Dene Grigar, Frode Hegland, and Fabien Bénétou on Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Project: Authorship in XR
This presentation introduced a two-year Sloan Foundation-funded project focusing on authorship and text manipulation in extended reality environments.
The team demonstrated working prototypes on Apple Vision Pro showing notes floating in space with connecting lines, emphasizing that basic XR functionality for reading and writing plain text is already solved, and relatively straightforward to implement using native development tools, in addition to to the main WebXR system developed. The project aims to go beyond simple text display to explore more complex authorship capabilities, with the team highlighting that their goal is to encourage others to build similar tools since the technical barriers are lower than many assume. The demonstration showed real-world implementations filmed in a living room setting, illustrating both the current capabilities and limitations of XR authoring tools.
To experience this work in VR, please visit The Future Text Lab.
Dene Grigar on Making Physical Artifacts from Virtual Museums Accessible
Grigar discussed the preservation and accessibility challenges of digital literature and electronic literature works that exist in virtual museum environments.
She emphasized the importance of documentation and creating physical artifacts or records from virtual collections to ensure long-term preservation and accessibility. The presentation addressed methodologies for capturing, documenting, and making these ephemeral digital works available to researchers and the public, drawing on her extensive experience with the Electronic Literature Organization and digital preservation work. The discussion touched on the evolution of preservation methodologies over time and the need to adapt approaches as technology and understanding develop.
Mark Anderson on the Difference Between Exploring and Creation of Knowledge in XR
Anderson explored the conceptual and practical distinctions between knowledge exploration and knowledge creation within extended reality environments.
He examined how XR spaces can facilitate different cognitive modes, contrasting the passive or receptive experience of exploring existing knowledge structures with the active, generative process of creating new knowledge connections and artifacts. The presentation likely addressed how spatial interfaces and immersive environments change the relationship between users and information, enabling new forms of intellectual work that blur traditional boundaries between consumption and production of knowledge.
Alexandra Martin on 1P1 Collection
Martin presented on the 1P1 (One Person One) collection database project, which documents digital literature and XR experiences with a comprehensive taxonomical approach.
The database currently contains approximately 80 documentations with goals to reach 250 before going online and 500 before implementing additional technologies like AI-based classification. The project involves a collaborative team of ten people who actively debate taxonomical distinctions, working in both French and English to create resources for academic research, art education, and public engagement. Martin emphasized the importance of establishing baseline vocabularies even amid disagreement, noting that the taxonomy includes considerations for various interaction modalities including full body and partial body engagement, though navigational interactions were identified as an area for future development.