Social Telepresence

What are new forms of social interaction over distance? During the 2020 pandemic lockdown, most of the world experienced social distancing. Under these circumstances, digital social presence in any form has become more important than ever, as social interaction is crucial for us humans. The Ars Electronica Futurelab and its partners research new ways to enrich one-to-one conversation, meetings of small groups and big gatherings over a distance:

Tele-mobility

Peter Holzkorn (AT)

What parts of physical presence could telepresence replace in the future, and what new abilities could it add? What incentives will it need for its benefits to outweigh the perks of physical travel, and in which cases? In the Ars Electronica Futurelab, we want to foster discussion about this, and create prototypes with promising technologies.

Collective physical experiences at remote locations

Kyoko Kunoh (JP/AT)

What telecommunication technology promotes sharing our social presence? With the aim to promote multi-modal telecommunication research in the future, this research carries out a series of the experiments at Ars Electronica Center to come up with various dimensions of the topic in the field featuring telepresence applications and interfaces.