks to the magic of presence. And speaking of presence, we’re improving that, too. We’re working to bring photorealistic spaces into the metaverse, enabling a profound new way to be together in spaces that look and feel like you’re physically there—we call it Hyperscape.” The story below from Cointelegraph provides key details and links to a hands-on ZDNet report on the new tool; an entry in The Ghost Howls blog provides…
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Call: Fifth annual International Conference on Games and Narrative (ICGaN 25)
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Read more: Call: Fifth annual International Conference on Games and Narrative (ICGaN 25)Call for Papers Fifth annual International Conference on Games and Narrative (ICGaN 25)Theme: Adapt, Adopt, Adjust: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Adaptation, Storytelling and SimulationMarch 3-6, 2025Hosted by the Games Institute, University of WaterlooWaterloo, Ontario, Canada [Also online]https://uwaterloo.ca/games-institute/events/international-conference-games-and-narrative-2025 Deadline for submissions: November 20, 2024 Below are some details from the CfP, but please also check out the website as there is more discussion and description of the theme and types of submissions we are looking for there. THEME & TOPICS We are looking for interdisciplinary work understanding adapted and adaptive experiences, narratives, mechanics, and gameplay. Some example topics include: Narrative and design…
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The appeal of an inferior virtual reality
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Read more: The appeal of an inferior virtual reality[This essay from The Baffler does a nice job describing the sense of presence people experience in virtual reality despite the relatively low perceptual realism the medium provides, and arguing that the worse our reality gets, the more appealing an escape into even a perceptually inferior virtual one becomes. This is only an abridged version of the much longer essay – see the original for more observations, including on the history of VR. See also an apparently related essay in MIXED, in which the author argues that “VR games like Gorilla Tag, Yeeps, and I am Cat seem like the…
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Call: AI: Technological, Social, and Cultural Ties – NEWPATH online conference
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Read more: Call: AI: Technological, Social, and Cultural Ties – NEWPATH online conferenceCall for Papers NEWPATH: New Paradigms in Communication Technologies and HumanityArtificial Intelligence: Technological, Social, and Cultural TiesMarch 6 and 7, 2025Onlinehttps://newpath.uskudar.edu.tr/ Deadline for submission of abstracts: December 20, 2024 We invite submissions for the 2025 online conference on “Artificial Intelligence: Technological, Social, and Cultural Ties,” which will be held in joint organization between the University of Tras-os-Montes and Alto Douro (UTAD-Portugal) and the Üsküdar University (Türkiye). In an era of unprecedented digital transformation, this multidisciplinary event will explore the entangled relationships between artificial intelligence, technology, society, and culture. There has been a significant amount of speculation about AI, including far-fetched…
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Can AI, and our robot stories, be blamed for a teen’s suicide?
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Read more: Can AI, and our robot stories, be blamed for a teen’s suicide?[Abridged versions of a detailed report and an opinion essay in The New York Times, both about a recent tragedy, illustrate some of the potential dangers of medium-as-social-actor presence. For more details and images, see the unabridged versions (if you have access). –Matthew] Can A.I. Be Blamed for a Teen’s Suicide? The mother of a 14-year-old Florida boy says he became obsessed with a chatbot on Character.AI before his death. By Kevin RooseOctober 23, 2024 On the last day of his life, Sewell Setzer III took out his phone and texted his closest friend: a lifelike A.I. chatbot named after…
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Call: Conference on Disability, Accessibility and Representation in the Creative Industries (DARCI)
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Read more: Call: Conference on Disability, Accessibility and Representation in the Creative Industries (DARCI)Call for Papers Conference on Disability, Accessibility and Representation in the Creative Industries (DARCI)September 10-12, 2025School of Arts and Creative Technologies, University of YorkYork, UKhttps://enhancingaudiodescription.com/darci-conference-announcement Deadline for submission of abstracts: November 4, 2024 We are delighted to announce that in September 2025 we will be hosting the Conference on Disability, Accessibility and Representation in the Creative Industries (DARCI) at the University of York (UK). The arts are central to human experiences. However, lack of access to creative and cultural experiences, and to creative practice marginalises disabled people, and limits their representation. Moreover, most work on accessibility still occurs outside of…
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URI professor exploring VR as tool to help adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities deal with trauma’s aftermath
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Read more: URI professor exploring VR as tool to help adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities deal with trauma’s aftermath[A potentially very valuable application of presence-evoking technologies is described in this report from the University of Rhode Island about the work of Professor Krishna Venkatasubramanian. For more information about his work see the NSF website, an earlier URI report, and the website for his Lab. –Matthew] URI professor exploring virtual reality as tool to help adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities deal with trauma’s aftermath Research is backed by $600K grant from National Science Foundation By Tony LaRocheOctober 21, 2024 KINGSTON, R.I. – Oct. 21, 2024 – Virtual reality devices have become a popular alternative for entertainment, communications, and…
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Call: Ethics of VR topical collection for the journal Ethics and Information Technology
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Read more: Call: Ethics of VR topical collection for the journal Ethics and Information TechnologyCall for Papers Topical Collection: Ethics of VRFor the journal Ethics and Information Technologyhttps://link.springer.com/collections/bgdgiebfai Guest-Edited by Patrizia Breil & Jörg Noller Deadline for submissions: July 31, 2025 Like artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR) is becoming an increasingly important part of our lives. It is a major factor in media and communication, technological interaction, economic production, and simulation. Recently, David Chalmers (2022) has argued that virtual reality is as real as physical reality and that we can live a good life in virtual reality. Chalmers therefore raises the question of “[h]ow you should behave in a virtual world”. However, unlike…
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Runway just changed filmmaking forever — Act-1 lets you control AI characters
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Read more: Runway just changed filmmaking forever — Act-1 lets you control AI characters[The story below from Tom’s Guide describes a “game-changing” AI video generation tool from the Google-backed company Runway. The tool reproduces the subtleties of a human performance on any video character or actor (or multiple characters/actors) without costly and complex motion capture techniques. The original story includes an animated image and a 1:21 minute demonstration video (also available on YouTube); see Runway’s blog post for more information and many videos. Coverage from The Decoder highlights the potential for creating (presence-evoking) live action video: “While the obvious use case is transferring human facial expressions and voice to animated characters for games…
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Recent Posts
- Call: Disney and the Multi-Media-Verse: Disney’s Engagement with Multimedia, Space and Culture (online conference)
- Company creates AI chatbot that encourages suicide, marketing and defending it as a presence-evoking social actor
- Call: “Art, Aesthetics, and the Sense of Touch” issue of ESPES. The Slovak Journal of Aesthetics
- VR pilot program shows promise for preventing substance misuse and violence among university students
- Job: Tenure-track Assistant Professor in Game Studies at Brock University