[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…

[Mashable reports on how MSNBC’s real-time graphics team developed technology that let them be the “first to seamlessly transition from real life space into a digital one on live television” during coverage of the recent U.S. midterm elections. Note especially the comments at the end about planned future uses of the technology. See the original story for several other pictures and a 1:56 minute video “sample of the Capitol illusion in action.”  –Matthew] [Image: Screenshot from video in Mashable story] How MSNBC used tech from ‘The Mandalorian’ to bring election night to life Inside the beating, bustling, high-tech heart of…

[The continuing evolution of presence-evoking immersive technologies is enabling valuable use cases that enhance communication and users’ lives, as reported in this story from Futurism. See the original version for a different image, and for more details follow the link to the 14:28 minute video highlighted in the story. For more about Jenny and the Helping Hands community, see March 2022 coverage from Input.  –Matthew] [Image: Source: Input]   Sign Language in Virtual Reality Actually Looks Kinda Awesome Meta’s new finger tracking tech is actually pretty impressive. By Victor Tangermann November 1, 2022 Virtual reality isn’t all about legless avatars and…

[This first-person report from Here is Oregon describes what sounds like a very rich multi-sensory presence experience at the Portland Art Museum; see the original story for four more pictures and for more details and images, see coverage from OPB (Oregon Public Broadcasting) and the Portland Tribune, and visit the website of the Dutch design collective Polymorf. –Matthew] [Image: Participants take part in “Symbiosis,” an extended reality experience from Dutch design collective Polymorf that is making its international debut at PAM CUT in Portland. Credit: Ian Gillingham/Portland Art Museum] Extended reality experience ‘Symbiosis’ makes international debut in Portland By Jamie Hale…

[This story from Forbes reports on the first-place winner of the $10 million ANA Avatar XPRIZE competition, a team from the University of Bonn and their telepresence robot NimbRo; our colleague Jacki Morie is quoted extensively in the story. There’s more information in the EurekAlert! press release and especially on the NimbRo website, which features many pictures and videos. Coverage in SpaceNews provides this interesting context about the motivations for the competition sponsor, the largest airline in Japan: “’When we think about the world that we live in right now, where only about 6% of the population can travel over…