[A presence-evoking immersive installation at Princeton University this month uses virtual reality and spatial sound to enable audience members to (seem to) move around in the same spaces as performing orchestra musicians. Details about the public event are in the announcement from Princeton Online below; follow the links at the end for more information (the two-minute preview video is also on YouTube). Earlier coverage is available from WHYY and The Daily Princetonian. –Matthew] [Image: Credit: Mahler Chamber Orchestra. Source: Inside Princeton.] Groundbreaking Virtual Reality & Spatial Sound Installation Returns to Princeton University Concerts Princeton University Concerts (PUC) brings the fan-favorite…

[TimeOut Hong Kong reports on an interesting use of realistic sets first used to evoke presence in film audiences and then repurposed to evoke presence in visitors to two iterations of an immersive physical exhibition. See the original report for five more images; the South China Morning Post has a more extensive gallery; and Hong Kong Guide provides a guided tour of the exhibition in a 3:35 minute video available on YouTube. For more about the Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In film, see IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes. –Matthew] ‘Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In’ exhibition Transporting us all back…

[It’s bad enough when products stop working because the company that provides externally-stored and updated software stops supporting them (I’ve had the frustrating experience with the expensive Glance Clock), but it’s particularly distressing when the product is a robot companion designed to evoke medium-as-social-actor presence in young users. The current example of Moxie and the company Embodied is reported in the story below from Popular Science (it also mentions an even more disturbing case involving a brain-computer interface); see the original version of the story for three videos. Reactions to Moxie’s shutdown are the focus of a 5:10 minute monologue…

[A new online platform for musicians addresses the presence-breaking problem of latency by using avatars presented in virtual reality and powered by algorithms so they can display the subtle timing adjustments between performers. A news release from the University of Birmingham Enterprise via EIN Presswire provides a description; more details are available from the University directly, and a 1:04 minute video is on YouTube. –Matthew] Bringing the magic of playing music to the virtual world The Joint Active Music Sessions (JAMS) platform has the potential to develop a social network where musicians can learn, connect, and perform. News Provided By…

[This interesting column from Forbes considers some of the psychological and other impacts and implications of the advancing abilities of technologies used in “stay alive at all costs” survival games to blur ”the line between truth and simulation.” –Matthew] [Image: A member of a British Army eSports team experiences a game via a virtual reality headset. Credit: Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images.] Survival Games and the AI, VR Revolution: Fears, Hopes and Challenges By Anisha Sircar, a journalist covering tech, finance and society [more info at https://anishasircar.com/]December 27, 2024 I was sitting on the couch, half-watching my partner play Dota…

[The Daily Mail story below describes an unusual use of technology-based images to replace windows, apparently in part as a safety measure in a mansion built in an area of Florida subject to dangerous hurricanes. See the original version of the story for many more images, and the current Realtor.com and Zillow.com listings for the home for more information and images. The label “virtual reality” certainly stretches the traditional meaning of that term, but the idea of using static or dynamic images on a display screen to substitute for a transparent window or ceiling in a home, office, or hospital…

[Presence would seem to have an important role in the findings of research conducted by an undergraduate kinesiology student and a professor at Pennsylvania State University Berks, who found that participants perceived the same exercise as requiring less effort when it was combined with the use of virtual reality, suggesting a way to promote physical activity in sedentary college students. See also a related story from BBC News. –Matthew] [Image: Diana Stoltzfus, left, takes baseline measurements of her study participant, right, before beginning exercise on the stationary bike using the VR headset. Credit: Samantha Bower / Penn State.] Virtual reality…

[The author of this first-person report from The Guardian on what it’s like to use virtual reality at the end of 2024, including the presence experiences VR provides, is optimistic about the medium’s future; the original version of the report includes a second picture. For a less optimistic view, focusing on the Apple Vision Pro “spatial computing” headset and on Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, see a new report in The Verge. –Matthew] [Image: Ed Newton-Rex prepares tea while wearing the Meta Quest 3 virtual reality headset at his home in California. Credit: Marissa Leshnov/The Guardian] I spent a week working,…

[The essay below from Silver Screen Hub on Facebook describes the different ways filmmakers used subjective camera techniques in three films, and why the techniques have the potential to evoke presence by making the viewer “not just a spectator, but an integral part of the story.” For more on the use of the techniques in the films, see Jim Carroll’s blog (The Lady in the Lake), a chapter in the book Subjectivity by Vivian Sobchack (Dark Passages), and PopMatters and Film Independent (Hardcore Henry). Note that the essay itself may represent an example of presence (in which the consumer overlooks…

[In the second of two special holiday posts today featuring essays about Christmas and technology, a professor of Philosophy uses the example of interacting with an “AI Santa” to write about the delicate line between harmless and positive suspension of disbelief and the dangers of misperceiving reality, i.e., the promise and peril of presence. See the original version of the essay in The Sacramento Bee for a different image.  –Matthew] [Image: AI Santa by Tavus. Source: Tom’s Hardware] Opinion: AI is now a sweet but weird part of Christmas By Andrew Fiala, a professor of philosophy at Fresno State UniversityDecember…

[In the first of two special holiday posts today featuring essays about Christmas and technology, the Cybernews writer presents a dark perspective on the impact of technologies, including those that evoke presence, on our experience of Christmas. The essay concludes with a reference to the simulation argument, the contention that we’re all experiencing the ultimate form of presence (or inverse presence, depending on whether the contention is true). For a contrastingly heart-warming story about the use of technology (broadly defined), see coverage in The Guardian of a unique United Airlines program: “For more than 30 years, United has staged its…

[Apparently for the first time, advertisers have used the multi-sensory “4D” technologies available in some movie theaters to increase the experience of presence, and thereby the attention of and impact on audience members. Details are in the story below from MediaPost, where the original version includes the 2:24 minute Wicked trailer in the immersive Screencast format (the trailer is also available on YouTube); the “Making of” video is available on YouTube as well. A press release via Business Wire includes this: “’The immersive nature of big screen cinema advertising already provides marketers with the highest attention scores of any media…