[A loathed and more recently loved virtual assistant built into an early version of Windows is now available on a holiday sweater (!), as reported by Mashable. –Matthew] Microsoft is selling an ugly holiday sweater featuring an OG Windows legend It’s only $75! By Alex Perry November 15, 2022 This’ll surely spice up your family’s holiday party. Ugly holiday sweaters feel like a decidedly early-2010’s trend, but that hasn’t stopped Microsoft from introducing one that’s actually pretty good. For the “low” price of $75 on the Xbox merchandise store, you can get a festive sweater depicting the OG Microsoft Office…

[This Gizmodo story is widely cited in coverage of a new tool developed by Disney Research that can more easily, quickly and economically create illusions that age and ‘de-age’ actors. Coverage from Nerdist provides this succinct summary: “Similar to the system used in The Irishman, which Netflix and ILM developed, this system doesn’t require an actor’s face to be covered in tracking dots. It also doesn’t require visual effects artists to spend weeks erasing (or adding) wrinkles in every frame. The video [in the original story and on YouTube] shows off the simple interface, where all you have to do…

[The United Nations System Staff College (UNSSC) is an inter-agency institution that “respond[s] to the learning, training and knowledge management needs of UN staff and relevant partners.” Without using the term presence, this first-person blog post describes how and why the UNSSC has shifted from offering traditional to “more immersive and experiential learning” opportunities to their clients. Follow the links within and at the bottom of the post for more information. –Matthew] Driving sustainable development and climate action through virtual reality and interactive 360-degree videos By Paulyn Duman, Knowledge Management, Communications, and Reporting Officer at the United Nations System Staff…

[The post title is from ARTNews but the story below is from the Miami Herald, and it describes the latest version of an intriguing “presence and food” experience reported in a September 2019 ISPR Presence News post. The ARTNews story includes this: “’How do you visualize taste? What is the shape of spice? What is the color of flavor?’ [Creator Mattia] Casalegno said in an interview, describing his project. ‘I conceived Aerobanquets RMX as a total feast for the senses, a multi-sensory journey, a tool to reprogram all our perceptive expectations.’ … Casalegno first conceived of Aerobanquets in 2018 with the…

[This NBC News story describes how and why Morehouse College Professor Ovell Hamilton has created a unique course on Black history that will be taught next spring entirely via virtual reality, taking students to key places and events using 3D simulations and avatars designed to evoke spatial and social presence and enhance learning. See the original version of the story for five more images and a short video.  –Matthew] [Image: Students at Morehouse College are able to experience a virtual slave ship through virtual reality technology. Credit: Morehouse College] Morehouse College class will teach Black history in the metaverse Students…

[The brief story below from My Modern Net describes a project by Istanbul lawyer and photographer Alper Yesiltas in which he uses AI and other software to create realistic images of what celebrities who died years ago would look like today, “brought back to life as if nothing happened.” See the original story for the ten images. His most recent project, which Yesiltas presents in a Bored Panda post, is called “Thisness” (“[t]he quality in a thing of being here and now or such as it is”) and features 17 images that address the question “What would some iconic people…

[In this story from The Conversation a physicist explains some of the current arguments and evidence for the idea that all of our experience is the result of the ultimate form of presence – that the universe itself “is a computer simulation, with someone (perhaps an advanced alien species) fine-tuning the conditions.” The author argues that we should take the possibility seriously and describes new efforts to prove or disprove it; whether that happens or not, our collective fascination with the idea is entirely consistent with the fact that we live in an era when our technologies increasingly provide convincing…

[This story about another beneficial application of presence experiences comes from the Cornell Chronicle; note the involvement of our colleague Andrea Stevenson Won. See the original version for a second image. –Matthew] [Image: Kim Benowski, left, a staff member from Cornell’s Center for Teaching Innovation, helps a student use a VR headset as she learns a complicated microscope technique in a molecular biology and genetics class. Credit: Sreang Hok/Cornell University] Students visit virtual world to learn research technique By Kathy Hovis, a writer for the College of Arts and Sciences November 22, 2022 Safely and effectively preparing a sample for…

[Without using the term, this story from Unite.ai examines (and provides links to other stories about) a range of potential causes and potential effects of our medium-as-social-actor presence responses to different types of robots. –Matthew] Emotional Attachment to Robots: Why Does It Happen, and Does It Matter? By Zac Amos November 17, 2022 Humans have been designing robots for a long time, and with advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), they will eventually exceed expectations with their abilities. Though humans desire them for their practical uses, such as deliveries or industry, experiments prove people get attached much like they would a…

[Here’s a bit of interesting presence history from My Modern Met; see the original story for three videos and three more images, and follow the many links for more information and examples. –Matthew] [Image: Circa 1830 French Peepshow Toy of the Tuileries via Etsy; see these and more views at TypePunchMatrix] Paper Peepshows: How People Experienced “Virtual Reality” in the 19th Century By Madyson DeJausserand November 10, 2022 Today, virtual reality technology involves putting on some sort of headset that can transform the world around you, from creating an immersive experience out of the Mona Lisa to seeing wilderness from…

[This short DesignTAXI story describes a new human-sized stuffed Teddy Bear created and marketed to evoke medium-as-social-actor presence. See the Loving Bear Puffy website for more information, many pictures, and testimonials including this one: “The first few days I felt a bit strange until I got used to his presence because he seems like a real person, but now I can’t imagine walking in and him not being home.” –Matthew] [Image: Source: Loving Bear Puffy website] Man-Sized Teddy Bear Is The Hunky Companion That Lets You Cuddle All Day Long By Mikelle Leow November 14, 2022 How often do you…

[As this story from VentureBeat reports, companies like Hour One and Synthesia are creating hundreds of thousands of “authorized deepfake” videos for thousands of businesses, which means encounters and interactions with digital “people” will become increasingly common.  –Matthew] [Image: Source: GRIT Daily] Why authorized deepfakes are becoming big for business By Sharon Goldman November 9, 2022 Natalie Monbiot, head of strategy at synthetic media company Hour One, dislikes the word “deepfakes.” “Deepfake implies unauthorized use of synthetic media and generative artificial intelligence — we are authorized from the get-go,” she told VentureBeat. She described the Tel Aviv- and New York-based…