International Society
for Presence Research

Author: Matthew Lombard

  • 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…

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

  • 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

  • Call: “Theory of Mind for social HRI” and other special sessions at RO-MAN 2022

    Published:

    [Note: See the conference website for information about these other special sessions: Hand-Object Interaction: from Human Demonstrations to Robot Manipulation Short- and Long-Term Personalisation in Human-Robot Interaction Social Human-Robot Interaction of Human-care Service Robots Mental Models of the Human User in Social HRI Safe Human-Robot Cooperation and Collaboration in Manufacturing Environments Nonverbal Communication Skills in Humans and Robots –Matthew] CALL FOR PAPERS SPECIAL SESSION Theory of Mind for social HRI 31st IEEE International Conference on Robot & Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN 2022) August 29th – September 2nd, 2022 Naples, Italy and Online [See NOTE below] http://ro-man2022.org Important dates for Regular…

    Read more: Call: “Theory of Mind for social HRI” and other special sessions at RO-MAN 2022

  • Scent-based immersion could be coming soon. Will the public have a nose for it?

    Published:

    [This story from Built In provides an entertaining, link-filled history and update on efforts to bring olfactory illusions to presence experiences. See the original story for three more images, and for more information see ISPR Presence News posts from June 2020 (an interview with OVR Technology’s CEO) and September 2020 (regarding the Virtual Mayflower project). –Matthew] The Metaverse, in Glorious Smell-O-Vision! Scent-based immersion could be coming soon. Will the public have a nose for it? Stephen Gossett, a staff reporter covering UX, design and product management. He is the former digital editor at the design magazine Sixtysix. February 8, 2022;…

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  • Call: Second International Conference on ICT for Health, Accessibility and Wellbeing (IHAW 2022)

    Published:

    Call for Papers Second International Conference on ICT for Health, Accessibility and Wellbeing (IHAW 2022) December 5-7, 2022 Golden Bay Beach Hotel 5*, Larnaca, Cyprus https://cyprusconferences.org/ihaw2022 Submission deadline: July 18, 2022 (AoE) ICT for Health, Accessibility and Wellbeing (IHAW 2022) is the second of the series of International Conferences on “ICT for Societal Challenges”. It is a showcase for high quality oral and poster presentations and demonstrations sessions. This conference aims to be a platform for multi and interdisciplinary research at the interplay between Information and Communication Technologies, Biomedical, Neuro-cognitive, and Experimental research. This research includes the design, experimental evaluation…

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  • Why you can’t have legs in virtual reality (yet)

    Published:

    [Despite recent improvements in virtual reality technology, users’ avatars still don’t have legs due to the difficulty of realistic tracking of full body movements. This CNN report describes the challenges and prospects for progress; note the explicit use of the term presence without the need for a definition, and the references to the uncanny valley at the end. The original version of the story includes a video and more images. –Matthew] [Image: Avatar bodies in Meta’s Horizon Worlds VR app are limited to floating torsos with head, hands, and arms.] Why you can’t have legs in virtual reality (yet) By…

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  • Call: ISMAR 2022 – IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality

    Published:

    [Note: See conference website for other Calls. –ML] CALLS FOR JOURNAL PAPERS ISMAR 2022: IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality October 17-21, 2022 Singapore https://ismar2022.org/call-for-journal-papers/ OVERVIEW The IEEE ISMAR is the leading international academic conference in the fields of Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality. The symposium is organized and supported by the IEEE Computer Society, IEEE VGTC and ACM SIGGRAPH. The first ISMAR conference was held in 2002 in Darmstadt, Germany. The creation of the conference emerged from the fusion of two former academic events dedicated to this research field: the International Symposium on Augmented Reality (ISAR) and…

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