Immersive Technologies Seminar Series: Expanding Social Realities through Abstract Embodiment

Over the course of his PhD, John Desnoyers-Stewart has taken a multifaceted approach to investigate the potential for emerging technologies such as virtual and mixed reality to expand social realities. As a SSHRC Doctoral Fellow, his approach to research-creation centres around the creation and public exhibition of immersive installations and performances that push the boundaries of what is possible. Over the past five years he has created installations and performances that encourage performance, connect people through breathing, and allow strangers to meet one another as galaxies. These immersive experiences have been exhibited at over 25 venues ranging from the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre in Vancouver to several VR Festivals in Europe. Join him as he takes you on a journey into expanding reality through his transdisciplinary research and creation practice.

This talk is free and open to all, registration is not required.

The Immersive Technologies Seminar Series is a collaboration between CITech and the Media Studies program, and is organized by NSERC CREATE in Immersive Technologies (CITech), a highly multidisciplinary graduate training program at UBC focusing on skills development and collaborative research to design immersive solutions for various real-world applications. Find out more about CITech.

About the Artist

John Desnoyers-Stewart is an interdisciplinary artist-researcher pursuing his PhD in Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC, Canada. He is a professional engineer with a Master of Fine Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies who seeks opportunities to bring knowledge from diverse disciplines together to promote creativity and innovation. His current focus is developing immersive installations to encourage new perspectives on immersive technology and to better understand its true potential and study its effects. He has exhibited his multi-user mixed reality installations, Star-Stuff, Eve 3.0, Body RemiXer, and many more at art galleries and festivals in Vancouver, Canada and around the world. Through these installations he hopes to encourage social connection and collaborative creativity, exploring positive social applications of virtual reality and better understanding the experience of embodying abstract bodies.