[A project at Glasgow University uses virtual reality (and presence) to create virtual experiences that bring together diverse locations, memorabilia and stories to celebrate Scotland’s national bard, Robert Burns. As this story from The Guardian notes, the project is part of larger venture to “create virtual reality guides that will allow individuals to open their own VR museums and allow visitors to enjoy collections assembled from across the globe.” See the original story for a second image. –Matthew] [Image: A VR recreation of Alloway Auld Kirk, the setting for his supernatural poem, Tam o’Shanter. Credit: The University of Glasgow] Egg…

[This September 2023 post from About Amazon describes how the company is incorporating artificial intelligence to make interactions with its voice assistant Alexa more natural (like “talking to another human”). See the original version for a second image and two videos. At CES 2024, Amazon announced three new AI skills, described in a new story from Tech.co, and Tech Brew spoke with the director of Amazon’s “voice-focused venture arm” Alexa Fund, about “how the company is thinking about the future of AI in voice applications.” –Matthew] Previewing the future of Alexa By Daniel Rausch, Vice President, Alexa and Fire TV…

[With the acknowledgment that “societal bias and dynamics” apply to interactions with avatars in virtual and augmented reality, Google and University of Central Florida researchers have produced a new open-source Virtual Avatar Library for Inclusion and Diversity (VALID). The details, including the presence-related phenomena that make the Library vital, are in this post from the Google Research blog (where the original features large versions of the picture below and four others). –Matthew] [Image: Headshots of all 42 base avatars available on the VALID library were created in extensive interaction with members of the 7 ethnic and racial groups from the…

[As 9TO5Mac reports in a widely cited story, new Apple guidelines tell developers to refer to their apps for the company’s new, expensive, presence-evoking Vison Pro product without “using terms such as AR (augmented reality), VR (virtual reality), XR (extended reality), or MR (mixed reality). Instead, Apple says that visionOS apps are ‘spatial computing apps,’” and that the “Vision Pro is a spatial computing platform.” The story below from Fast Company does a nice job of explaining and illustrating the differences (see the original version for a video). –Matthew] [Images: Credits: Tetiana Lazunova/Getty Images; puttapon/Getty Images] What is spatial computing?…

[The positive impacts of presence-evoking technologies for medical treatment of patients who live in rural areas of Canada are described in this story from the University of Alberta; in coverage of the telerehabilitation program in the St. Albert Gazette adds this detail: “It’s an uncanny thing, in that when you’re using this robot, it feels like that urban clinician is in the room,” [rehabilitation medicine professor Martin] Ferguson-Pell said. “It’s very important because the patient wants to build a relationship of trust with that virtual connection that they have with the Urban clinician. And the use of the telepresence robot…

[Ten years after the entertaining and thought-provoking portrayal of medium-as-social-actor presence in the film Her, our parasocial interactions and relationships with digital persona are increasingly complicated. This story from Inverse is a good primer; see the original version for five more images and a video (note that the story includes a spoiler near the end).  –Matthew] What Her Can Teach Us About Love In the Age of Artificial Intimacy 10 years later, Spike Jonze sci-fi masterpiece has only become more poignant. By Becca Caddy December 30, 2023 Imagine a perfect partner: One who always texts back, listens, and remembers even…

[This story by the Editor at Large of CNET describes and explores with its creators how the art collective Meow Wolf is developing virtual experiences that overlap with its psychedelic physical installations. Note this key quote from near the end: “I love the massive immersion of a physical Meow Wolf world. But can that work in VR as well? ‘Our brains don’t file physical encounters and virtual encounters in a different place,’ [Senior art director Don] Carson said. ‘And I think that that is sort of a hint at the potential of being able to blur those lines. If you have…

[This essay from TechRadar doesn’t use the term, but it provides a cogent explanation of how generative AI images and video are rapidly becoming capable of evoking potentially dangerous presence experiences. See the original for two more images. –Matthew] [Image: Four images Midjourney spit out in under a minute based on [the author’s] prompt. Credit: Midjourney] In 2024 AI will make it almost impossible to know the truth Generative AI images will trip you up By Lance Ulanoff January 3, 2024 AI imagery is now on a course to unravel our understanding of visual truth in a way that no…

[Although it doesn’t focus on all the intriguing parasocial and other presence-related motivations and responses to the growing number of live, participatory immersive experiences based on TV series and films and “designed to lever an imaginary world into our real one,” this story from The New York Times provides an interesting, link-filled primer on the phenomenon (and see the original version for seven more pictures). For more on the “academic” Sarah Bay-Cheng and her work, see the York University website.  –Matthew] [Image: TV brand extensions increasingly include live interactive events inspired by series, like a “Squid Game” competition. Credit: Jamie…

[There’s a lot of press coverage this morning about a new entertainment project that will use a combination of presence-evoking technologies to recreate concert and other experiences with Elvis Presley. The story below from BroadwayWorld provides the key details. Reuters adds this context: “Global interest in the singer, widely acclaimed as the best selling solo music artist of all time with more than 500 million records sold, is undimmed 46 years after he died aged 42. Baz Luhrmann’s biography ‘Elvis’, released in 2022, created a new generation of fans, while Sofia Coppola’s 2023 ‘Priscilla’ explored his complex relationship with his…

[In the aftermath of the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023, the founders of Treedis, an Israeli company that produces virtual and augmented reality media to “advertise properties and other assets,” began documenting some of the events and experiences of that day using virtual reality. The story below from Ynetnews provides details about the project (warning: some content is very disturbing); see the original version of the story for two more images and a 1:38 minute video. More details and the immersive 3D material is available on the Treedis website. Coverage from All Israel News notes that “The purpose of…

[This critical essay from The New York Times argues that rather than being concerned about technologies that produce presence-evoking simulations of human cultural artifacts, we should be concerned about the formulaic and unimaginative nature of the actual artifacts. See the original version for four more images. –Matthew] [Image: “Hello Vincent,” at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, allows you to converse with an A.I. Van Gogh. Credit: Elliott Verdier for The New York Times] A.I. Can Make Art That Feels Human. Whose Fault Is That? A fake Drake/Weeknd mash-up is not a threat to our species’s culture. It’s a warning: We…