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 the web address provided below.

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

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 the web address provided below by the conference deadline of June 6, 2005.

REGISTRATION

Registration costs before or on July 31 are 200 GBP for individuals with an academic, governmental, or non-profit affiliation; 300 GBP for individuals with a corporate affiliation; and 100 GBP for doctoral students. (For costs in other currencies, visit http://www.x-rates.com). All registration fees will include admission to all Workshop sessions, conference materials, refreshments during breaks, lunches and conference dinner/reception.

Registration opens May 15, 2005. Please visit the registration page of the conference web site (web address follows) for for the registration and payment forms and procedures.

CONFERENCE COMMITTEE

Conference chair

Mel Slater (University College London)

Program Committee

Mariano Alcaniz (Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Spain)

Carlo Alberto Avizzano (Scuola Superiore S. Anna, Italy)

Jeremy N. Bailenson (Stanford University, USA)

Rosa Baños (University of Valencia, Spain)

Woody Barfield (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA)

Edwin Blake (University of Cape Town, South Africa)

Cristina Botella Arbona (Universitat Jaume I, Spain)

Doug Bowman (Virginia Tech, USA)

Martin Buss (Technische Universitaet Muenchen, Germany)

Cheryl Campanella Bracken (Cleveland State University, USA)

Alan Chalmers (University of Bristol, UK)

Jonathan Freeman (Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK)

Doron Friedman (University College London, UK) (Exhibitions/demonstrations co-chair)

Luciano Gamberini (University of Padua, Italy)

Ilona Heldal (Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden)

Wijnand Ijsselsteijn (Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, Netherlands)

Roy Kalawsky (Loughborough University, UK)

Rita Lauria (North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, USA)

Jane Lessiter (Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK)

Matthew Lombard (Temple University, USA)

Celine Loscos (University College London, UK)

Katerina Mania (University of Sussex, UK)

Giorgio Metta (Università degli Studi di Genova, Italy)

Christa Neuper (University of Graz, Austria)

Miriam Reiner (Technion: Israel Institute of Technology, Israel)

Albert Skip Rizzo (University of Southern California, USA)

Daniela Romano (University of Sheffield, UK) (Posters chair)

Roy Ruddle (University of Leeds, UK)

Maria Victoria Sanchez-Vives (Instituto de Neurociencias de Alicante, Spain)

Ralph Schroeder (Oxford Internet Institute, UK) Thomas Schubert (University of Jena, Germany)

Mel Slater (University College London, UK)

Anna Spagnolli (University of Padua, Italy)

Anthony Steed (University College London, UK)

Walter van de Velde (European Commission, EU)

Vinoba Vinayagamoorthy (University College London, UK) (Demonstrations/exhibitions co-chair)

Suzanne J. Weghorst (University of Washington, USA)

Mary Whitton (University of North Carolina, USA)

CONTACT

For more information or assistance, please contact the Conference Chair, Mel Slater, at the e-mail address provided below, or help@ispr.