Contributors
Margaret Dolinsky, PhD
Associate Professor, Digital Art
Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture+Design
Indiana University
Bloomington Indiana
dolinsky@iu.edu

Submission Details: 360 virtual reality https://dolinsky.pages.iu.edu/footpath/
Title: Path I

​

Artist Bio

        Margaret Dolinsky creates virtual reality portraits of people and landscapes. She welcomes visitors into digital worlds that combine aesthetic whimsical play with visceral and subversive confrontation. Dolinsky's work also involves digital projections for opera and experimental film. She designed interactive video for several operas, including the American Opera Theater. Dolinsky transforms her sketches by using vivid colors to evolve paintings, virtual reality, opera sets, video, animations, sculpture, and jewelry.

        Dolinsky began working with the CAVE and Dan Sandin and Thomas DeFanti in the mid 90’s and recently did a residency at UCSD with the CAVECam. Her VR work exhibits internationally including at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, The ICC in Toyko, The Red Gate Gallery in Beijing, Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria as well as other venues, festivals, and galleries. She has shared her work and spoken at many conferences including the International Society of Electronic Artists, SIGGRAPH, IEEEVR, Towards the Science of Consciousness, and Consciousness Reframed.

        Dolinsky is featured in the book “New Media Futures: The Rise of Women in the Digital Arts” by Donna Cox, et al. Dolinsky has contributed to several books including Reframing Consciousness: Art Mind and Technology (Ascott, Ed.), VR Developer Gems (Sherman, Ed.), Understanding Virtual Reality: Interface, Application, and Design (Sherman et al.) and Chinese and Portuguese publications. Dolinsky's work is featured in Leonardo, Discover, Computer Graphics World, US News and World Report and ACM's Computer Graphics.

        Dolinsky co-chairs IS&T Engineering Reality of Virtual Reality conference with Ian McDowall, one of the founders of Fakespace Labs. Dolinsky is Associate Professor and Area Head of Digital Art in the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design at Indiana University in Bloomington. She received a PhD from University of Plymouth, UK and an MFA from University of Illinois at Chicago.

​

Art Statement

        My art communicates the stream of consciousness that occurs when I draw and paint. This embodied cognition often reveals abstract portraits of people challenging their circumstances. Without intention the images appear much like dreams appear, filled with spontaneous and subversive visual analogies that challenge my ideas of perceptual thinking. My medium of choice is virtual reality.

        A virtual environment transports us to an alternative three-dimensional world that situates us in time and space and provides clues to make decisions on how to navigate and find our own way. In my work, colors, shapes, textures, size and sounds – formal elements of art – that construct the ambiance, which encourages visitor movement and interaction, and guides the visitor’s direction. As we explore the art, we construct a relationship to the work using our detection and our perception. We begin to identify with certain characteristics of the work and weave ourselves into a narrative.

        As the visitor manipulates her head, hand, and body movements, the work offers a psychological proximity whereby the participant is physically located inside the art, completing the art with her active engagement, whereby her consciousness forms and shapes the experience.

        I primarily deal in abstraction with my hand drawings and paintings so that I can push boundaries beyond the real world to establish new connections between the self and a virtual environment. It is the reality as determined by the computer, which is mediating the code, positioning visual language upon the screen. In addition, it is the visitor, who is navigating the environment, and pushing their psychological awareness towards immersion in the environment.

        The environment establishes a state of presence by exploiting perception and the senses. I hope to ignite a perceptual modality to cause a sudden and fleeting moment of extra experience – a perceptual shift. For me, a quick and spontaneous drawing demands a virtual world of interaction, immersion and experience. The artwork is created from a process of active imagination—a method that generates imagery from the unconscious—and is realized as an
interactive computer-generated experience.

​

​

Artwork

​

https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdolinsky.pages.iu.edu%2Ffootpath%2F&data=04%7C01%7CAnna.Ursyn%40unco.edu%7C42e1f93c68ce4947cb0908d9fffa9f09%7Cb4dce27cd088445499652b59a23ea171%7C0%7C0%7C637822274692089785%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C2000&sdata=U3gz1ZjlaNUJcXCDkn7Z5ElDWa%2FoQuRv8o%2Fti6k5jD8%3D&reserved=0

https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fvimeo.com%2F642060175&data=04%7C01%7CAnna.Ursyn%40unco.edu%7C42e1f93c68ce4947cb0908d9fffa9f09%7Cb4dce27cd088445499652b59a23ea171%7C0%7C0%7C637822274692089785%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C2000&sdata=54r3Hi0AyQSUQQoT6uwsyBlVapdw54Mh0x5cvmevesk%3D&reserved=0