[Warning: Adult content. Sexuality is a common but under studied and discussed application area for presence. As this concise and link-filled story from The Conversation states, in the current global situation “digital technology has never been so central to human sexual and intimate connection.” See the original story for a different image. –Matthew] [Image: Source: Cosmopolitan] Online sex parties and virtual reality porn: Can sex in isolation be as fulfilling as real life? April 16, 2020 Jennifer Power, Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, La Trobe University Andrea Waling, ARC DECRA Research fellow,…

[In non-pandemic presence news, researchers at Stanford have developed a new system for augmented reality that makes virtual objects appear more solid, as reported in this story from IEEE Spectrum. For more information including images and a video, see the website of the study’s lead author, Brooke Krajancich. And in an at-least-peripherally related development, an international group of researchers has developed “a learning-based approach for removing unwanted obstructions, such as window reflections, fence occlusions or raindrops, from a short sequence of images captured by a moving camera” – for full details and impressive demonstrations see the project’s website; for a…

[Even if virtual meetings could fully replicate nonmediated communication they wouldn’t solve the many problems with human interactions, but as this story in The New York Times explains, the reduced experience of presence in meetings via video conferencing can amplify gender and personality-based inequities. –Matthew] [Image: Credit: Shannon May] It’s Not Just You: Virtual Meetings Aren’t All That Great Overlapping chatter. Interruptions. Gaffes on camera. And for women, possibly not being heard at all. By Alisha Haridasani Gupta April 14, 2020 “Everything that we think is going to be an equalizer turns out not to be.” — Deborah Tannen, professor…

[There are still significant practical and technical issues to resolve, but this story from IEEE Spectrum explains why virtual reality will increasingly provide rich social presence experiences superior to today’s commonly used video conferencing systems (e.g., Zoom). See the original story for a second image. –Matthew] [Image: Virtual meeting on the Engage platform. Credit: Immersive VR Education] Forget Video Conferencing—Host Your Next Meeting in VR Recent advances have made VR the superior technology for conferences and meetings, some experts claim By Edd Gent 13 April 2020 With workers confined to their homes by the coronavirus pandemic, video conferencing is providing…

[While Zoom and other video conferencing tools provide social presence during the pandemic, stationary webcams and drone footage let us leave our homes and experience the now mostly-empty spaces of the world. This short story from Washington, D.C.’s WTOP highlights some of the “virtual escapes” that have become more popular in these strange days (the original version includes a brief audio news report). For more examples that include photos and videos see: As world quarantines, webcams and satellites quietly watch (AccuWeather) What the world looks like on lockdown: Webcams at popular tourist spots (OZY) Visit the Grand Canyon, Eiffel Tower…

[Another activity now only available in mediated form is yoga classes; this first person story from SFGate describes the (presence) experience it offers. See the original story for six more images and a video, and see a story in The Spaces for a picture and link filled “peek inside some of the world’s most striking yoga studios” offering virtual classes.  –Matthew] [Image: Credit: Madeline Wells] I tried virtual yoga. Here’s why it may be better than the real thing By Madeline Wells, SFGATE March 21, 2020 A few months ago, I finally caved into purchasing a membership at a small…