Author: Matthew Lombard


  • Call: Ten Years of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey: Legacy, Impact, Future

    Call for Papers: Ten Years of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey: Legacy, Impact, Futurehttps://bristoldigitalgamelab.blogs.bristol.ac.uk/2026/06/19/call-for-papers-ten-years-of-assassins-creed-odyssey-legacy-impact-future/ Editors: Dr Richard Cole & Dr Alexander Vandewalle Deadline for submission of abstracts: August 24, 2026 In 2018, Ubisoft Quebec’s Assassin’s Creed Odyssey introduced audiences around the world to the most elaborate rendering of Ancient Greece ever produced in a video game. Featuring a heroic protagonist in the first stages of the Peloponnesian War, Odyssey allowed players to roam an expansive, open world recreation of the Greek world, to experience historical events, converse with authors, philosophers, and politicians, and to play out their own historicized fantasies in an…

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  • How VR Is changing the way Shakespeare is taught

    [This story from the University of California, Davis includes lots of interesting comments about the principles behind the design of, and first-person reports about presence and learning from students in, a UC Davis course called “Interactive Shakespeare: From VR to AI.” See the original version for five more pictures and a 2:18 minute video (also on YouTube). For more context, see the July 2022 ISPR Presence News post ”Two forms of ‘Shakespeare Karaoke’ illustrate immersion and isolation issues in EdTech and beyond.” –Matthew] To Be or Not To Be … in Virtual Reality How VR Is Changing the Way Shakespeare…

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  • Call: Between Screens: Video Games, Film, Television and Transmedia Exchange

    Call for Book Chapters: Between Screens: Video Games, Film, Television and Transmedia Exchangehttps://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2026/06/25/between-screens-video-games-film-television-and-transmedia-exchange Edited by Dr Michael Samuel and Dr Richard Cole Deadline for submission of abstracts and bio statements: August 7, 2026 Adaptation is a dialogic process, a creative exchange across content production and context rather than an attempt at fidelity. Recent trends in adaptation studies reflect this complexity. Videogames exist within a vast ecosystem of transmedia storytelling and experiences, yet scholarship on adaptation and video games remains limited. This collection is a response to this gap. Our aim with Between Screens is to reframe the conversation about the…

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  • Prominent people have more reason to believe we live in a simulation

    [In a recent interview the modern philosopher who popularized the Simulation Argument (that we’re all experiencing the ultimate form of presence) commented that prominent people, especially “extreme cases” like Donald Trump and Elon Musk, have more reason to give credence to the possibility that they and we are living inside a simulation. This report from IFLScience does a nice job of summarizing the argument itself and relaying the new comments; it includes links to both the interview with Nick Bostrom and an earlier IFLScience report on whether and how we might or might not want to escape such a simulation.…

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  • Call: Retrofuturism 4.0: Materiality Online Symposium

    [NOTE: Visit the website for this event for archives from previous symposia in the series. –Matthew] Call for Papers: Retrofuturism 4.0: MaterialityOnline SymposiumAugust 27-28, 2026https://musicalretrofuturism.wordpress.com/ Deadline for submission of abstracts: July 20, 2026 Since 2022, we have held a series of online symposia addressing ‘retrofuturism’, a term we use to denote the ways in which internet aesthetics invoke visions of utopia and nostalgia. From vaporwave and hauntology to chiptune and frutiger aero, music, sound and audiovisual media have been central to these present-day entanglements of past and future possibility. Our past symposia have looked at microgenres, nostalgia, and anemoia.…

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  • How Proximie telepresence is transforming surgery, maternal care in Kenya

    [A growing network of hospitals in Kenya are using the Proximie telepresence system to improve obstetric surgical care, as reported in this story from Health Business (the original version includes a second picture). For more information and context, see an April 2021 ISPR Presence News post and the Proximie website (and specifically the August 2022 blog post “The Obstetric Safe Surgery (OSS) Program in Kenya: Co-designing surgical training and mentoring programmes with local teams”). –Matthew] Inside Proximie: How telepresence is transforming surgery and maternal care in Kenya By Pauline Achieng TomJune 3, 2026 In Kibwezi Makueni County, a mother suffers…

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  • Call: “Play, Games, and Sociality” for Studies in Symbolic Interaction

    Call for Manuscripts: Play, Games, and SocialityFor the journal Studies in Symbolic InteractionJournal: https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/book-series/studies-symbolic-interactionPosted on the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) e-list on June 25, 2026 Deadline for submission of abstracts: September 1, 2026 G.H. Mead discussed his well-known versions of play and the game in the context of development, as necessary activities regarding the pragmatic and empathic orientations of the self to others. However, his notion of sociality, which delves into the temporal connection between past, present, and future, is connected to the importance of emergence and novelty. Implicitly, Mead’s notion of sociality accentuates the importance of play and…

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  • SelfBlending keeps VR immersion while interacting with real objects

    [A new tool developed by researchers at the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST) in South Korea provides a way to preserve sensory immersion and presence during a virtual reality experience while allowing the user to interact with objects in their physical environment, a potentially valuable alternative to image passthrough and removing the VR headset. Basic details are in this story from the Chosun Daily (the English edition of the Chosun Ilbo); more information is available in this published article: Elsharkawy, A., Gim, B., Ataya, A., & Kim, S. (2026). SelfBlending: Artificial Intelligence-Driven Augmentation with Hand Interactions for Seamless…

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  • Call: Digital Transformation and Intelligent SOciety (DTISO 2026)

    Call for Papers: The International Conference on Digital Transformation and Intelligent SOciety (DTISO 2026)November 17-20, 2026Barcelona, Spainhttps://dtis-conference.org/2026/ Deadlines for submissions: Full papers: July 21, 2026 Special Tracks and Workshops: August 21, 2026 Digital transformation and intelligent society refer to the profound integration of advanced digital technologies—such as artificial intelligence, big data analytics, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things—into every aspect of modern life. This transformation is reshaping how individuals communicate, how organizations operate, and how governments deliver services. By leveraging data-driven insights and intelligent systems, digital transformation enhances efficiency, enables automation, and supports more informed and timely decision-making across…

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  • Is humanoid robot Codey future of embodied AGI in education, healthcare?

    [A new humanoid robot named Codey is designed to use embodied decentralized artificial general intelligence (AGI) to autonomously interact with humans in ways that evoke social presence in a variety of public and private environments. This story from Interesting Engineering describes the robot and its current and planned capabilities; see the original version for a 4:07 minute video (also available on YouTube). The excerpts from coverage in USA Today that follow below provide additional context, including comments on how children and adults respond to Codey and concerns about the prospect of similar robots becoming a regular part of our lives…

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  • Call: Multisensory XR: From ‘Tech for Good’ to Ethical Immersive Experience

    Call for Papers: Multisensory XR: From ‘Tech for Good’ to Ethical Immersive ExperienceAn international interdisciplinary conferenceJanuary 6-7, 2027Centre for the Ecologies of Attention and PerceptionKing’s College LondonLondon, UKhttps://multisensoryxr.sites.er.kcl.ac.uk/2026/06/36/ Deadline for submissions: September 1, 2026 KEYNOTES Sarah Ticho: Multidisciplinary artist and maker operating at the intersection of health, wellbeing and embodied storytelling, using immersive technologies Alan Warburton: Media theorist working across synthetic imaging techniques, known for his groundbreaking video essays Plenary panel on Open XR: Beyond Platform Economies — AI now dominates public and scholarly attention, overshadowing many other areas of technology. Yet there have been some prominent recent developments around…

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  • MRI-safe haptic device enables new presence evidence and measure

    [Researchers at South Korea’s Pohang University of Science & Technology (POSTECH) devised a way to produce effective and coordinated haptic stimuli for a person using an fMRI-compatible projection and sound virtual reality system, with intriguing results indicating the role of haptics in generating presence responses. See details below (or via EurekAlert!) and in the researchers’ new publication. –Matthew] “Fingertip Immersion” in Virtual Reality with Brain Activity Measurement POSTECH Professor Keehoon Kim’s Team Develops Multi-Finger Haptic Display that Operates Inside MRI June 5, 2026 What if virtual reality could go beyond sight and sound—and truly let users feel the digital world…

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