Presence production

Abstract: This investigation has been carried out at the RoyalInstitute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm. The main goal hasbeen to investigate the factors determining the production of asense of presence and reality in video mediated communication.Presenceis in these studies defines as the subjectiveexperience of being together in one place when one isphysically situated in another. Presence is an emergentproperty; it has no physicality, but arises as a mentalsensation. Special attention has been paid to spatial factors,embodiment issues, and narrative elements related to theproduction of presence.A context map has been used in order to model the semanticsof presence production and to visualize the relationshipsbetween the determining factors. The conclusions may besummarized as follows:    Knowledge about physical and extended spaces and bodiesand of the shifting of attention between these is importantin presence production.    Well planned design of physical and virtual spacesenhances the sense of presence.    Coherent design and production of mediated embodiment canenhance the sense of presence.    Conscious use of content characteristics, e.g., goodstorytelling, can enhance the sense of presence.    Different communication modes need the support ofdifferent combinations of presence production factors.    Even technically poorly mediated communication maysupport a sense of presence and reality if the storytellingis good.    The human sensory environment should be supported by asense of non-mediation, technological transparency, on theplane of discourse.    The results indicate that individual differencesinfluence the sense of presence and reality.The perception of video mediated communication evolves aspeople become daily users. People seem to intuitively begin tointerpret new types of mediated cues, adding what is missing incomparison to a real time physical communicationexperience.Keywords:Telepresence, presence, social presence,co-presence, concept modeling, virtual reality, person space,task space, narration, video mediated communication, videoconferencing.