TeleAbsence: A Vision of Past and Afterlife Telepresence
Name
TeleAbsence_pres_a_00441.pdf
Size
2.13 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
d928d2a10beba69aa3311b648d387617
Author(s)
Ishii, Hiroshi
Pillis, Daniel
Pataranutaporn, Pat
Xiao, Xiao
Noh, Hayoun
Li, Lucy
Algargoosh, Alaa
Labrune, Jean-Baptiste
Date Issued
2025
Publisher
MIT Press
Citation
Ishii, Hiroshi, Pillis, Daniel, Pataranutaporn, Pat, Xiao, Xiao, Noh, Hayoun et al. 2025. "TeleAbsence: A Vision of Past and Afterlife Telepresence." 34.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
This paper presents our vision of TeleAbsence, extending the concept of telepresence to the past and the afterlife to address the vast emotional and temporal distance caused by the memory of loved ones who drifted apart and faded away. Instead of explicit and literal representations of loved ones, TeleAbsence describes poetic encounters with digital and physical traces left by the absence of others. TeleAbsence fosters illusory communications to conjure the feeling of being there with those no longer with us without using synthetic or generative representations and utterances. Our vision is deeply inspired by the Portuguese concept “Saudade”—the “desire for the beloved thing, people, place, and moment, made painful by its absence.” We present our vision through five design principles: presence of absence, illusory communication, the materiality of memory, traces of reflection, and remote time, grounded in historical and cultural contexts. We present exploratory narratives to illustrate these principles and the concept of ambient co-presence using poetry, phone, piano, and pen as mediums. We discuss challenges and opportunities for future work, including representational strategies to depict lost loved ones, ethical issues, and the possible extension of TeleAbsence to historical public figures.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Media Laboratory
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1162/pres_a_00441
