International Society
for Presence Research

Author: Matthew Lombard

  • Call: International Association for Computing and Philosophy conference (IACAP 2022)

    Published:

    Call for Abstracts and Symposium Proposals IACAP 2022 – The International Association for Computing and Philosophy (IACAP) 2022 Conference July 22-24 2022 Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA, USA [and online] https://www.iacap.org/iacap-2022-cfa/ Following the highly successful online-only INSEIT/IACAP-2021 at the University of Hamburg, organized by Judith Simon and the many dedicated scholars in her research group, IACAP is delighted to announce a return to Silicon Valley with the 2022 meeting being hosted by Santa Clara University’s School of Engineering, with support from SCU Philosophy faculty and the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. Pending any necessities of the pandemic, IACAP is…

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  • Is virtual reality (and presence) bad for our mental health?

    Published:

    [This story from Tech Monitor, which features our friend and colleague Stéphane Bouchard, considers some of the potential negative consequences of presence experiences via virtual reality; one of them involves inverse presence, the perception that nonmediated experience is actually mediated. –Matthew] [Image: Credit: Photo by David McNew/Getty Images] Is virtual reality bad for our mental health? It’s touted as the gateway to the metaverse. But the impact of prolonged use of virtual reality on our mental well-being is under-researched. By Greg Noone February 24, 2022 (Updated February 28, 2022) Jeff Grover* likes to walk, a pastime suited to the landscape…

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  • Call: FTC 2022 – Future Technologies Conference 2022

    Published:

    Call for Papers Future Technologies Conference (FTC) 2022 20-21 October 2022 Vancouver, Canada and online [see NOTE below] https://saiconference.com/FTC2022/CallforPapers Submissions due: 15 March 2022 NOTE: We are aware that the situation regarding COVID-19 is a cause for apprehension. There will be an option for virtual participation (with reduced registration fee), for anyone who cannot or chooses not to travel. The Future Technologies Conference presents the best of current systems research and practice, emphasizing innovation and quantified experience. FTC has emerged as the foremost world-wide gathering of academic researchers, Ph.D. and graduate students, top research think tanks and industry technology developers.…

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  • First-person report: Disney’s new 2-day immersive Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser experience

    Published:

    [I’m more of a Star Trek person, but this detailed description from CNN of a new elaborate (and expensive) two-day immersive experience at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida suggests that it will evoke an impressively wide variety of compelling presence experiences. See the original story for a 12-image photo gallery. For more coverage, including more pictures and a video, see Good Morning America, and for an extensive collection of videos see Disney’s Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser YouTube playlist. For more about the new AI-based interactive droid named D3-O9, said to be a test for a new platform for immersive,…

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  • Call: Ludic Spatial Strategies & Forest Spaces – UNITE GamiFOREST Coffee Talk #2

    Published:

    Call for Participation UNITE GamiFOREST Coffee Talks #2 LUDIC SPATIAL STRATEGIES & FOREST SPACES by Mattia Thibault Date: March 18, 2022 Time: 13:00 (Helsinki Time) Zoom Link: https://tuni.zoom.us/j/67954634202 How can the organisation of a space favour playfulness, creativity and curiosity? If we look at existing spaces designed to host playfulness (theme parks, arenas, interactive museums, playgrounds, casinos, treetop parks and so on) we can try to outline a series of spatial strategies that are put in place exactly to this end. But how can these strategies be applied to a space with an emergent morphology and an intrinsically open-ended configuration?…

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  • Presence and the definition and nature of reality

    Published:

    [This intriguing essay from Scientific American isn’t about technology and doesn’t refer to telepresence or presence, but it raises several issues related to the concept(s) of presence, including the difficulty of agreeing on definitions of primary terms we use like “reality”; the important roles of the attributes of media technology users in presence experiences; the relationship between presence and dreams; the limitations of referring to “first order” mediation (experiences mediated by our biology) and “second order” mediation (experience mediated by both our biology and technology); and the radical possibility that rather than all of us living in a giant metaverse-like…

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  • Call: Virtual Consumerism issue of Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking

    Published:

    CALL FOR PAPERS Special issue on Virtual Consumerism Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking https://home.liebertpub.com/cfp/special-issue-on-virtual-consumerism/366/ Submission deadline: April 1, 2022 Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking is developing a special issue dedicated to virtual consumerism. Ushered in by Amazon and fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic, virtual consumerism (VC) is more than simply the act of buying products on the Internet. The term encompasses entire economies and the study of each facet of these intricate new systems. Modern technologies, buoyed by current world conditions and trends, have enabled the creation of a seemingly inexhaustible parade of consumer products and services, forming new markets,…

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  • Cars as social actors: Mitsubishi’s AI explains itself with intuitive driving instructions

    Published:

    [From the early days of Cliff Nass’ Computers Are Social Actors (CASA) research we’ve noted drivers’ social responses to cars as well, due largely to their direct, haptic interaction with their vehicles. Voice-based GPS navigation systems added another set of cues to enhance Cars As Social Actors perceptions and responses. But this interesting story from IEEE Spectrum describes the next level of this form of Medium As Social Actor (MASA) presence created by an evolving vehicle-based AI that provides real-time, context-dependent guidance in a more natural, conversational manner that humans can better understand, and trust. See the original story for…

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  • Call: “Extended Reality as a Gateway to the Metaverse” at MetroXRAINE 2022

    Published:

    Call for Papers Special Session on: “EXTENDED REALITY AS A GATEWAY TO THE METAVERSE: PRACTICES, THEORIES, TECHNOLOGIES AND APPLICATIONS” 2022 IEEE International Conference on Metrology for eXtended Reality,Artificial Intelligence, and Neural Engineering (IEEE MetroXRAINE 2022) October 26-28, 2022 Rome, Italy Session: https://metroxraine.org/special-session-10 Conference: https://metroxraine.org/ Extended abstract submission deadline: March 18, 2022 Final paper submission deadline: July 30, 2022 SPECIAL SESSION DESCRIPTION The fast development of Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR) solutions over the last few years are transforming how people interact, work, and communicate. The eXtended Reality (XR) term encloses all those immersive technologies that…

    Read more: Call: “Extended Reality as a Gateway to the Metaverse” at MetroXRAINE 2022

  • Men are creating AI girlfriends and then verbally abusing them

    Published:

    [This story from Futurism reports on an interesting but depressing phenomenon that raises serious questions about the perils of medium-as-social-actor presence, as well as human nature. –Matthew] [Image: Getty Images/Futurism] Men Are Creating AI Girlfriends and Then Verbally Abusing Them “I threatened to uninstall the app [and] she begged me not to.” By Ashley Bardhan January 18, 2022 Content warning: this story contains descriptions of abusive language and violence. The smartphone app Replika lets users create chatbots, powered by machine learning, that can carry on almost-coherent text conversations. Technically, the chatbots can serve as something approximating a friend or mentor,…

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  • Call: AI-Generated Characters: Putting Deepfakes to Good Use – CHI 2022 workshop

    Published:

    Call for Participation A Workshop at ACM CHI 2022 AI-Generated Characters: Putting Deepfakes to Good Use Hybrid Workshop April 30, 2022 Workshop: http://deepfakes.media.mit.edu/ CHI 2022: https://chi2022.acm.org/ Submission deadline: March 5, 2022 AI-generated characters (more infamously known as “deepfakes”) are a form of digital media generated by deep neural networks, which feature the human appearance and appear authentic to human beings. Such realistic renderings are made possible through advances in generative machine learning for the hyper-realistic synthesis, recreation, and modification of prose, images, audio, and video data. While the technology is perhaps most widely associated with media manipulation and misinformation, it…

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  • Beyond Zoom: Beem app lets you livestream yourself in AR; 2-way telepresence coming

    Published:

    [Tech Crunch provides this description of the origins and current and planned capabilities of Beem’s consumer augmented reality technologies designed to create social presence experiences. See the original story for four more images and a 48 second video (also available via YouTube). –Matthew] Beem, an app that lets you livestream yourself in AR, raises $4 million By Sarah Perez February 17, 2022 What’s the next step beyond Zoom calls and FaceTime? How about beaming yourself from one device to another in real time using augmented reality? That’s the premise behind a startup called Beem, which is today announcing its first…

    Read more: Beyond Zoom: Beem app lets you livestream yourself in AR; 2-way telepresence coming

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