[A more recent Miami Herald story about the interactive AI-based robot bartender Cecilia led me to the BBC News story below from November 2021 about “her” and other robots filling this social role. Note especially the last paragraph below: “’We’re trying to develop something… that can hold a conversation, or crack a joke, ask if you liked your drink, or suggest another one,’ [Yanu’s Mr Adojaan] says. ‘The most interesting part of the project is the effort to make it [appear] alive, or have character.’” The original story includes four more pictures, and the Herald story includes two more pictures…

[The headline of the NASA press release below refers to just one application of holoportation technologies that use 3D capture and mixed reality displays to evoke social presence. The release describes an impressive demonstration of holoportation to the International Space Station while it traveled “17,500 miles per hour … in orbit 250 miles above Earth,” and says that plans include enabling two-way holoportation, with haptics, during deep space missions and to/from extreme remote environments on Earth. See the original release for a second picture and the AEXA Aerospace website for more on holoportation. –Matthew] [Image: NASA flight surgeon, Dr. Josef…

[A new effort to create (tele)presence after death, this time in an immersive 3D social environment accessible via VR, is described in this story from Vice. The article includes information on how the company involved is addressing some though not all of the many ethical issues presence after death raises. –Matthew] [Image: Source: Somnium Space VR on Steam] Metaverse Company to Offer Immortality Through ‘Live Forever’ Mode Somnium Space is developing a way for people to talk to their loved ones even after they die. All it requires is massive amounts of personal data. By Maxwell Strachan April 13, 2022…

[An easy-to-use app that creates realistic-looking 3D models of objects with just a smartphone camera seems like another step toward commonly available personalized presence experiences. The story below is from Digital Camera World, where it features three different images and the 47 second video mentioned (also available on YouTube). See the Epic Games news release for more information, along with a nine minute video demonstration from Kams1 on YouTube. Coverage in DesignTAXI adds one of multiple potential cautions: “Creators will be able to sell the asset for use in games and other projects, on top of keeping them for personal use.…

[In this story from Tech Radar veteran technology journalist Lance Ulanoff reports on his experience of using ARHT Media’s Holopresence technology, in the process describing several interesting aspects of current telepresence technologies and businesses. See the original story for three more images (including an animated gif of the ‘Star Trek’-like “beam in” described at the end). –Matthew] [Image: Credit: Future] Holopresence means never having to say, ‘Sorry, I can’t be there’ This is how I beamed in like ‘Star Trek’ By Lance Ulanoff April 11, 2022 In Holopresence land you can be two places at once. One is sitting on…

[This message from Anthropology professor Tom Boellstorff at the University of California Irvine appeared on air-l, the listserv of the Association of Internet Researchers. –Matthew] Date: Sat, 9 April 2022 From: Tom Boellstorff <tboellst@uci.edu> Subject: Virtual Cultures in Pandemic Times Dear all: the documentary Virtual Cultures in Pandemic Times is now freely available on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wgJKr744hY. This film, by the wonderful filmmaker Bernhard Drax, is about research I conducted with three colleagues about how people were using Animal Crossing and Second Life during the early days of the pandemic. Bernhard really is a remarkable filmmaker, who also directed Our…

[This story in Stuff (sponsored by Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington) summarizes important concerns about bias in the creation of digital humans raised by writer, visual effects designer, and researcher Raqi Syed. For more about her work, including a 3:13 minute video (also available on YouTube), follow the link in the story and visit her website. –Matthew] Finding virtue in the virtual: Who gets to be a digital human? “The story our most enduring myths tell us is that a great white man will fall from the sky and save us,” says senior lecturer Raqi Syed of Te Herenga…