Telepresence

Earwig is a piece of ambient telepresence. The technology consists of a pair of very low profile headsets. At potentially random times, the units transmit glimpses of the wearer’s aural environment and vocal activity to the ear of the other wearer. The wearer’s have no say in when and what is transmitted. The result could potentially be whispers in the ear, snippets of the other’s world or broken conversations with no context. The effect could be haunting, cinematic, comforting, or possibly just confusing. The experience would be very different depending on the wearers’ relationship with one another. Lovers may find that little snippets make them feel connected and bring a feeling of ambient presence while strangers might find it disorienting, haunting, and cryptic.

Rory Nugent

A person’s notion of presence in a given environment is validated by their senses. Vision, hearing, touch, smell and taste are what we depend on to separate reality from dreaming. Although technological advances have been made to simulate presence to these sensory perceptions, it is still a lacking substitute to actual presence. But perhaps sensory fidelity isn’t the only solution to convey the qualities of someone’s presence to another location.
There can be two perceptions at work in a telepresence system. One is the telepresenter’s perception of the environment/audience. Does the system give the telepresenter a strong sense of presence in the simulated environment? This sense of immersion is achieved in such entertainment systems as IMAX theaters, and professional sound systems which convey a life-like and sometimes larger than life experience. Another perception at work is the remote audience’s sense of the telepresenter. This is in the case of a multiple user system. Does the audience feel a sense of presence in the projection of the telepresenter? The telephone is a classic example of feeling someone’s presence just through audio, to the point that we forget that we are just speaking into an electronic device. We are able to feel like we are talking directly to the distant person on the other side of the line.
One end goal of telepresence, for all its simulation and communication, is to make a real effect between telepresenter and the remote environment/audience. This is a two way relationship grounded in real time. One type of effect is physical. Simple mechanisms such as remote controlled cars come to mind. Also inversely, the telepresenter can feel the effect of the environment as well such as in the Back to the Future disney ride, or in the force feedback of video game steering wheels. Another type of effect is emotional. I think of the latest movie on IMAX, a U2 concert in 3D, and how watching it on a screen can possibly evoke the same emotions as being physically there. In the end it is interesting what sensory information our consciousness chooses to process as a ‘real’ experience, and what it chooses to suspend disbelief in.

Thomas

The idea of presence has come up in another class. In Urban Computing, one of the first topics we are addressing are walls. Walls are an interesting concept in regards to presence because of their fungibility.

For the most part, the relationship between physical distance and presence is simple: if someone is not near you, they are not present. But with walls, and other physical barriers, the concept becomes a bit hazy. Physical barriers allow for partial presence or limited presence. How does a glass wall which allows for sight but not sound impact presence? How about a paper thin wall, like many New York apartments, which allows for sound to pass but not sight? Do two people being on each side of these walls constitute presence? Where do we draw the line? How about prison.

Prison phones are one scenario where users request/acknowledge presence yet it is received in a restricted format. On a prison phone (at least in the movies), the users can look at each other through the window, but can’t hear each other. They must use a telephone receiver to talk. They also cannot touch each other. Other examples of restricted presence include confessionals and peep shows. These are not telepresence, they are anti-presence because they only offer partial presence even though there is physical proximity. But these scenarios do mimic telepresence.

Rarely, if ever, does telepresence provide a true, all sensory experience. Telepresence typically does a good job of representing one or two elements of presence but not all. I am interested in exploring this further. What elements of telepresence do we value more than others? Is sight more valuable than sound or touch? What makes telepresence “work”?

I hope to answer some of these questions as the class progresses.

Marc

Presence is linked to our senses. We recognize the features of a person by means of smelling, touching…etc. However, we are exposed nowadays to too many stimuli. Our senses become saturated somehow, and our perception seems no more so reliable. Photography was once a proof of the reality. It still reproduces the world in a realistic way but currently we assume no longer a picture as an ultimate trusty source. The concept of trust comes therefore into play. And this idea of trust is diverse depending on the sense we are talking about. Maybe the sight is the most paradoxical one. It’s the one we depend on most of the time in our everyday life. But on the other hand it’s very susceptible to be manipulated.

Presence is linked to the mind. Senses depend completely on the mind. It’s our brain which processes the whole information and selects that which is worth to be kept. Our ability to receive data from the world and process it is very personal. Some people are sensitive, some are not. And this defines “our level of reality”. The intensity of the inputs. In this sense, the recreation of presence is much more a mental state than a sensual one. You can emulate some personal features by recreating or reproducing intimate information related to them; personal ways of expression, movements, noises, customs etc. This information can be transmitted by means of diverse channels of communication.

Presence is the present. The present is in your mind. Although the text “The Power of Now” is full of contradictions and it exaggerates some ideas in order to trigger a reaction, there are a couple of ideas which I would like to stand out. “Time and mind are inseparable”. I think that’s true but in a different way the author actually does. Mind is for me referring here to memory. It reminds me the movie “Memento”. The protagonist is living a constant 5 minutes present and even though, his whole life refers to a past which is not necessary true. Without memory, the thought of the past becomes an obsession that imprisons the individual in a loop.

Presence is linked to remembrance. If I had to develop a project about this concept I would focus on that. At the same time, I think there must be trust to recall presence efficiently. As I said before, everything is in your mind.

*************************************************

I think one of the best senses to recall presence is the smell. I worked last semester with it but of course it’s really hard (and in fact my final project ended stinking like an old lady). Anyway, there must be a way. Perhaps this one could work. The breathing box is a small box which reproduces the recorded breath rhythm of some person. It requires a special ritual to be effective. During one week one individual wears a medal made of rubber which also records the heartbeat and processes this information to transform it in breath rhythm. It’s covered with some kind of fabric which also absorbs the smell of this person. After one week you can put this medal in a box to give to someone important. The medal will inflate and deflate with the breath rhythm while it will retain the smell of the person. After a week or more, The second person can reuse the medal and hence delete one presence with the new one.

Rodrigo

What is the presence?

I probably asked myself regarding this question several times long before. In the stream of consciousness, the presence might be simply defined as constant past. Likewise, when we aware the presence that is not a presence anymore. Even while talking to someone, the present time of our conversation is just below the velocity of sound. Then what can we say the presence is? Is the presence even exist or able to define?

When we eat, talk, sleep and struggle to something around us. The consciousness is limited by our ego, becoming aware of ourselves. Thus, when it comes to talk about presence, some people say it would be better to talk about the consciousness and the body. What I am trying to say is losing self-consciousness.

From the book called ‘Flow’, the author ‘Mihály Csíkszentmihályi’ said a loss of the feeling of self-consciousness is the merging of action and awareness. It means people can feel most ecstatic experience when they were doing something without self-consciousness. Just as painting a picture, playing basketball or playing musical instrument, those moments are defined as ‘flow’ by the author. I also believe that we can feel the presence when we are doing something with extreme concentration like as watching movies or listening music which move our emotions. Even though we cannot tell the presence at that moment, during the activity, it can be called as the presence. I think this idea is a little similar with an idea of Samādhi in Buddhism.

The presence also can be determined on our past memory. In the future, assuming that our memory is saved at each cell of our brain and furthermore people can control them by advanced technology, what is going to be happen to our ego? What if we can delete or change our specific memories, like as friends, parents, lover and everything we thought as ‘my memory’ so far. Can I still be able to called either myself or say the moment as presence?The presence has to include the information of the past. Therefore, I think the presence is a relative truth.

Although I cannot clearly tell what is the presence, I can still say I am happy whenever I watch my teen-age’s old video which includes one of my happiest memories in my life. Also, I enjoy showing myself to parents in Korea through the web-cam in these days. Apparently, both of them are just digital images via medium. Both contain the happiness memory and convey the real emotions. However, the former video was recorded in the past, the latter webcam is unpredictable present image. Accordingly, there is something more in the live ‘telepresence’. Well, but I still cannot concrete the concept of presence, hopefully in the class.

Jaeyoon

People leave their home for various reasons (in search of bigger and better things, to explore different places, to escape an unpleasant situation, etc). Sometimes they leave forever, sometimes for a short time. Because of human nature, I think, people are afraid / uncomfortable in a new environment where most things are new and unknown, and they yearn for a connection with familiar things and people. (That doesn’t mean that the new environment won’t become familiar eventually.) Often the people left behind are very important people in the life of the person who’s away. Hence the need for telepresence.

So the feeling of (tele)presence should speak to that familiarity, to the connection that the people have. It could be mediated through something very specific to the relationship between the two people.

What is the bare minimum that is required to recreate a feeling of presence? Given that even in dreams I have felt someone’s presence, I would say not very much. Even just thinking about someone can make them present in my mind. It should probably be something more deliberate (or at least causally connected to the other person) than that. I think though that the conviction that someone from afar is doing something that you can perceive (with your senses) is the least that would be required.

To take a different approach, presence can be expressed through the negation of absence, or by emphasizing its absence, in order to make one’s (former) presence more noticed and appreciated. This is two ideas: one is to show traces of a person’s presence, that (by the laws of physics) would require the person to be there in order for their presence to be justified. This idea comes from this painting that I saw this weekend.

The other idea would be to otherwise emphasize the person’s absence, forcing the other person to conjure them up in their mind, thus making them present in the mental realm.

Project Idea:
To make another person’s absence more noticed, and thus their presence desired and imagined, I propose making a set of accessories (potentially bracelets) that display the distance between the two people.

kyveli

I don’t know. I don’t think presence is all that complicated. To be honest, I don’t like the idea of deconstructing it right now. Either something is present or it’s not. We either experience it or we don’t. Sometimes I think we can get caught up in the act of qualifying simple life stuff. It makes sense that if we want to communicate or experience a sense of place or an activity or even a person that the more our senses are engaged, the more believable that experience becomes. Part of that has to do with how much of our physical space we are willing to open up, put out there, and how much of it we would like to keep private. In some cases, even if we know that something is not real, that a particular time-space does not exist, we can still project our presence –our sense of self– into virtual environments that fool our minds into believing it does. Children are particular good at this. Take a look a these two videos of an infant and toddler using the WiiMote.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_mBLWpdwnI&eurl=http://dustormagic.wikispaces.com/WebVids

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDdErzFwrRY&eurl=http://dustormagic.wikispaces.com/WebVids

In both of videos you get the sense that the child believes that the virtual space is real and the activity is actually occurring. In the first one, the infant laughs whenever s/he hears the ‘swoosh’ from the virtual club as it hits the ball. In the other video, the child is completely engrossed, both physically and visually, in virtual game play. As you can see, for both of them, this is a real as it gets.

Whether it’s moving in time to a virtual game or feeling the pains of a faked stomachache, very young children usually don’t have the cognitive tools to deconstruct the meaning of the Now. Meaning they won’t likely think, my anxiety about school results from anticipation of an event that has yet to occur, therefore, it does not exist. Ok, I’m being a bit of smart ass here but perhaps you get the point:)

Here’s an interesting question though: Can telepresence technology be used to allay fears that a child might have, or an adult for that matter, about future events, people, places or activities? Can telepresence help individuals overcome fears, phobias or prejudices? Can telepresence help individuals live more fully in the Now? Can it help to increase a person’s capacity to empathize? I think so.

For example, I believe telepresence can help children deal with anxieties about first day of school. Imagine being introduced to teachers, classmates and the room environment via virtual navigation system, all from the comfort of home. Imagine sitting with your parent as you walk to your future desk and chair. Imagine playing with virtual Legos and blocks in the construction/play area.

This technology might also prove helpful to individuals with certain phobias. For example, say you have fear of water. Would it be helpful to take a virtual swim in lap pool or in the sea? If you are afraid of heights, would it be helpful to virtually jump off a cliff? So many opportunities! I, for one, have a fear of snakes. I’m not too keen of being cured of this one, but, I’ll be open (at least to end of this paragraph), perhaps telepresence technology could help me here. Maybe I could take a virtual walk in the bayou where I happen upon some cottonmouths. Ok, maybe that’s not a good idea.

Moving on: What if I could spend a day in the life of someone I knew little about? Maybe even someone I feared? Another culture, perhaps? What if I can experience activities in another part of the world? Speak another language with natives? Would I become more connected or more or less a voyeur? Who knows…

I do know that there are times where I am physically present within a given time/space but mentally out to lunch:) You know those moments: When you ask the person to repeat herself. Or when they ask you if you’re still listening and you’re thinking: How can I still be doing something that I haven’t even started? Or, when you’re engaged in dialogue, i.e. your mouth is moving, but you haven’t the faintest idea of what you are talking about. So, in short, I believe telepresence technology, in all its creative and commercial glory, can help us (read me) to live more present lives, if only because it defines the damn thing and provides the means by which to partake in it or not.

Afterthoughts:
Tele-TuckNRead is a virtual system that allows parents to tuck + read bedtime stories to their child/ren when they are away. Tele-Readerific! is a virtual system that allows volunteers to assist struggling readers at schools across the country or world (kind of like Project Smart, just virtually).

Seanita

As it was also in the readings of the Rest of You class last semester, I wondered why Dano referenced “Power of Now” more than any techy bluetoothish ultrawireless user manual. I bought the book, and started reading under a warming candle light and chilling sound of rain. Well, by the end of page 70s, I was traveling in the little details of “the Now”, laughing at my problems waiting for me in “the future”, and cuddling with “the Being” on the canals of Venice.

Not really.. I was well disappointed with the shallow concept of the book and the writer, Eckhart Tolle, who came up with this amazing spiritual theory sometime in the past, when he was young, depressed, not happy. In the book, in which he chose his target audience as desperate people who are pretty much in the same state, his theory of recognizing “the Now” and separating the self from the conscious level etc. obviously has its foundation on important theories in psychology, psychoanalysis, and Zen, but seriously suffers from being unaware of the scientific support of these important theories/concepts. While not having a background (nor enough research) on psychology, he is mistakenly using many words like unconscious, conscious, psychiatrist, ego, etc.. and also he is bravely giving very simple definitions on the biggest mysteries in life such as death, suicide, communism (?), time, but wait, I need to paraphrase these two:

The secret of life is to “die before you die” - and find that there is no death. p46

Your life is real. p63

Although his concepts like separating the self from the conscious level and observing the ideas, detaching from the flow of the ideas have their place in various studies on psychoanalysis and Zen, all of these stand so-without reason and logic in the book. I will not discuss the book further, but focus on the things that come to my mind (well after reading and drinking some tea over).

What happens to ‘presence’ and the ‘present’ time when we consider the speed of light?

Consider this situation; I raise my hand within -+ 0.2 ms of 23:08:34, Monday, January 28th, 2008. If we consider that same time exists and happens at the same time (let’s call it universe time) in all the universe, what does the guy living in the galaxy 24k light-years away from earth see while he is observing me with his ultramultra telescope at that same time?

As we know, what he will see is my past, and definitely not raising my hand. Then we can say that real universe time will question the realness of the time that I am experiencing now, and even my existence in current time, therefore my presence in any place in anyway. Simply put, there will never be a way to create my presence next to that guy while I am alive. Although we are capable of swinging the Wii controller at the same universe time, we will never be able to play golf together because we exist in each other’s past (well, our past exists in each other’s present).

It is not that I am crazy about playing wii with the extraterrestrial, it makes me question the current levels of delay we are having while talking on the skype, or chatting on msn? Delay is actually a concept which can extend from the microseconds of passing (actually, I learned that it is not the movement of the electrons, but the propagation of the movement of electrons, which is around 2/3 of the speed of light) of electrons in a wire to a million years of non-existence in the light-speed scale. Although its effect is taken very seriously when an unsynchronized audio and video is transferred in a teleconference, we cannot fight against the natural delay (in very large amounts) that would be even be caused by the fastest thing ever known; light. Then delay becomes a natural phenomenon, which I need to think a little more about. hmm…

Also, since light is the fastest dude, should we take it as the reference in my realtime presence? What did I just say?

sinan

There are many reasons we need to interact with another human being. such as:

Walking alone on street in NY around 2 o’clock.

When travelling, being in the cab, alone, in a new city.

Just had a nightmare and woke up.

Got a great news or ideas to share.

30 min everyday jogging in the gym.

Miss someone, wants to talk.

…

The reason varies from sharing ideas, passing meme, like sharing news and ideas, to trying to maximize the efficiency within the limited time, like jogging while chatting with friends; from trying to find oneself by comparing with others, interacting with others, to pursuing the sense of “real” by seeing,touching, hearing, etc; to the most basic thing: sense of safety and certainty.

I want to address the very basic reason for why interact, why need presence by focusing on safety.

Here are two examples around safety:

When in the cab, in a strange city, for instance, the first time I went to San Jose, alone. I had no idea where the hotel was and it was dark outside, with few people on the street. When I got in the cab, I started dialing my friends’ phone number, and started the conversation, and try to let the driver hear what I was talking about with my friend, such as where I was right now, in a cab, blah blah …

I introduced my friend’s voice into the cab, not only for me, to accompany myself, but also to show to the driver while I was struggling in my little universe whether this man was good or bad, since I didn’t have another other way if this guy was bad. Though the driver may 99% not be the bad man; and though even the driver was a bad man and was listening to my chatting with my friend in phone, he still may ignore that and be as bad as he was. even I totally understood that, I still can’t help calling my friend, speaking loudly. The content is not important, the person who he/she is is also not that important. The difference between “there’s someone else here”, either in person or in voice , and “no one else here” matters. All is because that makes me feel safe.

Also, I always got phone calls when one of my friends was walking on the street by herself, after party, at night. I also always call somebody on my way back home, alone, in the night, in new york. I just feel safe by doing so.

So the wacky idea popped up in my mind is: air walking partner

A fake partner step by step with the lonely night walker, with recorded conversation playing all the time. To fake a presence, instead of using the real telepresence. It’s more of a joke. It’s depicted by me as a wearable, a bag or a waistcoat, being able to be inflated and transformed into a person size or a dog.

The conversation or the sound produced by the dog could be accelerated or slowed down, and the pitch could be increased or decreased by the steps. To inflate and transform the dog/person, we don’t need to stop in the middle of the street in the darkness, just simply walk to inflate them.

Plus, I’m also interested in doing some thing on cell phone, since those two scenarios are both around cellphone. to be continued…

meng li

Presence and the act of creating it is dependent upon the perspectives of the participants in question. One might consider two individuals sharing the same physical space to be in each other’s presence. Yet those individuals themselves might not agree with such a generalization. They could be in completely foreign mental spaces consciously avoiding their immediate environments. Conversely, two individuals interacting through a remote medium (instant messaging, video conferencing etc) may experience the presence of the one they are physically separated from despite the striking limitations of the given medium. The experience of presence is dependent upon one’s readiness to experience it.

Following the above statement, I feel as though immersion is not essential for a successful telepresence experience. The relentless progression of our available telecommunications resources will continue to augment the richness of our remote interactions. By this, I am afraid that our growing reliance upon computing and remote interaction will set a new precedence for normal communication habits, eroding away our current necessity for physical interaction.

I believe our presence comes from our past rather than the prediction of the future. Our presence clearly show accumulation of past. Food, which I ate in the past, made my body, like the obesity people ate food too much before. The number of smiling made our wrinkles and so on. Our traces of the past such as education, family, thinking are essential of our presence. In the case of identifying each other, the incident of the past is really important. In my case, the recognition of the presence tend to be a appearance, while I’m talking with my friends by phone, I remind their appearance from time to time, so the important thing to me is meeting them directly each other before at least once, then I can understand their presence now. Therefore, it’s impossible for me to make a friend on the Internet because we don’t share the past before.

Moreover, I feel the key of understanding presence is same as the key of becoming friend. The past thing is also important in this case. For instance, in the class, although I didn’t talk each other, I feel friendliness of other classmates if we study in the class for a while. I observe their behavior like speech or works in the class. It helps me to feel friendly and understand his presence. One of my favorites Japanese novels written by Haruki
Murakami has interesting story. The woman doesn’t want to show her ears in this story even if she has perfect and beautiful ears. She has some complicated past about ears and shows her ears only for intimate friends. We can discuss about same thing for our daily life. As for me, if I told my secret to my friends, we can understand each other and feel friendliness. To share the past is really important to identify and become friend each other.

So, how can we utilize presence for the new technology?
There is social networking site named mixi in Japan. People decide some criteria of showing their information such as diary, personal information, photos, movie … In other words, people make the level to show their presence for friends. There is some level of the presence probably. To sort or categorize presence might be helpful to create works by using Telepresence technology.

Noriaki Okada

Kacie Kinzer

I can start by talking about presence in the context of quality. The reason I am interested in presence relates to some of the things that Linda Stone addresses in her ETech keynote talk: the movement toward things that improve one’s quality of life—the desire to interact with systems, technologies etc. that provide a sense of “meaning, belonging, protection, and trust.” Not only do I believe that this trend is taking place in our society, it seems clear that one of the areas with the richest possibilities for augmenting our interactions is by emphasizing presence. Smearing ideas together from “The Power of Now” and the Keogh Journal of Presence, I am provisionally defining presence as real-time awareness/experience of one’s current physical and psychological environment. To be present is to be aware of the interior and exterior spectrum of one’s experience at any given time. This is the antithesis of continuous partial attention, in that it forces one to focus not on the past or present but the unfolding experience at a resolution that grounds us in the reality of what is. Telepresence then would be the sensation of being present elsewhere.

Why would people want to be telepresent as opposed to simply being present in the reality that is directly in front of them? The answer for me is because we want connection. I love the story that was told in class about being a child and believing that everything disappeared which was not being immediately experienced at the moment. As we grow up, we know that this isn’t the case. Intellectually, and spiritually perhaps, we realize that things are happening remotely and there is, I think something inside of us that wants to be omni-present—to be somehow connected to friends and family, to loved places which are across the room, city, country. Not to mention the impetus to experience something that is unfamiliar. I think that Telepresence can be both “far off” and “present”—if one is fully aware of or experiencing one’s current environment then one is still present regardless of technological mediation or even synthetic formulation of the experience. (This is a bold claim that may later require modification).

At the same time, I don’t feel that immersion is necessary for Telepresence—it seems to me that the only way to talk about presence in the first place is on a scale of more-or less present, and therefore talking about Telepresence is a matter of negotiating a gradient also. While it may be that the greater the immersion, the more one is (tele) present… I am also interested in a sort of victorious simulation of presence—perhaps technologies conveying presence could be less immersive and instead rely on the power of imagination to create something which is nonetheless poignant. The one thing that does seem important to me is the factor of time—there must be no lag in the correspondence to one’s actual movements and the effects they have on the tele-environment. I am beginning to wonder though, if actual correspondence in absolute time is necessary—I’m not sure that it is. It might be fun to play around with this to see what happens.

A proposal relating to presence:

I am interested in using personal computers as a ay of conveying someone’s physical presence and surroundings in an unobtrusive way throughout the day to someone else. This method is an oblique way of conveying presence—it simply generates a glimpse of someone else without requiring interaction between the two people. Because we almost always have our laptops with us, using built in components such as cameras along with a program which waited for a particular input would be a very easy way to remind people that they are connected to someone else across time and space. Ideally this would be done through a more or less random operation—such as by tracking all of the letters which the user deleted in the normal course of typing emails, entering words in the search bar of Goggle, or typing word documents, the computer would be able to the user would be able to specify a loved one to whom a snapshot would be sent each time the user deleted all of the letters in a name or phrase through the course of in the course of their normal computer operations.

*(I changed the timestamp on this post so that it would not mess up the chronology of posts for ambient)

like most things that you really feel (in a grokky sort of way) i think (tele)presence is experienced most profoundly when it sneaks up on you or happens in a bit of a peripheral way. i think that, like the punchline of a joke or the sudden smile of a stranger, it’s the surprise of the unexpected that feels somehow “true.” in the case of telepresence: the surprise of someone at the end of the line out there somewhere. and thinking about all of this makes me think about a lot of childhood wondering/wonderment, things like “everyone i know is out there somewhere. right now. doing something (and terrifyingly: doing so without my knowledge. or more terrifyingly still: without me!)” and i think those kinds of thoughts are the genesis of our fasciation with all things telepresent. the distance between us and the other. the fascination of the time-machine. of the transporter. the wrinkle in time. it’s finding little tears in the stuff that makes sense of our lives. of exploring those tears. exploring, in our case, with technology.

first experiment here: telePenguin.

…

the “selfish meme” line of thinking reminds me a lot of the theory (schopenhauer’s, i think) that it is the will of the unborn child that brings two parents together - that drives them (often against their better judgment) to bring itself into being. baby as living, breathing meme. this can be used to great effect in explaining some frighteningly unlikely couples. and some particularly willfull kids, i suppose. oh, and judging from magazine covers, i guess that babies themselves are somewhat of their own meme at the moment, as well…

and telepresence itself seems to be a dominant meme right now. especially among our gang - a gang particularly hobbled by the dreaded ContinuousPartialAttention.™

…

from keho:

“…Device Activism…uses the creation of electronic objects to highlight a social issue. Although this may involve producing some kind of functioning device, the object itself is secondary to the question being highlighted, though this
question may itself relate to our relationship with technology in a social context.”

this is what i’m most interested in. i think making objects that point outward toward the issues we’re interested in, that don’t so much solve a problem or calculate a solution but rather engage viewers in some sort of unspoken dialog are really rich. and really rare, too.

[and of all meme-y things, wordpress’ spelling engine doesn’t recognize meme !]

daniel liss

Presence of another is developed by all kinds of conscious and unconscious actions, mannerisms, body language, scents, sounds, and so forth. And, like a tree falling in a forest, if there is no observer all these attributes of presence may as well be nonexistent. Our senses observe this consciously / unconsciously crafted presence while our brain interprets the information and comes to all sorts of conclusions. Despite the presence being portrayed, the observer is the one who subjectively interprets the presence and has the final say.

I feel that the way we use our senses to interpret presence is analogous to how people interpret data sets of any kind. When you work with only one set of information the observer is left with no reference as to whether or not that data is correct or incorrect. Fact or fiction. However, since that is all the information he or she has, they must do something with it despite potential uneasiness. Working with two data sets leaves the observer either completely confused or rather sure of themselves. If two data sets mismatch, there is no way to tell which one is right and which one is wrong. Though, if both are correct it is far easier to confide in this data. Three data sets and up, he or she will most likely confide in the data that is most common with the others. If most are in line, it is easy to feel comfortable. If there is lots of disparity, it is hard to feel comfortable. If most of the data points in one direction, he or she can make a reasonable decision and confidently ignore the data that seems incorrect or false. Just like data sets, by having many senses we are able to observer our environment and come to reasonably confident decision. If one of our senses isn’t making sense, it can often be ignored and considered ill. We use our many senses and brain to interpret presence. I feel since most modern technologies are reductive, in that they only give us a channel for one or two of our senses, it is difficult to have a fully realized sense of presence. This must be why many people find these technologies impersonal and better as methods of communication or disseminating information than for having truly meaningful interactions that replicate rich physical coexistences.

Rory Nugent

“What creates presence?”

I doubt there’s any convincing, worthwhile subsititute for real physical human presence. Humans need each other for safety, for sharing resources, for comfort, and for sex. So we’re wired and finely tuned– psychologically, and physically– to seek and recognize the presence of other humans, and to respond to that presence. We hear, see, smell, touch, and (occasionally) taste each other. Group cohesiveness, sociability, and collective action has allowed us as a species to thrive, to take over the planet. Our biology, our instincts, will not be tricked into believing presence when the sensations (particularly the tactile, olfactory sensations) are faked. This is why video conferencing– a literal representation of presence– is so unappealing.

We shouldn’t try for authenticity or believable physical intimacy in our telepresent-selves. Telepresence should acknowledge and emphasize distance, not seek to fully mask or close it. Wandering and exploring are essential human activities. But they’re balanced by our capacity for memory and imagination (which bring us, however unreliably, back and forth through time and space) and the longing we feel when we’re away from people and places we love. Isolation over any distance is seriously unhealthy for us as individuals, and for our species. We shouldn’t be lulled into accepting high-tech substitutes for real human contact, substitutes that would encourage us to drift further and further away from each other, whether the space in which we’re losing ourselves is physical or technological or interior. Telepresence should leave the user with a twinge of alienation, a sense of absence coupled desire. It should not be satisfying.

Telepresence should be an novel form of interaction, metaphorical rather than literal. It should be expressive and uniquely compelling. It should use elements of the familiar, of remembered moments and personal signifiers, combined with fiction and unreality. “Telepresent” events should feel like visitations. Rather being piped into a classroom/conference room/bedroom to offer a flat, reassuring smile from a high-def TV screen, wouldn’t you prefer to appear holographically as a flock of iridescent sparrows, or to project your voice via the sound and smell of a thunderstorm, or to hover in mid-air as a glowing skull wrapped veil of pink flames? We can create our presence, and telepresence should allow us express a full range of “presences,” not just our warmest and fuzziest.

We are curious beings that need and want confirmation of our existence and presence. We like to explore, yet we want to stay at home. We yearn for freedom, difference and change, yet we find comfort in familiarity. I believe it’s this dilemma that telepresence aims to solve.

The presence stack:
Physical sensory input of a moment,
channeled through nerve paths to the brain,
processed and compared to a set of memories of the sensation,
judgments constructed on the presence of the sensation or the realness of the input,
and predictions constructed of the next sensation.

Is what I, smell, feel, hear, or taste, real? is it out of the ordinary? What is real and not real? Is this moment not the moment I expected to follow the last moment?

Presence deals with and persists in change. Our presence cannot be static. Presence cannot remain in the past or exist in the future. We can only continuously observe and predict changes within our current moment based on our past experiences.

Being present is a combination of sensations that confirm our prediction of where we are spatially and mentally. If I were to sense or experience a moment that is out of the ordinary and a magnitude beyond what I expect, I would question the reality of my environment in that moment. In other words, if my prediction of the near future is shattered by an extraordinary experience outside my threshold of reality, my presence comes into question. For example, if I were to approach my sink and turn on my faucet and nothing comes out, something unexpected has happened, but I’ve had similar experiences in the past, so I can imagine what had gone wrong and find a solution. On the other hand, if I go to turn on the faucet and butterflies fly out, the presence of the faucet in my reality or my presence in this reality would be questioned. Is that real? Is this real? Could this be happening now? Am I dreaming?

We are often willing to accept the presence of other people with only a fraction or glimpse of their entire presence. I often mistake a mannequin in my peripheral vision as a real person, only to be surprised when a closer look reveals its lifelessness. I can also fool myself into believe I’m somewhere else no matter how hard I try to resist when I listen to binaural recordings of a previous space and time. We are willing to complete the picture for ourselves because we try to match previous experiences to our current experience to predicting how our environment should be. Could implied presence by a mannequin persist over a long period of time? Can audio input be so convincing that we question our mismatched vision?

In each confirmation of another’s presence, i think we are looking for life. Is the other alive? The classic horror movie scenario of walking down a hall of medieval armor statues questions how we determine the presence of another being. Is someone wearing the armor and standing very still, or is it empty and lifeless? The presence of a ghost or prankster is only confirmed when something moves. Or is that enough? If their axe drops to the ground, would we assume someone deliberately dropped the axe, or did the shifting of my weight on the creaking floors cause the accident? Would a glimpse of a pair of eyes confirm our suspicions of someone’s presence? Would the sound or smell of someone’s breath convince us? Whether it is a single clue or a combination of movement, sight and sound, we are looking for a confirmation of life.

If I follow my brother into a dark basement, i would continually feel his presence no matter how dark or silent the room may be. Even if he didn’t respond to me calling his name, i would still expect him to be there when i turn the lights on. Perhaps he’s ignoring me or playing a game with me. It would be a hard stretch in our imagination and a break in our reality if we turned the lights on and he was nowhere to be found. Perhaps I would even search for him in the basement behind the shelves and behind the boxes. Without some indication of him exiting the basement like the sound of the door closing or the sound of his footsteps, his presence is automatically completed by a single instance of his existence before we entered the basement. Our imagination wants to complete our senses to detect his presence.

We want presence and will stretch our imagination to detect presence.

Talking Face to Face is a networked communication system that detects the position of two users in relation to each other anywhere on the globe. Using a combination of GPS and a compass, the audio output is modified to create the sensation of the voice’s position and proximity to the listener. If Bob is in NYC and Sarah is in LA, their voices would sound relatively distant to each other. Bob would face west and Sarah would face east so their voices would sound as if they were facing each other. If Bob turns away , Sarah’s voice would sound like they were no longer facing each other. As Bob and Sarah turn their positions the voice they hear will gain reverb, volume, and other effects to simulate their relative presence in a spacial environment.

Che-Wei Wang

People assume that I would feel lonely because I am not with my family or I am not at home. So, I thought I am lonely. But what is loneliness? I have realized that not being with my family doesn’t really make me feel lonely. I think the emotions are too relative to define like that.

Same thing with present, it is a very relative concept. How are you going to decide when the present is? now? no. right now? no…it’s already passed. Some people might say today, this week, 2008, or 21c. You might find the peaceful space if you ignore the things happening around you which were probably related to your relationships(not only romantic relationships but also family or friends or maybe your thoughts). But how long are you going to stay in that so called “peaceful space”? For me, ‘Focus on your presence! Enjoy your life right now!” is something that I would say to my miserable friend when I don’t have any brilliant solutions for her/him. What Buddhism has for people is ‘finding the peace inside you’, not ‘forget about past or future’. So, smart people have made the way of finding inner peace turns into very easy things to do, which is ‘PRESENT’.

Why people make the distance from something that they feel comfortable? Why do people leave somewhere they are going to miss? I think it’s all about the dream or maybe hope. Most humans have their dreams and priorities of the things that they have to do for their lives. And those things might make them lonely, bored, frustrated and exhausted but they think those are worth. What people like us have to do is making somethings which reduce stress and loneliness for those people who are trying hard for their dreams even though that is working for short period of time. It’s like the hand-writing letter. When you get those letters from your loved ones although the letter itself doesn’t really have the important messages in it, you can feel their love from the paper. The time they spent..the thoughts they put into it…

I would like to make some kind of lightings which my friends or family can turn on in Korea. When they push the button for a few seconds, the lamp which is in NY will be lit up. I think it would be much more lovely to see than the emails. Who knows..it might be on all the time.

Jain Koo

Do you have your loved one away? Are you bored of his business trips? Are you most often sleeping alone in your king size bed?

PillowSolus is your companion in your bed, giving you the real time presence of your partner right next to you! The pillow, which your loved one uses when he/she is away, transmits the owners head position to the pillow next to you, which shapes itself as if your partner is sleeping right next to you! You will see his/her sleeping, waking up, turns in the bed, stress, and maybe even sweat! (Simply, one pillow is transmitting the position of the head, and the other is taking the shape as if it has the head in the same position)

Sinan

Presence

Most media are used to transcend time and distance. Wheels allowed you to reach people over a greater distance, paper allows you to reach across time to people. Computers allow you do both.

Why do you want to do that? Being away from home makes you lonely. Concentrating on outside the present makes you distracted. Why do people want to do this?

The idea in this telepresence class is transcend distance but live within the constraints of time.

What creates presence?

Is immersion necessary for telepresence.

Is live television, or live to tape, more interesting.  Is instant messaging more interesting than email.

Will you be more uninhibited if there is no record in time.

Keho Journal of Presence

Power of Now

Meme Machine

Is less more? Are you more “there” in a telephone conversation or a video conference?

I would like to build a pair of sensors, one placed at the threshold to the kitchen in my home, one at the threshold of the kitchen in my mother’s home. Crossing the threshold in one place would cause the sound of footsteps to sound in the other place.

Ideally I would use vibration sensors on the floor and then a motor to recreate the footsteps.   For an initial prototype I will use an ir sensor and a vibrating motor for the footsteps.  This should stand alone but for now I will send the signal via bluetooth to my desktop computer.

Continuous Partial Attention

Examples

Networked Objects