[The website described in this story from the University of South Wales may be of interest and use to presence scholars and creators. –Matthew] Wallace & Gromit: The Big Fix Up Behind the Scenes with USW Website Story: https://www.southwales.ac.uk/news/news-2022/audience-future-how-usw-helped-create-new-chapter-wallace-gromit/ Website: https://www.uswaudienceofthefuture.co.uk/ The University of South Wales (USW) recently collaborated with a consortium of creative industry practitioners to do just that. Using emerging technologies, the team worked together to invent an innovative, all new chapter for the beloved Wallace & Gromit animation series. The project saw USW researchers working with a team of developers, including Tiny Rebel Games, Sugar Creative, Potato…

[Prospective and current university students used to have to get information from brochures, books, and telephone or in person conversations, then more recently from websites. Based on this story from Inside Higher Ed, soon they may be able to just have a conversation with an online AI-based chat bot of the university’s president that evokes medium-as-social-actor presence. Follow the link in the story for a video and to talk to the digital President of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and see more coverage (including the video) in a story from UNLV. –Matthew] UNLV President Turns Himself Into an AI…

[It doesn’t use the term, but the goal of the new Ikea exhibition described in this MediaPost story is clearly presence, along of course with marketing research. See the company’s website for more information, including a longer (1:37 minute) video (which is also available on YouTube. –Matthew] Ikea Gets Immersive With Brooklyn Pop-Up By Sarah Mahoney March 3, 2022 Ikea wants to give shoppers a new way to look at the future of furniture, with an immersive design experience in its Brooklyn store. And in return, it’s hoping to get a better sense of how people really feel about storage.…

[Several recent articles highlight the use of deceptive images and videos regarding Russia’s attack on Ukraine, including the report below from Business Today. For more details see the Twitter thread from NBC’s Ben Collins and for related stories see CNN (“Fact check: Phony images masquerading as CNN coverage go viral amid war in Ukraine”); ABC 10 in Sacramento, California (“Ukraine warns Russia may deploy ‘deepfake’ of Zelenskyy surrendering”; and more coverage from Rolling Stone, The Lieber Institute for Law & Warfare at West Point, and Axios. –Matthew] Digital war: How Russia is using deep fakes in Ukraine for propaganda In…

[An ambitious project at the University of Texas is using a treadmill and virtual reality (and presence) to alter the brains of patients with epileptic seizures before they undergo dangerous surgery; as one researcher describes it, “we want to know if we can train patients to move vital [brain] functions to another area so that when the surgeon goes in, they’re operating on a circuit that is no longer as critical for memory, speech, or movement.” The story is from the University’s alumni magazine Alcalde. –Matthew] Researchers at UT’s Dell Medical School Are Using Virtual Reality and Video Games to Help…

[Cornell University researchers have developed an interesting and unusual application of presence-evoking technologies; see the original story for a 21 second video (also available via YouTube). For a related story see “Virtual tours make pig farming more transparent” from Phys.org. –Matthew] [Image: A view of the 3D model of Red Hook Farm in Brooklyn, New York, featuring a processing shed and high tunnels for vegetable production.] Virtual reality farm tour expands access to urban agriculture By Krishna Ramanujan February 28, 2022 One way farmers learn best practices is through their peers, but the pandemic has limited in-person meetings.…

[This story from Tech Monitor, which features our friend and colleague Stéphane Bouchard, considers some of the potential negative consequences of presence experiences via virtual reality; one of them involves inverse presence, the perception that nonmediated experience is actually mediated. –Matthew] [Image: Credit: Photo by David McNew/Getty Images] Is virtual reality bad for our mental health? It’s touted as the gateway to the metaverse. But the impact of prolonged use of virtual reality on our mental well-being is under-researched. By Greg Noone February 24, 2022 (Updated February 28, 2022) Jeff Grover* likes to walk, a pastime suited to the landscape…

[I’m more of a Star Trek person, but this detailed description from CNN of a new elaborate (and expensive) two-day immersive experience at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida suggests that it will evoke an impressively wide variety of compelling presence experiences. See the original story for a 12-image photo gallery. For more coverage, including more pictures and a video, see Good Morning America, and for an extensive collection of videos see Disney’s Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser YouTube playlist. For more about the new AI-based interactive droid named D3-O9, said to be a test for a new platform for immersive,…

[This intriguing essay from Scientific American isn’t about technology and doesn’t refer to telepresence or presence, but it raises several issues related to the concept(s) of presence, including the difficulty of agreeing on definitions of primary terms we use like “reality”; the important roles of the attributes of media technology users in presence experiences; the relationship between presence and dreams; the limitations of referring to “first order” mediation (experiences mediated by our biology) and “second order” mediation (experience mediated by both our biology and technology); and the radical possibility that rather than all of us living in a giant metaverse-like…

[From the early days of Cliff Nass’ Computers Are Social Actors (CASA) research we’ve noted drivers’ social responses to cars as well, due largely to their direct, haptic interaction with their vehicles. Voice-based GPS navigation systems added another set of cues to enhance Cars As Social Actors perceptions and responses. But this interesting story from IEEE Spectrum describes the next level of this form of Medium As Social Actor (MASA) presence created by an evolving vehicle-based AI that provides real-time, context-dependent guidance in a more natural, conversational manner that humans can better understand, and trust. See the original story for…

[This story from Futurism reports on an interesting but depressing phenomenon that raises serious questions about the perils of medium-as-social-actor presence, as well as human nature. –Matthew] [Image: Getty Images/Futurism] Men Are Creating AI Girlfriends and Then Verbally Abusing Them “I threatened to uninstall the app [and] she begged me not to.” By Ashley Bardhan January 18, 2022 Content warning: this story contains descriptions of abusive language and violence. The smartphone app Replika lets users create chatbots, powered by machine learning, that can carry on almost-coherent text conversations. Technically, the chatbots can serve as something approximating a friend or mentor,…

[Tech Crunch provides this description of the origins and current and planned capabilities of Beem’s consumer augmented reality technologies designed to create social presence experiences. See the original story for four more images and a 48 second video (also available via YouTube). –Matthew] Beem, an app that lets you livestream yourself in AR, raises $4 million By Sarah Perez February 17, 2022 What’s the next step beyond Zoom calls and FaceTime? How about beaming yourself from one device to another in real time using augmented reality? That’s the premise behind a startup called Beem, which is today announcing its first…