Denise Quesnel
Biography
Denise joined the iSpace team in Fall 2016 as a graduate student.
Denise studies profound emotional shifts, like awe and wonder, that can occur through interaction with immersive, multisensory artistic artefacts and technological experiences. She is a researcher of the immersive realities, specifically creation and design of virtual/augmented reality (VR/AR) content and interfaces.
After spending over a decade in the film and VFX industry, she founded an immersive R&D studio, worked in University research departments, and is now a PhD student with the iSpace Lab at SFU’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology. Her artistic and work experience feeds into her motivation around understanding how emotional shifts combined with technology can help facilitate compassion, understanding, interconnectivity for ourselves, one another, and our planet. As an active volunteer with service to the global community, Denise created the SIGGRAPH VR Village in 2015 to help create a venue for interdisciplinary immersive works in the scientific, entertainment, medical, and education fields. She is also involved in advocacy and policy-making in the health care and technological communities.
Projects
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Introduction
Over the past five years, we have seen awareness and creation of Virtual, Mixed, and Augmented Reality (VR/MR/AR or, the ‘immersive realit...
Do you get enough “awe” in your life? In our busy day-to-day lives, we often take our experiences for granted. While we have the technology to connect with one another, like smart phones, we don’t necessarily get outside with nature, or stargaze. Such activities may consist of common awe-inspiring moments, and we now understand that feeling awe is associated with all sorts of social and well...
How can we use immersive VR to give people pivotal positive experiences without having to send them out into space?
“We went to the Moon as technicians, we returned as humanitarians” reflected Edgar Mitchell after his space flight. This describes the overview effect – a profound awe-inspiring experience of seeing Earth from space resulting in a cognitive shift in worldview, le...
Sonic Cradle suspends the body is a completely dark chamber which encourages experiences comparable to mindfulness meditation. Users compose peaceful soundscapes in real-time using only their breathing.
[vimeo 35764652]
Introduction and demo of the Sonic Cradle
Sonic Cradle is a relaxing human-computer interaction paradigm designed to foster meditative attentional patterns. The current p...
Publications
http://ispace.iat.sfu.ca/wp-content/plugins/zotpress/
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Prpa, M., Quesnel, D., Vidyarthi, J., Kitson, A., & Riecke, B. E. (2016, May).
Sonic Cradle - Immersive interaction design combining breathing- and neurofeedback to foster focused attention meditation on breath [Poster]. 2nd International Conference on Mindfulness, Rome, Italy.
http://www.cmc-ia.org/icm2016rome/
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Quesnel, D. T., & Riecke, B. E. (2017, October 6).
Connected Through Awe: Can Interactive Virtual Reality Elicit Awe for Improved Well-Being? [Poster]. 3rd Annual Innovations in Psychiatry and Behavioral Health: Virtual Reality and Behavior Change, Stanford University, CA, USA.
https://med.stanford.edu/cme/courses/2017/psychiatry17.html
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Quesnel, D. T. (2017, November 12).
Evoking Deep Connections by Embodying Another’s Reality [Talk]. TEDxESFU, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
https://youtu.be/xsRzjUoSbE0
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Quesnel, D., DiPaola, S., & Riecke, B. E. (2018). Deep Learning for Classification of Peak Emotions within Virtual Reality Systems.
International SERIES on Information Systems and Management in Creative EMedia (CreMedia),
2017/2, 6–11.
http://www.ambientmediaassociation.org/Journal/index.php/series/article/view/274
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Stepanova, E., Quesnel, D., & Riecke, B. E. (2018). Transformative Experiences become more accessible through Virtual Reality. 1–3.
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Stepanova, E. R., Quesnel, D., Kitson, A., Prpa, M., & Riecke, B. E. (2017, November). Virtual Reality as a Tool for Inducing and Understanding Transformative Experiences [Poster]. Psychonomic Society 58th Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
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Cole, A. W., Quesnel, D. T., Pekcetin, S., Gromala, D., O’Brian, H., Antle, A. N., & Riecke, B. E. (2017). Integrating Affective Responses and Gamification into Early Reading Acquisition Software Applications. CHI PLAY’17 Extended Abstracts, 73–85. https://doi.org/10.1145/3130859.3131433
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Quesnel, D., Stepanova, E. R., Aguilar, I., Pennefather, P., & Riecke, B. E. (2018). Creating “AWE”: Combining artistic intuition and research-based design for an emotionally-profound art installation. 2018 IEEE Games, Entertainment, Media Conference (GEM) (full paper), Galway, Ireland.
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Quesnel, D., & Riecke, B. E. (2018). Are You Awed Yet? How Virtual Reality Gives Us Awe and Goose Bumps. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02158
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Stepanova, E., Quesnel, D., Kitson, A., Prpa, M., Aguilar, I., & Riecke, B. E. (2018, June).
A framework for studying Transformative Experiences through VR [Symposium presentation]. 23rd Annual CyberPsychology, CyberTherapy & Social Networking Conference, Gatineau, Canada.
http://interactivemediainstitute.com/cypsy23/
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Stepanova, E. R., Quesnel, D. T., & Riecke, B. E. (2019). Space - a Virtual Frontier: How to Design and Evaluate a Virtual Reality Experience of the Overview Effect Promoting The Feeling of Connectedness. Frontiers in Digital Humanities - Human-Media Interaction, 6(7), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.3389/fdigh.2019.00007
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Quesnel, D., & Riecke, B. E. (2017). Awestruck: Natural Interaction with Virtual Reality on Eliciting Awe. 205–206. https://doi.org/10.1109/3DUI.2017.7893343
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Stepanova, E. R., Quesnel, D. T., & Riecke, B. E. (2019). Understanding AWE: Can a virtual journey, inspired by the Overview Effect, lead to an increased sense of interconnectedness?
Frontiers in Digital Humanities - Human-Media Interaction,
6(9), 1–21.
https://doi.org/10.3389/fdigh.2019.00009
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Quesnel, D., Stepanova, E. R., Aguilar, I., Kitson, A., & Riecke, B. E. (2017). AWE [Invited Virtual Reality Exhibition]. TEDxSFU, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
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Quesnel, D., Stepanova, E. R., Aguilar, I., Kitson, A., & Riecke, B. E. (2017). AWE [Invited Virtual Reality Exhibition]. SPLASH, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
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Quesnel, D., Stepanova, E. R., Aguilar, I., Kitson, A., & Riecke, B. E. (2017). AWE [Invited Virtual Reality Exhibition]. TEDxEastVan, Vancouver, BC, Canada.