[I often hesitate to post stories on this topic, despite its obvious relevance to presence, in part because of the juvenile and prurient tone of the press coverage, but this story from CNET that describes the latest fascinating but ethically murky step toward effective presence illusions in the context of sexuality stands out as responsible and thoughtful. See the original story for many more photos, a video and links to related information. –Matthew] Sex dolls, live models make ‘virtual intercourse’ feel real Camming site CamSoda calls itself a “virtual strip club.” Now new integrations with VR, connected toys and sex…

[This column from Forbes suggests that as the technology of virtual assistants like Alexa and Siri evolves and they become more capable of evoking effective medium-as-social-actor presence, they’ll take on bigger roles in our lives and disrupt the mundane but important interactions of our human-human relationships (a prospect thoughtfully expanded on in the film Her). ––Matthew] [Image: An Amazon Echo. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)] Will Virtual AI Assistants Create Real Relationship Troubles? Kalev Leetaru, Contributor – I write about the broad intersection of data and society. January 9, 2018 As they say in relationship counseling, communication is everything in nurturing a successful…

[Predictions about the future of virtual reality and presence from two culture contributors are in the news and featured in stories below from The Art Newspaper and Gamespot. –Matthew] [Image: A screenshot from the upcoming film Ready Player One] Douglas Coupland says Virtual Reality could replace ‘overrated’ books in post-millennial age Generation X author and artist was among 100 cultural leaders to convene at the Verbier Art Summit on digital art Anny Shaw 22nd January 2018 “Virtual Reality [VR] is this asteroid that’s going to hit the planet in 2023,” said the Canadian novelist and artist Douglas Coupland, citing Google’s…

[The technology described in the story below from Indianapolis Business Journal could substantially advance the quality and prevalence of effective presence illusions. More information including a 2:10 minute video (also on YouTube) is available from the Purdue University news release, and coverage in Digital Trends includes this summary: “’The Holostream system includes four major modules,’ Song Zhang, an associate professor at Purdue, told Digital Trends. ‘[There’s] a high-accuracy and high-resolution 3D video acquisition module that achieves camera pixel resolution at 30Hz; a novel 3D video compression module that substantially reduces 3D video data size; a 3D video streaming module that…

[The incident reported in this story from The Verge raises important and interesting questions about what happens when critical events in the nonmediated (‘real’) world emerge in the mediated, virtual world – revealing human nature and suggesting the need to create awareness and potential means for responding beyond the presence environment. The original story includes a 17:56 minute video, and for more details see coverage in Kotaku.–Matthew] User succumbs to a seizure in virtual reality while other players can only watch By Megan Farokhmanesh Jan 19, 2018 While playing around in VRChat, an online virtual community, YouTuber Rogue Shadow VR…

[A 2013 ISPR Presence News post described Tianducheng, a replica of Paris in China; now François Prost has created a photo series that pairs images from the ‘real’ and the replica. This interesting (and lightly edited) story is from It’s Nice That. See more of the images in the original story and on the photographer’s website, and find more coverage from CityLab. –Matthew] Paris Syndrome: photographer Francois Prost explores a replica city in China Words by Bryony Stone January 4, 2018 “I will always remember the first time I went to Venice,” photographer François Prost remembers. “I was 23.…