Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVE) with co-located or remote video communication functionality require a continuous experience of social presence. If, at any stage during the experience the communication interrupts presence, then the CVE experience as a whole is affected - spatial presence is then decoupled from social presence. We present a solution to this problem by introducing the concept of a virtualized version of Google Glass™ called Virtual Glass. Virtual Glass is integrated into the CVE as a real-world metaphor for a communication device, one particularly suited for collaborative instructor-performer systems. In a study with 65 participants we demonstrated that the concept of Virtual Glass is effective, that it supports a high level of social presence and that the social presence is rated higher than a standard picture-in-picture videoconferencing approach for certain tasks.

The field of evolutionary art is generally concerned with evolving patterns that have little constraint. This paper describes an evolutionary art system that is constrained to form flag designs, following a set of common design patterns. The resulting genotype representation, genetic operators and forms of user interaction are chosen to allow an exploration of ldquoflag spacerdquo, as well as allowing the user to rapidly focus on aspects of specific designs. The utility of the approach is demonstrated by evolving flag designs using image similarity and by user-directed evolution.