[Other coverage of the latest iteration of AI-based video manipulation of humans (e.g., in Gizmodo and TechCrunch) includes more details while noting the remarkably fast evolution of the technology, and the website of Stanford visiting professor Michael Zollhöfer includes much more information and a statement about both its positive and negative applications, but this short piece in Co.Design describes the implications most starkly. The articles all include the new 7:04 minute video, which is also available via YouTube.  –Matthew] [Image: Screenshot from Deep Video Portraits demo video. Source: TechCrunch.] This new face-swapping AI is scarily realistic The end of reality…

[This first story from BBC Capital’s new Augmented Reality column provides a vivid, link-filled overview of medium-as-social-actor presence responses to robots. The original version includes six more pictures. –Matthew] [Image: German Chancellor Angela Merkel meets Pepper the Robot on Girls’ Day on April 26, 2017 in Berlin, Germany. The event is meant to encourage young women to pursue careers in all parts of the German economy, especially in sciences, information technology and engineering, and this year the event occurs simultaneously with the W20 women’s empowerment summit, sponsored by the G20 Group of 20 major economic powers. Photo by Adam Berry/Getty…

[The CBC report below is about a niche but potentially life-saving application of presence-evoking technology; the original story includes three different images. For more information listen to the 4:27 minute report from CBC’s Daybreak North radio program and see the VR Safety Training Solutions website. A short piece from MyPrinceGeorgeNow includes these additional quotes: “’From the people we have talked to who have taken the [regular] training, they aren’t always confident that they would know how to use it effectively in the field even though they’ve taken the training,’ explains CEO Kelly O’Neill. ‘So we wanted to be able to…

[The profound implications of the innovation described in this story from the MIT Media Lab is clear in this sentence from the second-to-last paragraph: “We see a future in which our designed world will be carefully integrated within our nature: a world in which what is biological and what is not, what is human and what is not, what is nature and what is not, will be forever blurred.” See the original story for an additional image, three videos, an FAQ and more. Futurism’s coverage, titled “Artificial Limbs We Forget Are Artificial,” links to a story in Popular Mechanics with…

[Oculus Venues is a new platform for social VR and this story from Wired describes some of the key design choices its creators faced; it includes both explicit and indirect references to presence. The original version includes different images; for more information about what the Venues experience is like see stories in CNET and Mashable. –Matthew] [Image: Source: VRScout] With Venues, Oculus and Facebook Push Social VR Into New Territory Peter Rubin May 30, 2018 Tonight, more than 9,000 people will fill Red Rocks Amphitheatre outside Denver to listen to Vance Joy, an Australian singer-songwriter with a name like a…

[This new telepresence robot has capabilities that make it more like a “real life” avatar for users. The short story is from SoraNews24, where it includes a different image and a 1:45 minute video. For more information see a story in Forbes that considers the robot’s potential use for remote shopping, and a press release via Digital Journal. –Matthew] Japanese telecom company unveils robot that lets you see, hear, and feel through it [Video] The only problem is that it looks like a killing machine compared to domestic robot Pepper. Koh Ruide June 4, 2018 When Japanese telecommunications company Softbank…

[This story examines a recent study of the potential of a film that provides both male and female perspectives in an unusual split-sphere 360° video format to create empathy and attitude change. The story is from Medium, where the original includes three different images. It’s worth looking at the study itself (via Dropbox), in which presence and other aspects of the technology and experience are considered. A related recent story worth a look is “Walking in another’s virtual shoes: Do 360-degree video news stories generate empathy in viewers?“ in Columbia Journalism Review. –Matthew] [Image: Source: UTURN creator Nathalie Mathe] The…

[This story from MIT News describes what sounds like a valuable course at MIT, one that explicitly covers presence. My colleague Laura Zaylea and I have been doing something similar in a cross-course collaboration (Emerging Media Production and Psychological Processing of Media), initially focusing on 360 videos and augmented reality. If you teach or know of other courses like this, please let me know (at lombard@temple.edu). –Matthew] [Image: In MIT’s hands-on humanities class CMS.339 (Virtual Reality and Immersive Media Production), students are grappling with multiple dimensions of making virtual reality, from technical challenges, to philosophical questions, to the art of…

[This story from Inverse describes a clever new way to manipulate VR users’ perceptions to create more natural walking (and thus presence) experiences in virtual worlds. –Matthew] [Image: Source: Digital Trends] VR Worlds Where You Can Actually Walk Around Are on the Way Goodbye, room-limited HTC Vive games! By Mike Brown May 30, 2018 Ready to go on an infinite journey through virtual reality? Researchers at Stony Brook University, working with Nvidia and Adobe, announced on Tuesday that they’ve taken a big step toward making virtual worlds feel vast and expansive. By manipulating the eye’s natural movements, the researchers say…

[Although it doesn’t cover specific steps to bring about institutional change, this opinion column from Times Higher Education makes the compelling argument for the incorporation of presence-evoking technologies in higher education. –Matthew] [Image: CAVE2 at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Source: UIC] Universities should immerse themselves in virtual reality Embracing immersive content would aid public engagement and bring research and teaching closer together, argue Vincent Tong, Sam Smidt and Matilda Katan May 3, 2018 By Vincent Tong, Sam Smidt and Matilda Katan While universities bill themselves as pioneers of technology, they are…

[This story from Artsy describes the trend towards technology-based experiential art and attractions, focusing on Meow Wolf’s installation in Santa Fe (coming soon to Denver, Las Vegas and elsewhere); the company’s CEO “envisions a future where the lines between things like art, theme parks, role-playing games, and augmented reality will be blurred. The emerging term, he explains, is ‘alternative reality.’” The original story includes a large photo gallery, and for more information see Meow Wolf’s website and a 2:20 minute video on YouTube (which will lead you to other videos). Two related news stories from the last few weeks may be…

[Thank you to everyone who joined us for PRESENCE 2018 last week in Prague, either in person or virtually. Special thanks to organizing committee members SongYi (Grace) Lee, Kun Xu, Hocheol Yang and Jihyun Kim. For me at least, it was another rewarding, intellectually invigorating and very enjoyable combination of presentations and informal discussions about different aspects of a fascinating topic. In our concluding session we identified a variety of challenges we face as presence scholars and we’ll be following up soon on some of the steps we developed towards addressing them. In the meantime, the story below is about…