January 16, 2008

CFP: Virtual Pets Symposium

by Andrew Stern · , 10:20 am

The AISB conference is holding their second virtual pets symposium, building upon the first one from last April.

The Reign of Catz & Dogz symposium aims to explore aspects of interaction with anthropomorphised embodied devices such as Aibo, Pleo, Paro and Nabaztag, software such as Catz, Dogz and Nintendogs, as well as the numerous non-commercial devices and systems that have been developed in many research labs. The world-wide popularity of many of the commercial examples of such artefacts provides evidence of the widespread appeal of interacting with artificial representations of creatures – however the academic investigation of such interactions remains scarce.

All papers accepted by the symposium will be considered for a special section on the role of virtual creatures in society in the journal Interaction Studies scheduled to appear late 2008 or early in 2009.

(Speaking of which, Pleo was released this past holiday season, but I haven’t heard much buzz about it. Does anyone have one?)

3 Responses to “CFP: Virtual Pets Symposium”


  1. Grand Text Auto » Choose-Your-Own Dogma Says:

    […] manifesto pertaining to interactive narrative and drama systems. Most people in this area think of Dogz when they hear “dogmatic,” but there’s also the obedience to doctrine that the […]

  2. andrew Says:

    The NYTimes technology columnist David Pogue isn’t too impressed by the Pleo.

  3. Robert Oschler Says:

    “The NYTimes technology columnist David Pogue isn’t too impressed by the Pleo.”

    Yet Diane Sawyer of Good Morning America loved it and so are a host of other folk too:

    http://pleoworld.com/news

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