International Society
for Presence Research

Author: Matthew Lombard

  • FDA clears augmented reality system to help navigate spine surgery

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    [The U.S. Federal Drug Administration has approved a new system for spinal surgery that “convert[s] imaging data into either a 2D or 3D immersive hologram” and superimposes the “navigation plan right on the patient’s body” during the operation. The details, and links to two other applications of presence-evoking technology in the operating room, are presented in this story from Fierce Biotech. See the Novarad press release for more information including a one-minute video (also on Vimeo). Another Fierce Biotech story reports on FDA approval of a Lensar system that incorporates augmented-reality imaging technology for cataract surgery. –Matthew] FDA clears augmented…

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  • Call: “Fictional Persons and Characters” – Free online workshop

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    CALL FOR ABSTRACTS Fictional Persons and Characters International Online Workshop October 12, 2022 Submission deadline: June 20, 2022 It is tempting to think of fictional characters as if they were fictional persons. The inhabitants of a fictional world, where they live and engage in meaningful interactions as we do in the real world. However, this conception is problematic. First, because the concept of “person” is far from being clear. Are persons to be defined in physical or mental terms? And even if we restrict ourselves to a Lockean framework where persons are defined in mental terms, regardless of their physical…

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  • Looking Glass Factory launches world’s largest holographic display

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    [Like most of the coverage of the recently announced largest-ever, 65-inch holographic display from Looking Glass Factory, this story from VentureBeat draws on the company’s press release (via PR Newswire), but it adds several interesting details. For more information on and examples of the technology see The Verge and the 12:08 minute video “Hands-On with Looking Glass 8K Holographic Display!” from Adam Savage’s Tested on YouTube. CNET‘s coverage highlights the many presence-evoking works being presented at Tribeca Immersive 2022, including several available from home. –Matthew] [Image: Looking Glass CEO Shawn Frayne with holographic James Bond displayed on the Looking Glass…

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  • Call: “Affecting Game Time: Theory and Practice” Conference

    Published:

    CALL FOR PAPERS ‘AFFECTING GAME TIME: THEORY & PRACTICE’ 2nd September 2022 Online https://www.cdcs.ed.ac.uk/files/2022-06/Game%20Worlds%20CFP%202022%20-%20AGT.pdf Submission deadline: July 7, 2022 All games are felt in time. Whether they are live service or archived emulations, interruptible mobile play or unrepeatable roguelikes, quick situational happenings or laborious games of death and resurrection, play is an investment through, in and with time. Last year was a year of looping games that confronted us with both the medium’s core unit of design and the temporal affects of lockdown (Deathloop, 2021; Returnal, 2021; Loop Hero, 2021; Twelve Minutes, 2021; Overboard!, 2021). However, the temporal affects games…

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  • When things feel unreal, is that a delusion or an insight?

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    [This essay from Scientific American describes depersonalization/derealization disorder and relates the psychiatric syndrome to many theories and questions regarding illusions, including the simulation argument that what we perceive as reality is a constructed simulation. The disorder is also apparently related to inverse presence, “the illusion that a nonmediated ‘real’ experience is mediated” (Timmins & Lombard, 2005). You can watch the new nine-minute film via YouTube and learn about media coverage and other films about the syndrome on the Depersonalization Disorder in the Media page of the DP Manual website. –Matthew] When Things Feel Unreal, Is That a Delusion or an…

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  • Call: “Impossible experiences in extended reality” NordiCHI 2022 Workshop

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    Call for Papers “Impossible experiences in extended reality” Workshop NordiCHI 2022 workshop October 8th OR 9th, 2022 Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark Workshop: https://impossibleexperiences.wordpress.com/ NordiCHI 2022: https://conferences.au.dk/nordichi2022 Submission deadline: July 20, 2022 Previous research has suggested a typology of VR research that involves the dimensions of realism-fantasy and immersion, which are instrumental to flow (e.g., Velasco, Barbosa Escobar, Petit, & Wang, 2021). However, the term “impossible”, as defined “incapable of being or of occurring”. In that sense, the first part refers to real-fantasy objects, and the second to laws governing the objects. In our view, then, a more encompassing “Impossible experiences”…

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  • Google suspends engineer who claims the company’s experimental AI has become sentient

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    [My friend Roy Yamanaka posted a story about this in the ISPR Presence Community Facebook group and it merits a post here too. After extended interactions with the natural language generator LaMDA, Google engineer Blake Lemoine has claimed that it is sentient. Futurism provides the summary below. Technologist Shelley Palmer noted the relevance to medium-as-social-actor presence in his Think About This email newsletter for June 13, 2022 when he wrote, “If Google created a conscious machine, that’s awesome. If they created a model that can fake us into thinking it’s sentient, that’s awesome too.” Coverage in The Verge provides more…

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  • Call: ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology (VRST 2022)

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    Call for Papers/Posters/Demos VRST 2022 ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology Tsukuba, Japan and online November 29 – December 1, 2022 https://vrst.acm.org/vrst2022/ Submission deadlines: Abstracts: July 18, 2022 Papers: July 22, 2022 Posters and demos: August 22, 2022 The ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology (VRST) is a premier international symposium for the presentation of new research results, systems, and techniques among researchers and developers on augmented, virtual and mixed reality (AR/VR/MR, XR for short) software and technology. VRST brings together the main international research groups working on XR, along with many of the world’s leading…

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  • Sci-fi becoming reality: Researchers develop early version of human skin for robots

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    [Researchers in Japan have taken another step toward making fictional human-like robots and cyborgs that blur the line between us and machines possible in reality. I’d add the examples of The Bionic Woman, Humans and Westworld, among many others, to the ones in this story from Smithsonian magazine, which describes the new development of human-like skin for robots and places it in the larger context of medium-as-social-actor presence, its causes and implications. See the original story for a 25 second video and see Euronews (or YouTube) for a 1:40 minute report. –Matthew] [Image: A robotic finger coated with living human…

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  • Call: Workshop on Symbiotic Society with Avatars: Social Acceptance, Ethics, and Technologies (SSA) at RO-MAN 2022

    Published:

    Call for Papers Workshop on Symbiotic Society with Avatars: Social Acceptance, Ethics, and Technologies (SSA) In conjunction with the 31st IEEE International Conference on Robot & Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN 2022) Naples, Italy and Online September 2, 2022 (Half day morning session) Workshop: https://www.asedc.org/RO-MAN2022_SSA_workshop RO-MAN 2022: http://www.ro-man2022.org/ Paper submission deadline: July 17, 2022 1. Statement of objectives Although COVID-19 pandemic caused many problems in the society, new technologies emerged to overcome the difficulties. One aspect is communication. Using a telepresence robot, people can exist in a distant physical space and meet other people there. In a metaverse environment, the user…

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  • Is reality an illusion? New research explores how perception influences physical responses

    Published:

    [A new optical illusion provides another vivid illustration that human perception is subjective and is raising familiar philosophical questions about the nature of reality, as described in this story from The Debrief (where the original includes three more images). Other coverage makes the point in different ways. Here’s an excerpt from The New York Times story: “Illusions like the expanding hole feed into the debate over whether all perception is, fundamentally, an illusion. ‘Everything we perceive is inconsistent with the physical reality of the world,’ Dr. Dale Purves [a neurobiologist and professor emeritus who studies visual perception at Duke University]…

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  • Call: 4th Zip-Scene Conference on Immersive Storytelling

    Published:

    Call for Proposals 4th Zip-Scene Conference on Immersive Storytelling Innovation Center of Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest, Hungary 10-12 November, 2022 https://zip-scene.mome.hu/ Deadline for submitting proposals: June 30, 2022 Dear All, This year we again organize the 4th Zip-Scene Conference of Immersive Storytelling (in-person). Yuhuu! I’m sending below the information about the #cfp (call for proposals): Details (short): The 4th Zip-Scene Conference on Immersive Storytelling (10-12 November, 2022) will be organized in Budapest, at the Innovation Center of Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in partnership with ARDIN & INDCOR COST Action. This year – beside the general…

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