The World as an Interface: Exploring the Ethical Challenges of the Emerging Metaverse

Mixed reality is emerging as the next phase of personal computing. Once Apple Glass is released augmented and mixed reality will go mainstream and the impact on our behaviour will be as dramatic as when the iPhone was released. In parallel, what used to be 2D webpages are becoming 3D worlds, collectively forming a meta universe of virtual or mixed reality domains -the ‘Metaverse’. Mixed reality is precisely where the best affordances of the digital and analogue worlds should work together to create entirely new interactive learning, social and economic opportunities. In this paper we reflect on how the physical world will itself become an interface making reality even more machine-readable, click-able, and searchable. We further propose how society will need to ensure that the appropriate boundary management is in place to allow us as co-creators of the metaverse to protect our ethical rights of privacy, integrity, and autonomy

Transitioning from Transmedia to Transreality Storyboarding to Improve the Co-Creation of the Experience Space

Transmedia storytelling is a digital based marketing approach in present day consumer markets. Typically applied to spanning or segueing stories or experiences across media such as film, books, comics and video-games to reach broader target audiences, often triggering a narrative, into which customers can participate and co-create the narrative. Common aims at customer engagement have been through shared stories on present day social media. However, for the creative-consumer, sharing on social media falls short of fully immersive storytelling ecology. Creatives (traditional designers and consumers) would benefit through tools and processes for incrementally expanding dimensions, mediums, fidelity, and shared interactions and senses across multiple media and interactive realities. This paper presents use cases of Transreality Storyboarding Framework (TSF), a design framework that affords creation of experience spaces for consumer-product engagement. Further, we propose a TSF app, to allow non-expert designers/everyday-consumers to contribute to storytelling, participation and production of product experience spaces

Augmented Unreality: Synesthetic Artworks & Audio-Visual Hallucinations

During ‘altered states of consciousness’ (ASCs), such as those produced by psychedelic drugs, an individual may experience substantial changes to mood, thoughts and perception, and have subjective experiences of visual or auditory hallucinations. In Hobson’s (2003, 44–46) discussion of his AIM (Activation, Input, Modulation) model of consciousness he distinguishes the imagery of dreams and hallucinations as ‘internal’ sensory inputs, in contrast with the ‘external’ inputs that are received via the senses from the surrounding environment during normal waking consciousness. For the purposes of this chapter, external inputs correspond with physical ‘reality,’ while the internal inputs generated by the brain during dreams or hallucinations shall be considered as ‘unreality.’ Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Pres

EVA London 2022: Electronic Visualisation and the Arts

The Electronic Visualisation and the Arts London 2022 Conference (EVA London 2022) is co-sponsored by the Computer Arts Society (CAS) and BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, of which the CAS is a Specialist Group. Of course, this has been a difficult time for all conferences, with the Covid-19 pandemic. For the first time since 2019, the EVA London 2022 Conference is a physical conference. It is also an online conference, as it was in the previous two years. We continue with publishing the proceedings, both online, with open access via ScienceOpen, and also in our traditional printed form, for the second year in full colour. Over recent decades, the EVA London Conference on Electronic Visualisation and the Arts has established itself as one of the United Kingdom’s most innovative and interdisciplinary conferences. It brings together a wide range of research domains to celebrate a diverse set of interests, with a specialised focus on visualisation. The long and short papers in this volume cover varied topics concerning the arts, visualisations, and IT, including 3D graphics, animation, artificial intelligence, creativity, culture, design, digital art, ethics, heritage, literature, museums, music, philosophy, politics, publishing, social media, and virtual reality, as well as other related interdisciplinary areas. The EVA London 2022 proceedings presents a wide spectrum of papers, demonstrations, Research Workshop contributions, other workshops, and for the seventh year, the EVA London Symposium, in the form of an opening morning session, with three invited contributors. The conference includes a number of other associated evening events including ones organised by the Computer Arts Society, Art in Flux, and EVA International. As in previous years, there are Research Workshop contributions in this volume, aimed at encouraging participation by postgraduate students and early-career artists, accepted either through the peer-review process or directly by the Research Workshop chair. The Research Workshop contributors are offered bursaries to aid participation. In particular, EVA London liaises with Art in Flux, a London-based group of digital artists. The EVA London 2022 proceedings includes long papers and short “poster” papers from international researchers inside and outside academia, from graduate artists, PhD students, industry professionals, established scholars, and senior researchers, who value EVA London for its interdisciplinary community. The conference also features keynote talks. A special feature this year is support for Ukrainian culture after its invasion earlier in the year. This publication has resulted from a selective peer review process, fitting as many excellent submissions as possible into the proceedings. This year, submission numbers were lower than previous years, mostly likely due to the pandemic and a new requirement to submit drafts of long papers for review as well as abstracts. It is still pleasing to have so many good proposals from which to select the papers that have been included. EVA London is part of a larger network of EVA international conferences. EVA events have been held in Athens, Beijing, Berlin, Brussels, California, Cambridge (both UK and USA), Canberra, Copenhagen, Dallas, Delhi, Edinburgh, Florence, Gifu (Japan), Glasgow, Harvard, Jerusalem, Kiev, Laval, London, Madrid, Montreal, Moscow, New York, Paris, Prague, St Petersburg, Thessaloniki, and Warsaw. Further venues for EVA conferences are very much encouraged by the EVA community. As noted earlier, this volume is a record of accepted submissions to EVA London 2022. Associated online presentations are in general recorded and made available online after the conference

Proceedings of EVA London 2024

The Electronic Visualisation and the Arts London 2024 Conference (EVA London 2024) is co-sponsored by the Computer Arts Society (CAS) and BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, of which the CAS is a Specialist Group. As for 2022, the EVA London 2023 Conference is a physical and online “hybrid” conference. We continue with publishing the proceedings, both online, with open access via ScienceOpen, and also in our traditional printed form, in full colour. The main conference presentations run during 10–13 July 2023, with workshops and other activities, especially for students, on 14 July 2023