International Society
for Presence Research

Author: Matthew Lombard

  • Call: ETRA 2025: ACM Symposium on Eye Tracking Research & Applications

    Published:

    Call for Papers: ETRA 2025: ACM Symposium on Eye Tracking Research & ApplicationsMay 26-29, 2025Tokyo, Japanhttps://etra.acm.org/2025/ Submission deadline for abstracts: October 26, 2024 Dear Colleagues, We are delighted to announce that the 2025 ACM Symposium on Eye Tracking Research & Applications (ETRA) will be held from May 26 to May 29, 2025, in Tokyo, Japan. We cordially invite you to participate in this prestigious event, which gathers researchers, practitioners, and professionals from a wide range of disciplines with a shared interest in advancing eye tracking research and its applications. ETRA 2025 will showcase cutting-edge research and innovations in various areas,…

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  • Roto VR Explorer chair could make VR less nauseating and more immersive

    Published:

    [A new “Made for Meta” rotating chair for virtual reality is designed to reduce motion sickness and increase immersiveness (presence), as reported in short story from The Verge and excerpts from coverage in several other publications that follow. Most of the original stories include more pictures and the Roto VR Explorer chair trailer (also available on YouTube). See an April 2015 ISPR Presence News post for details about an early version of the new product. –Matthew] This head-tracking spinning chair could make VR less nauseating The Roto VR Explorer chair matches the rotational movements of a VR user’s head, helping…

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  • Call: Bodies in Journalism – Special issue of Journalism Studies

    Published:

    Call for Papers Bodies in JournalismSpecial issue of Journalism Studieshttps://think.taylorandfrancis.com/special_issues/bodies-in-journalism/ Submission deadline (extended): September 2, 2024 The body has been a focal point of cultural critique in humanities and social sciences research since the corporeal or bodily turn of the 1980s and 1990s, when it began to be perceived as discursively shaped by language, culture, and ideology, rather than a fixed biological entity. In journalism, bodies play a crucial role in the day-to-day performance of news work: interacting with sources, collecting sensitive information, and negotiating access are integral aspects of the emotional labour of the profession. Despite its essential role…

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  • Forget imaginary friends, how about an imaginary teacher?

    Published:

    [Guy Bate and his colleagues at the University of Auckland are exploring the use of presence-evoking AI-based assistants to serve as supplementary teachers in the Graduate School of Management, as reported in this story from New Zealand’s The Post. See the original version of the story for five more pictures and a 1:24 minute video. –Matthew] [Image: A University of Auckland teaching avatar. Credit: Simon Morrow / Stuff] Forget imaginary friends, how about an imaginary teacher? By Kevin NorquayAugust 17, 2024 Wish you always had a friendly face close at hand, to help with tricky problems? Well, the University of…

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  • Call: Having a LARP: Immersion, Liveness, and the Qualities of Experience (Symposium)

    Published:

    Call for Submissions The Evolution of Story IIIHaving a LARP: Immersion, Liveness, and the Qualities of ExperienceJune 17, 2025Solent University, Southampton, UKhttps://evolutionofstory.info/call-for-papers-2025/https://evolutionofstory.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Having-a-LARP-Call-for-Papers-vr5.pdf Submission deadline: November 29, 2024 OVERVIEW: We are delighted to announce a one-day academic symposium titled “Having a LARP: Immersion, Liveness, and the Qualities of Experience,” hosted by Solent University on 17th June 2025. This symposium aims to provoke debate and challenge orthodox views on the evolution of storytelling and immersive experiences, particularly focusing on the increasingly mainstream phenomenon of Live Action Role Play (LARP). In recent years, LARP has transitioned from the fringes of entertainment culture to…

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  • Former NASA scientist doing experiment to prove we live in a simulation

    Published:

    [Regardless of its validity, the popular culture treatments and scientific and philosophical considerations of the idea that we all live in a sophisticated technology-based simulation, which would be the ultimate example of presence, demonstrate that simulation and illusion are important concepts and phenomena in our age (as clocks and steam engines were in earlier ones). This story from Futurism provides an overview of the latest efforts to find evidence that supports one version of the simulation argument. For more information, see the press release the author mentions, which is available at PRLog, and the experimenters’ testingthehhypothesis website. The Cosmos News…

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  • Call: Surrealism and Arts-Based Research: Bridging the Imagination and Reality Divide – online conference

    Published:

    Call for Papers Surrealism and Arts-Based ResearchBridging the Imagination and Reality DivideSeptember 30-October 1, 2024OnlineConference fee: 90 GBPhttps://labrc.co.uk/2024/07/06/surrealism2024/ Proposal submission deadline: August 31, 2024 We are delighted to announce our forthcoming conference, Surrealism and Arts-Based Research: Bridging the Imagination and Reality Divide, where we will delve into the captivating and enigmatic world of Surrealism across multiple disciplines. This transdisciplinary conference invites scholars, creatives, researchers, and practitioners to explore the enigmatic, the dreamlike, and the fantastical in their respective fields through the lens of Surrealism. We aim to come together to explore, discuss, and unveil the depths of the unconscious mind…

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  • NHL hockey goalie virtual reality tool highlights Fanatics Fest NYC

    Published:

    [The US National Hockey League isn’t an objective source, but this story from NHL.com provides some interesting information about the League’s presence-evoking virtual reality gameplay simulator and how and why people use it. See the original story for a second image and for more information see the NHL Sense Arena and Fanatics Fest NYC websites. –Matthew] Goalie virtual reality tool highlights Fanatics Fest NYC Sense Arena program gives fans taste of real NHL action By David Satriano, NHL.com Staff WriterAugust 15, 2024 Have you ever wondered what it’s like to stare down a slap shot from Alex Ovechkin? Well, thanks…

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  • Call: The Human-Machine Communication Syllabus Project

    Published:

    Call for Participants The Human-Machine Communication Syllabus Projecthttps://andrealguzman.net/hmcsyllabusproject Submission deadline: September 13, 2024 Communication and media research is expanding to include artificial intelligence and robotics, and this broadening of the study of communication also has extended to the classroom. Scholars who are integrating human-machine communication into their courses are invited to participate in the Human-Machine Communication Syllabus Project by Andrea L. Guzman, Northern Illinois University, and Jason Archer, Michigan Technological University. The purpose of the project is two-fold: First, we aim to study how scholars are conceptualizing human-machine communication and incorporating it as a subject of study within higher education.…

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  • Avi Schiffmann’s startup is launching an AI ‘Friend’ to be your always-there companion

    Published:

    [Twenty-one-year-old Avi Schiffmann, already known for a series of technology inventions, is launching a new AI companion called ‘Friend’ that, as the name suggests, is designed to evoke medium-as-social-actor presence. The story from The Verge below provides details, and the excerpts from coverage by Wired adds more; the original versions of both stories include the 1:44 minute product trailer video (also available on YouTube). For a negative take on Friend, see a story in TechRadar, and for related news about Heeyo’s “AI chatbot [created] to be a billion kids’ interactive tutor and friend,” see a recent story in TechCrunch.…

    Read more: Avi Schiffmann’s startup is launching an AI ‘Friend’ to be your always-there companion

  • Call: AI Ethics in Africa Colloquium September 4, 2024 via Zoom

    Published:

    Call for Participation A-day Virtual Colloquium onAI ETHICS IN AFRICASeptember 14, 202415:00/3 pm (South Africa Time) and 14:00/2 pm (Nigeria Time) DESCRIPTION In recent years, there has been a rapid development in Artificial intelligence (AI). Some of these developments include smartphones, factory arms, autonomous cars, AI wristwatches, ChatGPT4, griefbots, robot surgeons, and robot lawyers. This rapid development raises various concerns, one of which is the ethical concern of how to design AI in such a way that it would not pose a danger to humanity or exacerbate the suffering of nonhuman animals in the context of factory farms. …

    Read more: Call: AI Ethics in Africa Colloquium September 4, 2024 via Zoom

  • We need to prepare for ‘addictive intelligence’

    Published:

    [Here’s an extremely thoughtful link-filled essay from MIT Technology Review about some of the perils of medium-as-social-actor presence and what researchers, designers and regulators can do to mitigate them in an ethical manner. –Matthew] [Image: Credit: Pat Pataranutaporn | Robert Mahari] We need to prepare for ‘addictive intelligence’ The allure of AI companions is hard to resist. Here’s how innovation in regulation can help protect people. By Robert Mahari a joint JD-PhD candidate at the MIT Media Lab and Harvard Law School. His work focuses on computational law—using advanced computational techniques to analyze, improve, and extend the study and practice…

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