THE ELECTIVE

Generally, I found the elective interesting and enlightening. It was particularly interesting learning about the phenomena and ideas behind things that impact on our everyday lives (like Facebook which I continue to procrastinate on while writing this - it seems that I am addicted to 'digital' and it interferes (and arguably sometimes enhances) every part of my everyday life). I think Manovich's essay and his assertion that "It is only a matter of time before constant broadcasting of one's life becomes as common as email." was fascinating because it directly corresponded with my personal experiences of the internet over the years.

I think the most challenging thing has been the sheer overwhelming scale of the issues involved with digital environments. Everything seems to get faster and more complex exponentially and what you have studied and concluded one week may be completely out of date by the next.

The Digital Environment elective relates to my major in that it has given me an understanding of current and past processes and technological advances in new media and will hopefully give me a starting point for self-promotion via the internet and other technology in the future. Despite the fact that I am on a heavily drawing/'craft'-based illustration course, it was useful to have my eyes opened to the potential out there (and I've recently signed up for a Dreamweaver workshop). I suspect that 'digital' will affect my aims for the future in a number of ways. As an illustration student, it's likely I will end up doing freelance work and an online portfolio has been essential for a number of years. The internet is a cheap and relatively easy way in which to reach a huge number of people all across the world, and it is no longer necessary to discuss a brief with a client in person. However its constantly evolving nature means it's difficult to predict what outlet will be most effective by the time I graduate. MySpace, for example, was responsible for launching a number of music artists, but now appears to be all but dead. It will be important to keep a look out for trends and I am already doing this via other people's blogs (and in my own personal blog).

I feel that the elective has helped me to question a number of things I took for granted, and to realise that things that until recently seemed far-fetched are surprisingly close in the digital world.