Margaret Dolinsky

LVis (Library Visualizer) is a joint project aimed at the 2D and 3D visualization of search results derived from user queries of digital library collections. This paper gives an overview of the intent of the project, the data mining techniques applied, the visualization metaphors used and the usability studies that have been planned and undertaken to date.

Ygdrasil is a programming framework for creating networked, multi-user virtual worlds, especially interactive artistic worlds. It provides a shared scene graph, a plug-in system for adding new behaviors, and a high-level script interface for composing these worlds. We describe the architecture of Ygdrasil, and its use in creating two applications that were demonstrated at the iGrid 2002 workshop.

This panel presentation will exhibit artwork developed in CAVEs and discuss how art methodologies enhance the science of VR through collaboration, interaction and aesthetics. Artists and scientists work alongside one another to expand scientific research and artistic expression and are motivated by exhibiting collaborative virtual environments. Looking towards the arts, such as painting and sculpture, computer graphics captures a visual tradition. Virtual reality expands this tradition to not only what we face, but to what surrounds us and even what responds to our body and its gestures. Art making that once was isolated to the static frame and an optimal point of view is now out and about, in fully immersive mode within CAVEs. Art knowledge is a guide to how the aesthetics of 2D and 3D worlds affect, transform, and influence the social, intellectual and physical condition of the human body through attention to …

Help Design Your New ACM Digital Library. We're upgrading the ACM DL, and would like your input. Please sign up to review new features, functionality and page designs. Leave an email address: or Follow @ACMDL. or [Not interested]. Google, Inc. (search) …

The proliferation of technological devices and artistic strategies has brought about an urgent and justifiable need to capture site-specific time-based virtual reality experiences. Interactive art experiences are specifically dependent on the orchestration of multiple sources including hardware, software, site-specific location, visitor inputs and 3D stereo and sensory interactions. Although a photograph or video may illustrate a particular component of the work, such as an illustration of the artwork or a sample of the sound, these only represent a fraction of the overall experience. This paper seeks to discuss documentation strategies that combine multiple approaches and capture the interactions between art projection, acting, stage design, sight movement, dialogue and audio design.

A visitor's experience of immersion in projection technology accumulates over time with the navigational movements that are called for through the digital artwork. The visitor travels through the artwork to gain an understanding of space and a sense of place within the visual field. An engaging display envelopes the visitor and thereby enhances their sense of immersion. An explorative movement within the virtual environment garners understanding, facilitates decision-making and intensifies navigation. Abstraction and symbolism in the visual experience offer a metaphoric journey through the visual virtual experience. This article calls for a need to subvert and exploit rational imagery to stimulate the imagination in an effort to enhance immersion through the projection screen. The article will discuss how virtual environments fusing projection technologies with artistic imagery energizes experiential circumstances …

After being dormant in the public eye for more than 10 years, VR is now back to the front pages re-discovered as the portal to push the limits of our imagination towards compelling immersive experiences that can also blend with the physical world. Well-established companies and strongly backed new companies are committing serious investments into VR and its applications. This second VR wave is coming strong and fast in making VR accessible for the general public, not as the specialized technology for a few elite research labs of the 90s and early 2000s.

The international Grid, or the iGrid, is a fertile ground for exploring levels of sensorial communication, visual metaphors and navigation strategies. This paper seeks to answer the following questions: What is the iGrid? What does it mean to share a collaborative virtual environment (CVE)? What implications does sharing CVEs have for communication? What are visual navigation strategies across a high performance high-speed network? How can art shape experience in a technological world? Networking virtual environments via the iGrid establishes a performance theater where academics and researchers create dialogues between disciplines. CVEs synergize towards a new dimension of literacy where knowledge is presented as abstract visual engagement. In CVEs, the visuals act as three dimensional navigation icons that can symbolize a choice to be made, a direction to consider or a sequence in a narrative …

A strong motive for such interactions are sensory and cognitive stimulation produced by the imagery of people. Here the vessels can be perceived as if they hold other objects, memories or ideas. Once the participants interact with the vessels, they may be transmitted to another world or another state of exploration.

This paper seeks to answer the following questions: What is the iGrid? What does it mean to share a CAVE Automated Virtual Environment (CAVE)? How are artists shaping experience in a technological world? What implications do sharing CAVEs across a high performance high–speed network have for shifting and changing perceptions?The iGrid or international grid is a network used by applications that demand high bandwidth for realizing computation intensive states. Some applications include visual displays and some include interaction with persons in remote locations. The iGrid networking effectively allows exploration among many disciplines on multiple levels. From the iGrid 2002 conference website we learn:

Since its invention in 1979, Ars Electronica has maintained its strong focus on the crossovers between art and technology. With each annual edition of its Festival for Art, Technology and Society, Ars Electronica has become more and more an international meeting point for the ever-growing community of people interested in digital art, its practise, and its theories. The festival advanced from an insiders’ event for pioneers and early adopters to the major event of the international digital art circus.Ars Electronica also developed a strong influence on the local level and became a major driving force in Linz, Austria's process of transformation from a city based on the aging steel industry to a new economy of innovative technologies and industries, and it became an icon for Linz's new identity as a modern cultural city.

The Living Canvas is a science/art/educational exhibit of artwork created by using the positioning of chloroplasts in leaf cells as an artistic medium and using light to control that medium. The work reveals the process of chloroplast movements as they occur in leaf cells and how those subcellular changes affect the optical properties of whole leaves to maximize photosynthesis. The works are designed to stimulate a sense of intrigue and awe to enhance the viewers’ awareness of plant life and their relationships with plants in their environment.

This research investigates how shifts in perception might be brought about through the development of visual imagery created by the use of virtual environment technology. Through a discussion of historical uses of immersion in art, this thesis will explore how immersion functions and why immersion has been a goal for artists throughout history. It begins with a discussion of ancient cave drawings and the relevance of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Next it examines the biological origins of “making special.” The research will discuss how this concept, combined with the ideas of “action” and “reaction,” has reinforced the view that art is fundamentally experiential rather than static. The research emphasizes how present-day virtual environment art, in providing a space that engages visitors in computer graphics, expands on previous immersive artistic practices. The thesis examines the technical context in which the research occurs by briefly describing the use of computer science technologies, the fundamentals of visual arts practices, and the importance of aesthetics in new media and provides a description of my artistic practice. The aim is to investigate how combining these approaches can enhance virtual environments as artworks. The computer science of virtual environments includes both hardware and software programming. The resultant virtual environment experiences are technologically dependent on the types of visual displays being used, including screens and monitors, and their subsequent viewing affordances. Virtual environments fill the field of view and can be experienced with a head mounted display (HMD) or a large screen display …

A unique production of French Medieval liturgical dramas from the 12th century Fleury Playbook was performed on January 13th 2007 through the joined forces of Indiana University's Early Music Institute, the Henry Radford Hope School of Fine Arts, the IU Children's Chorus, and director Timothy Nelson. This new adaptation used innovated approaches to gesture, scenography, and space to question the distinctions between theater, installation, and ritual. The lighting was done with 3D computer graphic projections of iconic imagery done in digital artist oils. These digital projections evolved through the dramatic event and the performers were able to interacted with their display. This paper offers a reflective account of the production.

This paper will discuss the potentiality towards a methodology for creating perceptual shifts in virtual reality (VR) environments. A perceptual shift is a cognitive recognition of having experienced something extra-marginal, on the boundaries of normal awareness, outside of conditioned attenuation. Definitions of perceptual shifts demonstrate a historical tradition for the wonder of devices as well as analyze various categories of sensory and optical illusions. Neuroscience and cognitive science attempt to explain perceptual shifts through biological and perceptual mechanisms using the sciences. This paper explores perspective, illusion and projections to situate an artistic process in terms of perceptual shifts. Most VR environments rely on a single perceptual shift while there remains enormous potential for perceptual shifts in VR. Examples of artwork and VR environments develop and present this idea.