Positive Technology Journal

Call for Papers

PRESENCE 2005 8th Annual International Workshop on Presence

London, England September 21-23, 2005

Submission deadline: June 6, 2005

Full details on the web at http://ispr.info

OVERVIEW

Academics and practitioners with an interest in the concept of (tele)presence are invited to submit their work for presentation at PRESENCE 2005 at University College London in London, England, September 21-23, 2005.

The eighth in a series of highly successful international workshops, PRESENCE 2005 will provide an open discussion forum to share ideas regarding concepts and theories, measurement techniques, technology, and applications related to presence, the psychological state or subjective perception in which a person fails to accurately and completely acknowledge the role of technology in an experience, including the sense of 'being there' experienced by users of advanced media such as virtual reality.

The concept of presence in virtual environments has been around for at least 15 years, and the earlier idea of telepresence at least since Minsky's seminal paper in 1980. Recently there has been a burst of funded research activity in this area for the first time with the European FET Presence Research initiative. What do we really know about presence and its determinants? How can presence be successfully delivered with today's technology?
This conference invites papers that are based on empirical results from studies of presence and related issues and/or which contribute to the technology for the delivery of presence. Papers that make substantial advances in theoretical understanding of presence are also welcome. The interest is not solely in virtual environments but in mixed reality environments. Submissions will be reviewed more rigorously than in previous conferences. High quality papers are therefore sought which make substantial contributions to the field.

Approximately 20 papers will be selected for two successive special issues for the journal Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments.

PRESENCE 2005 takes place in London and is hosted by University College London. The conference is organized by ISPR, the International Society for Presence Research and is supported by the European Commission's FET Presence Research Initiative through the Presencia and IST OMNIPRES projects and by University College London.

TOPICS

Submissions of papers, demonstrations, and panels that represent completed or ongoing work are encouraged in areas including but not limited to:

* Explications of the presence concept

* Presence evaluation/measurement methodologies

* Causes and consequences (effects) of presence

* Presence in shared virtual environments and online communities

* Social/affective interfaces, virtual agents, parasocial interactions

* Presence-associated technologies:
- Immersive, interactive, multimodal displays
- Advanced broadcast and cinematic displays (stereoscopic TV, HDTV, IMAX)
- Virtual environments/simulators
- 3-D sound
- Haptic/tactile displays

* Presence applications:
- Education and training
- Medicine and therapy
- Entertainment
- Communication and collaboration
- Teleoperation
- Presence and design
- Presence in art

* Presence and philosophical issues (e.g., the nature of 'reality')

* The ethics of presence

* Presence in the future: Media experiences in the 21st century and beyond

CONFERENCE FORMAT

Like the earlier workshops, PRESENCE 2005 will have an interactive format in which all participants (attendees, presenters, invited speakers) attend each of the sessions as well as several social events, allowing participants to exchange ideas and build knowledge together as the conference progresses.

The conference will feature keynote presentations by three prominent presence scholars:

Paul Verschure (Institute of Neuroinformatics, University/ETH Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland)

Woody Barfield (Human Interface Technology Lab, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA)

Carolina Cruz-Neira (Virtual Reality Applications Center, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, USA)

VENUE

The Workshop will be hosted by University College London
(UCL) in the Bloomsbury area in the heart of the great city of London.

For more information about London visit the official website for London (http://www.visitlondon.com/); for more information about UCL, visit the UCL web site (http://www.ucl.ac.uk).

SUBMISSIONS

We invite researchers and practitioners to submit work in the following categories:

Full papers: Comprehensive descriptions of original research or design work within the scope of the workshop. Full papers are limited to 12 pages in the PRESENCE 2005 template format (see submission page at http://ispr.info) and will be considered for oral presentation (unless the submitter requests consideration only for poster presentation).

Short papers: Brief presentation of tentative or preliminary results of research or design work within the scope of the workshop. Short papers are limited to 4 pages in the PRESENCE 2005 template format and will be considered for both oral presentation and poster presentation.

Posters: Visual display presentation. Submissions are limited to 4 A4 pages which contain miniature versions of the larger pages that would be displayed at the conference.

Demonstrations/exhibitions: Step-by-step audiovisual demonstrations and/or hands-on experiences of (commercial or academic) work within the scope of the workshop. Proposals for demonstrations/exhibitions are limited to 2 pages in the PRESENCE 2005 template format.

Panels: Sets of presentations on a single theme or topic within the scope of the workshop. Submitters are encouraged to be creative regarding both the topic and format of panel proposals, which are limited to 4 pages in the PRESENCE 2005 template format.

All submitted papers will be blind peer-reviewed by at least two selected reviewers. Work accepted for presentation will be included in the official conference proceedings and may be posted on the ISPR, presence-connect, and presence- research.org web sites prior to the conference. Authors of as many as 20 of the presented papers will be invited to revise their paper for publication in one of two special conference issues (August and October 2006) of the MIT Press journal Presence:
Teleoperators and Virtual Environments.

Please submit your work online at the submission page of the conference web site at http://ispr.info by the conference deadline of June 6, 2005.