PRESENCE RESEARCH

Presence Research is not a formal academic discipline, but it is a field of study in the sense that presence researchers know how to find each other; it is subject of magazines, conferences, research grants, publications and it has been an official research programme of the European Commission since 1998. Presence research is an interdisciplinary field that takes insights from physics, mathematics, biology, neurology, artificial intelligence, psychology, cybernetics, anthropology and also art. It is used by some researchers as an inspiration. Research into presence takes place in the military and entertainment industries, in the computer, telecom and network industries and in the arts. Every one of these domains has its own jargon, its own taxonomies. They have different reasons for doing the research, different targets to achieve, and also different funding structures. Nevertheless, results from the different fields are also meaningful and sometimes even shared with other fields.