Call for Proposals “XR Gallery”

IEEE VR 2025: The 32^nd IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces
March 8-12, 2025 | Saint-Malo, France

Edges of Reality: Questioning the Truthfulness of our Digital Realities

Important Dates - ALL DEADLINES ARE ANYWHERE ON EARTH (AOE)

October 31, 2024: Submission of abstracts.
November 28, 2024: Notification of acceptance.
January 22, 2025: Camera-ready version.

Overview

The desire to replicate reality has been a long-lasting human endeavor. Images of the earliest cave drawings communicated about the important aspects of life at the beginning of human civilization. Paintings and sculptures aspired to capture the natural proportions and beauty of human form as well as spirit, while cinema made the static images move and accompany them with sound. In the late 20th century, the unprecedented speed in digital developments enabled the creation of three-dimensional worlds, which did not only surround the user, but also respond to their actions.

Today, we are witnessing a rapid rise of artificial intelligence, conversational agents, and creative machines, the way reality is perceived is going through an unprecedented transformation. While offering immense creative possibilities, those tools also pose significant challenges by blurring the lines between fact and fiction, truth and fabrication. This digital storm is reshaping our relationship to facts and history, confronting our definition of reality, plausibility and realism.

TOPICS and SCOPE

As part IEEE VR 2025, we are delighted to invite you to the first edition of the ‘XR Gallery’ fostering bridges between people from the XR and Art communities through this art exhibition, titled "Edges of Reality: Questioning the Truthfulness of our Digital Realities". We aim to provoke creative thought and discussion between artists and researchers around the question of authenticity and truthfulness of digital experiences. By bridging the gap between the XR research community and the art world, we hope to inspire innovative perspectives and foster a deeper understanding of the complex relationship between technology and reality. Some of the potential questions which can be explored in this respect are:

How do scientific and technological advances confront and alter our common senses, changing our own perception of reality and of what is possible to imagine
Does my behavior change in a plausible simulated environment?
Can a software that behaves indistinguishably from a human be considered truly real?
What distinguishes our actual self from a simulated self constructed from our digital traces?
What would be the implication of a faithful simulation of an ancestor based solely on their private diaries or literary correspondence?
...

The exhibition will primarily focus on interactive XR art installations, while also welcoming non-XR art installations, such as performances or any other digital media questioning the nature of reality in our increasingly digital world.

Accepted submission will be showcased at the dedicated space for the XR Gallery during the entire duration of the IEEEVR conference, excluding the days of workshops (March 8-12 2025, Saint-Malo, France). Discussions are underway to arrange a public exhibition in the days following the conference.

Eligibility

The call is open to anyone interested in creating artistic content: artists, researchers, designers, etc.

The proposed artistic work may be new or already existing.

We will have an important inclusion criterion, and we particularly want to include the achievements of minorities. If you think you do fit within such criterions and face issues which prevent you from applying, please do not hesitate to contact us (see contact email).

Submission

In order to apply, submit the following information directly to the PCS system: (https://new.precisionconference.com/vr). The abstract should include:

Anonymised abstract (1000 words) with the following required information:
- Description of the art piece
- How it fits into the scope of XR Gallery 2025
- Implementation (how it will be executed, e.g., HMD or screen-based project, performance, etc)
Representative image
Anonymised video (max 5 min, max size 150MB)
The equipment and technical information required

Any supplementary material (press kit, portfolio, ..) which shows your previous work is also welcomed but not required! Anonymising the material is not necessary here.

Selection Process

Each submission will be examined by a panel of external assessor from the digital arts fields and XR research communities, on the basis of the following criteria:

Originality
How well it fits in the scope of the XR Gallery
Representative video and image
The equipment and technical information required for its realization: (including light, sound, network needs)

Accepted Submissions

The art installation will be showcased at the dedicated space for the XR Gallery during the entire duration of the conference, excluding the days of workshops (March 8-12 2025, Saint-Malo, France). The authors of the accepted submissions will receive support for their accommodation and monetary compensation: one free full conference registration and €500 (on invoice, this amount includes a contribution towards accommodation and representation costs).

Abstracts and supplementary material due: October 31, 2024

The abstract paper and optional supplementary material are to be submitted via the online submission system: https://new.precisionconference.com/vr

Authors who are unfamiliar with the formalism expected by our community will be able to draw inspiration from the essays edited in the Siggraph 2023 Art Gallery proceeding (https://dl.acm.org/doi/proceedings/10.1145/3588428).

Camera-ready version due: January 22, 2025

All accepted submissions must be prepared in the IEEE Computer Society VGTC format (https://tc.computer.org/vgtc/publications/conference/) and submitted as a 1-2 page PDF. We highly encourage authors to use the LaTeX template (https://github.com/ieeevgtc/vgtc_conference_latex/releases).

Authors unfamiliar with the Latex software can use theirs software of your choice (Ideally word, template here: https://github.com/ieeevgtc/vgtc_conference_word/releases/tag/2024.02.14) as long as it respects the VGTC format (https://ieeecs-media.computer.org/tc-media/sites/49/2024/02/26230749/vgtc-conference-24-02.pdf) and submitted as a PDF.

These papers will be included in the IEEE Xplore as part of the VRW proceedings (XR Gallery track).