[This story from New Scientist highlights negative consequences of presence-based advertising; while it focuses mostly on competition between advertisers, the larger concern is unwanted clutter in augmented/mixed reality, as illustrated in the Kevin Matsuda short film Hyper-Reality. The original story includes a 0:35 minute video and a different image. –Matthew] Augmented reality graffiti will lead to advertising ambush wars By Matt Reynolds 4 August 2017 Imagine looking up at the sky and seeing every cloud crammed full of adverts. High above a fast food restaurant, a competitor has scrawled its own cheeky pitch, urging shoppers to eat their burgers instead.…

[This disturbingly timely story from Yale News describes a new exhibition about the blurring of the real and artificial in our representations and understanding of war. The original includes five more images, and more information and images are available at the Gallery’s website. –Matthew] [Image: A detail from An-My Lê’s Film Set (“Free State of Jones”), Battle of Corinth, Bush, Louisiana, 2015. Inkjet print. Courtesy STX Entertainment] Exhibit features photographic portrayals of war, real and staged July 21, 2017 “Before the Event/After the Fact: Contemporary Perspectives on War,” an exhibition that brings together a range of contemporary approaches to the…

[In addition to describing the company’s new brain-controlled VR game, in this interview from IEEE Spectrum the CEO of Neurable argues that the brain-computer interface will “be the interaction method that allows for ubiquitous VR and AR”; the original story includes four different pictures and a 0:42 minute video. –Matthew] [Image: From Diorama, where coverage includes a 2:08 minute demonstration video] Startup Neurable Unveils the World’s First Brain-Controlled VR Game By Eliza Strickland Posted 7 Aug 2017 Imagine putting on a VR headset, seeing the virtual world take shape around you, and then navigating through that world without waving any…

[The tools available to creators allow increasingly sophisticated manipulations of mediated reality; this story from the UC Santa Barbara Current describes an interesting new one; follow the links at the end for more information, examples and a 5:18 minute video, and see coverage in DIY Photography for an explanation of how this new tool compares to others. –Matthew] Picture Perfect UCSB and NVIDIA researchers develop a new technique that enables photographers to adjust image compositions after capture By James Badham Monday, July 31, 2017 When taking a picture, a photographer must typically commit to a composition that cannot be changed…

[From Roomba to Kuri to sophisticated and adorable future companion robots that take care of us, we can’t help perceiving machines as independent, sentient social actors – i.e., experiencing media-as-social-actor presence. This interesting story from Wired considers some key design choices and ethical challenges. See the original for a 5:12 minute video. –Matthew] Companion Robots Are Here. Just Don’t Fall In Love With Them Matt Simon August 2, 20.17 “Hey, Kuri,” I say. “I love you.” Pause. I brace for rejection, but then the robot lets out a balooop and shimmies back and forth. This, I am to presume, means…

[I always enjoy visiting attractions that provide views from high above (e.g., Philadelphia’s One Liberty Observation Deck) but The Shard in London has taken things further, as reported in this story from the Evening Standard (where it includes several more pictures). For more information, Business Insider has a 1:31 minute summary video and Londonist has a story featuring a 2:30 minute viral video of a woman on the Slide attraction. Details and tickets are available directly from The View From The Shard’s website. Information about an earlier VR experience of the same building is available from Visualise. –Matthew] You can…