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Digital artist creating new realities at IU Bloomington
Oct. 14, 1999
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Indiana University, through a collaborative effort between University Information Technology Services and the Henry Radford Hope School of Fine Arts, is pleased to announce that Margaret Dolinsky has accepted a position as visiting assistant professor in the School of Fine Arts with a corresponding appointment as research scientist in the Advanced Information Technology Laboratory (AITL).
Dolinsky's innovative work in combining computer technology and art to create new forms of visual expression and experience has gained international acclaim.
"As a first-generation virtual reality artist, Professor Dolinsky is literally helping to invent the field of virtual reality art," said Donald F. McMullen, principal scientist in AITL. "She will have a significant influence on collaborations between the fine arts and the sciences, which we expect will result in applications of immersive technology for both artistic expression and scientific understanding. She also will be instrumental in raising awareness among students in these fields."
"The School of Fine Arts is delighted to have someone like Margaret on our faculty," added Professor Jeffrey A. Wolin, director of the School of Fine Arts. "With her strong fine arts background and technological skills, she provides students with a tremendous learning opportunity. The partnership between Fine Arts and UITS should be a model for future endeavors."
Dolinsky's background includes formal training in printmaking, painting, drawing, and art therapy, as well as electronic visualization. She has exhibited computer images and animations in dozens of invitational and one-person shows, including Digital Salon '99, SIGGRAPH '99, and Ars Electronica '99, Europe's premier digital media festival. She also has authored numerous papers on creating art using virtual reality, new media and digital technologies.
Dolinsky earned a master of fine arts degree in electronic visualization from the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she frequently collaborated with CAVE Automatic Virtual Environment developers Dan Sandin and Tom DeFanti.
"Creating art through virtual environments is my passion," said Dolinsky, who describes her work as visual poetry. "The creative process has me hooked. It compels me to forge a connection between my imagination and the irony and humor in this world. That is the true essence of art."
Dolinsky is enthusiastic about her new role at IU. "I am looking forward to teaching a new generation of artists this medium. Virtual reality offers a new way of looking, thinking and appreciating. I believe that it may fire synapses in ways that they have never been fired before."
As an artist committed to new levels of expression as well as to empowering the viewer, her focus is on developing the artistic metaphors created in her paintings and establishing their dynamics with the viewer.
"Art created through virtual environments allows participants to become actively engaged in the completion of an artistic creation and develop artistic appreciation," Dolinsky said. "For me, virtual reality is more than an artistic endeavor toward self-satisfaction and enlightenment. It is an opportunity to create for others, who must in turn complete the piece through their participation. Unlike a landscape painting where the artist's desire creates the view, virtual reality offers multiple views updated by the participant's active desire."
In her role as visiting assistant professor in the School of Fine Arts, Dolinsky will teach courses in virtual reality and digital arts and will help to augment collaborations between researchers and faculty in the sciences, information technologies and visual arts.
"Art is the cultivation of possibilities; science is the reproduction of conformity," Dolinsky said. "The two disciplines establish different philosophical methods, yet they both attempt to invent and uncover truths in our world. It took an oxymoron like 'virtual reality' to bring the arts and sciences together to produce three-dimensional real-time graphical environments for creative discovery."
Dolinsky's work with the AITL, which was recently featured in U.S. News and World Report and is slated for an upcoming ABC News segment, will be based primarily in the Advanced Visualization Laboratory (formerly the Virtual Reality/Virtual Environments Initiative).
For more information on Dolinsky and her innovative work, see her Web site at http://www.avl.iu.edu/dolinsky/
(Karen Adams, UITS, 812-856-5596, kadams@indiana.edu)