Inventing by mixing physical, virtual, and imagined realities

About Inventing by mixing physical, virtual, and imagined realities

Every person exists in three types of reality. First, people live in a physical reality where things follow the common laws of physics. Second, people have their individual imagined realities where things act as wishes. Third, using computer technologies, people can create virtual realities in which the existence and behavior of people’s representations and objects are programmed and can follow arbitrary rules defined entirely by people and not by the boundaries of physics. These three realities are highly correlated but not necessarily the same. By exploring the mismatch between these three realities, we see new concepts, interactions, and devices emerging, interfacing and extending these three instantiations of reality towards one ultimate reality—the one that brings creation, abstraction, and embodiment altogether.

About the Speaker

Dr. Lung-Pan Cheng is an Associate Professor in the Computer Science and Information Engineering Department at National Taiwan University. His research focuses on building interfaces between realities where computer systems, including sensors and actuators, are programmed to guide users to a plausible mixture. Dr. Cheng and his lab’s research has published several papers in top-tier Computer Science conferences (ACM CHI, UIST). Dr. Cheng has consecutively served as the associate chair and reviewer in these top-tier conferences. He received his Ph.D. from Hasso Plattner Institue, advised by Prof. Dr. Patrick Baudisch.