Author: Matthew Lombard


  • Watch Steven Spielberg direct a Ready Player One scene using virtual reality

    [This short story from CinemaBlend explains, and includes a 2:05 minute video clip of Steven Spielberg explaining, how the director used virtual reality to bring the virtual reality described in the novel Ready Player One to life in his recent film. Here’s a quote from the clip, which explains the screenshot below: “My avatar had a virtual camera and so if I pressed a button I could either start a video recorder and do actual shots by walking through the virtual set or I could do frame grabs.” I agree with the author’s endorsement: A group of us here at…

    Read more: Watch Steven Spielberg direct a Ready Player One scene using virtual reality
  • Call: 3rd Multiple Approaches to Game Analysis Workshop (MAGAW 2018)

    Call for Proposals 3rd Multiple Approaches to Game Analysis Workshop (MAGAW 2018) 8th – 9th of November 2018 University of Lincoln, UK Submission deadline: August 26th Queries about the workshop, email: magaw2018@gmail.com Emmanuel Guardiola (Cologne Game Lab, TH Köln), Jussi Holopainen (Lincoln Games Research Network, University of Lincoln), and Curtis Maughan (Cologne Game Lab, TH Köln, Vanderbilt University) invite you to apply to a two-day, hands-on game analysis workshop. Workshop Goal: In an attempt to develop a multidisciplinary game analysis toolkit, we are seeking a diverse spectrum of approaches to game analysis. By game analysis we refer to a systematic…

    Read more: Call: 3rd Multiple Approaches to Game Analysis Workshop (MAGAW 2018)
  • New (free) report: “Evaluating Immersive User Experience and Audience Impact”

    [Our friend, colleague and ISPR co-founder Jonathan Freeman and his firm i2 media research led the production of a new free report for those creating VR/AR content, based on many years of research on presence and presence-evoking technologies. See the bottom of this short story about it from Goldsmiths, University of London for the link to download the report.  –Matthew] Catapulting immersive industry into the spotlight Bodies, Minds, Society, Psychology By Pete Wilton Published on 28 Jun 2018 A Goldsmiths, University of London spin-off firm has produced a new report, working with Nesta and the Digital Catapult, aimed at those…

    Read more: New (free) report: “Evaluating Immersive User Experience and Audience Impact”
  • Call: 16th New Zealand Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (CHINZ 2018)

    Call for Papers CHINZ 2018 16th New Zealand Conference on Human-Computer Interaction University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand 19th November, 2018 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/chinz2018/ Part of the CHINZ Conference series, organised by SIGCHI NZ, the New Zealand Chapter of ACM SIGCHI Co-located with the 20th International Conference On Asia-Pacific Digital Libraries (ICADL 18) Submission deadline: 7 September 2018 The 16th New Zealand Conference on Human-Computer Interaction will provide a forum for researchers and practitioners involved with Human Computer Interaction in New Zealand and in other parts of the world. It aims to bring together people interested in any aspect of HCI and…

    Read more: Call: 16th New Zealand Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (CHINZ 2018)
  • Presence and deepfake video: The dangers ahead

    [As if the political currents around the world, and specifically in the U.S. as it celebrates Independence Day today, aren’t disturbing enough, presence scholars, policy makers and everyone else should be deeply concerned about how presence-evoking technologies are enabling increasingly dangerous and harmful deceptions. The story below from The Associated Press (AP) describes some of the threats in the realm of politics, and there is much more press coverage on this topic: IEEE Spectrum reports on a wager among experts on whether there will be a successful deepfake video scandal during the upcoming 2018 U.S. midterm elections – even those…

    Read more: Presence and deepfake video: The dangers ahead
  • Call: Academic Mindtrek 2018

    Call for Papers, Posters, Demonstrations and Workshops Academic Mindtrek 2018 10th to 11th October, 2018 Tampere, Finland https://www.mindtrek.org/2018/events/academic/ In cooperation with ACM, ACM SIGMM, and ACM SIGCHI. Contributions will be published in the ACM digital library. Deadline for full papers, posters, demonstrations and workshops: July 15, 2018 (extended) We are pleased to invite you to the 22nd International Academic Mindtrek conference, 10th to 11th October 2018. Academic Mindtrek is a meeting place where researchers, experts and thinkers present results from their latest work regarding the development of novel technology, media and digital culture for the society of tomorrow. Academic Mindtrek…

    Read more: Call: Academic Mindtrek 2018
  • Free virtual reality app drops users in the heart of historic Armenia

    [Presence can play a key role in preserving cultural heritage, and not just when sites are under threat. This story from Smithsonian.com describes a new free app designed to “bring the value of Armenian cultural heritage out of the abstract and into the lives of millions.” See the original story for more images. –Matthew] [Image: Khachkars are prominently visible in front of the Noravank monastery. Credit: Sossi Madzounian, My Armenia Program.] This Free Virtual Reality App Drops Users in the Heart of Historic Armenia Painstaking imaging of cultural heritage sites worldwide has the potential to usher in a new era…

    Read more: Free virtual reality app drops users in the heart of historic Armenia
  • Call: ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology (VRST 2018)

    CALL FOR PAPERS VRST 2018: The ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology Tokyo, Japan November 28 – December 1, 2018 https://vrst.acm.org/vrst2018/ Papers submission deadline: August 15, 2018, 23:59 PST Posters and demos submission deadline: September 1, 2018, 23:59 PST The ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology (VRST) is the premier international symposium for the presentation of new research results, systems, and techniques among researchers and developers concerned with 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…

    Read more: Call: ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology (VRST 2018)
  • Do Brexit and Trump show that we’re living in a computer simulation?

    [Recent events have me thinking again about the argument, offered even before the 2016 U.S. elections (see this ISPR Presence News post), that the rise of Donald Trump is evidence that we’re living in a computer simulation. It’s either a cruel experiment or prank by our digital overlords or some kind of glitch. The column below from The Conversation makes the counterargument to the first possibility by noting that any society that survives long enough to develop the capability to create such a sophisticated simulation would have had to develop a moral code that would prevent such cruelty. Of course…

    Read more: Do Brexit and Trump show that we’re living in a computer simulation?
  • Call: Critical Robotics – Exploring a New Paradigm (NordiCHI 2018 Workshop)

    Call for Papers Critical Robotics-Exploring a New Paradigm Workshop 10th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (NordiCHI 2018) Oslo, Norway Sunday September 30, 2018 https://critical-robotics.weebly.com Submission deadline: August 10, 2018 Critical Robotics-Exploring a New Paradigm is a workshop held at the 10th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (NordiCHI) in Oslo, Norway, on Sunday September 30, 2018. We invite you to participate and submit a position paper. In recent years, we have witnessed a rise in voices advocating more human-centered and holistic approaches in research on robotic technology. Towards this end, the adoption of broader perspectives and the exploration of critical questions…

    Read more: Call: Critical Robotics – Exploring a New Paradigm (NordiCHI 2018 Workshop)
  • Will you watch the next World Cup on your coffee table in 3-D? New tech impresses

    [This story from King5 TV in Seattle describes a new system that may be a glimpse of how we’ll experience a greater sense of presence in future sports broadcasts. See the original version of the story for a 2:04 minute video report. Coverage in ZDNet includes additional information and this assessment: “While still in an early development stage, the results are compelling enough to suggest there could be a real future in this kind of system for home sports viewing — and it could come sooner rather than later. … Unlike most newfangled 3D entertainment, this is something I can…

    Read more: Will you watch the next World Cup on your coffee table in 3-D? New tech impresses
  • Call: WellComp 2018: First International Workshop on Computing for Well-Being

    Call for Papers WellComp 2018: First International Workshop on Computing for Well-Being in conjunction with ACM UbiComp 2018 Singapore October 8, 2018 http://WellComp.org/ Submission Deadline: July 20, 2018 WORKSHOP THEME AND GOALS In the advancing ubiquitous computing age, computing technology has already spread into many aspects of our daily lives, such as office work, home and house-keeping, health management, transportation, or even cities. We have been experiencing that much of the influence from those technologies are both contributing better quality of life (QoL) of our individual and organizational lives, and causing new types of stress and pain at the same…

    Read more: Call: WellComp 2018: First International Workshop on Computing for Well-Being

ISPR Presence News

Search ISPR Presence News:



Archives