[From Fast Company, where the story includes several images and a video] [Image: Screenshot from a player video on the DayZ TV web site] “DayZ” Makes You Feel Every Murder You Commit. Can You Handle This? Dean Hall developed the zombie-packed, psychologically trying PC game to re-create tension faced by soldiers. The emotional responses it triggers have helped the game sell more than a million downloads in its first month. By Evie Nagy January 22, 2014 In early January, a Reddit user posted an emotional story about waking up on a beach and befriending a fellow lost soldier. But the…

[From the Subway Stories web site, which features much more information including images and videos] Subway Stories By Alon Chitayat & Jeff Ong “Subway Stories” is an interactive subway simulator exploring the inner-lives of commuters in New York City. Living in New York City, many of us spend hours a day below ground. Each day millions of people commute via the subway — an apparently “interactive” experience if you stop to consider the potential collisions that could happen. But if you’ve spent significant time on subways, you begin to realize it’s often an isolating experience — one of the last…

[From Race Yourself, where the press release includes a 1:40 minute video and several photos (I couldn’t find a screenshot with the 400 tonne cargo train –ML)] Get Fit This Year by Fleeing From Augmented Reality Zombies: Race Yourself Transforms Exercise Into a Game on Google Glass Race Yourself is a New Fitness Startup for Google Glass, Aiming to Turn Exercise Into a Game.  By Racing Against a Virtual Projection of Yourself, Attaining Personal Bests, and Burning Calories, You Can Unlock New Game Modes Such as Running Away from Giant Rolling Boulders. Race Yourself has Already Raised £200,000 from Investors…

[“In My Shoes experiments with alternative methods of communication. My aim is to put audiences as close to being in the shoes of a stranger as I can, I use virtual reality software, touch, taste, sound & smell to make it as true to life as possible.”… This is from The Guardian, where the story includes an additional picture.] [Image: Jane Gauntlett leads someone wearing audio-visual and more conventional props through a performance of In My Shoes in New York. Photograph: Amy Hart] Virtual reality theatre puts experience of brain damage centre stage Jane Gauntlett’s brain injury forced her to…

[From Dezeen, where the post includes additional images and a related video] [Image: Neil Harbisson is the first officially recognized human cyborg, but digitally enhanced human brains may become the norm in the future. Photograph by Dan Wilton.] “Cyborg scenario” will see computers in the brain replace wearable tech 17 January 2014 News: surgically implanted chips that feed digital information directly into the brain will supersede wearable technology, according to the co-founder of a leading 3D imaging studio. WiFi-enabled chips mounted inside the skull will be more effective than today’s devices such as virtual reality headsets and Google Glass, according…

[A different but arguably very related use of the term presence, from Brain Pickings: “Watts argues that our primary mode of relinquishing presence is by leaving the body and retreating into the mind — that ever-calculating, self-evaluating, seething cauldron of thoughts, predictions, anxieties, judgments, and incessant meta-experiences about experience itself.”] An Antidote to the Age of Anxiety: Alan Watts on Happiness and How to Live with Presence Wisdom on overcoming the greatest human frustration from the pioneer of Eastern philosophy in the West by Maria Popova “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives,” Annie…