A Place for Presence. Understanding the Human Involvement in Mediated Interactive Environments

The focus of this paper is the connection between presence and place and the strong belief that it can illuminate unexplored aspects of the human experience in virtual and mixed environments. Action is identified as the crucial catalyst for that connection, organizing the material and symbolic resources that constitute a place and setting the terms of the agent’s presence. Based on recent contributions from ethnography, cultural psychology and human geography, the perspective of a Presence-in-Place offers many advantages, including the adoption of several investigative methodologies beyond self-reports, the connections with the larger normative and cultural order and a unified approach to any hybrid environment, whether it be Virtual, Real or Mixed.