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seems to get faster and more complex exponentially and what you have studied and concluded one week may be completely out of date by the next.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.

THE FUTURE

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 interent 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).

PRESENTATION IDEAS

In January we have to present what we have been looking at in this elective to the other 2nd year BA students. There are a number of ways in which we could do this, with perhaps the most obvious being to create a website, with much of our discussions revolving around the internet. Creating an interactive digital environment of our own would seem to be an apt solution.

We could also create a film, perhaps using our own footage or clips from some of the films and tv programmes we've seen over the weeks. The Web 2.0 animation/film with the constantly reinventing text seems like a good illustration of the overall 'feel' of much of the elective.

'Personalised Surface'

I thought the exhibition was intriguing. I was fascinated by Dan Hays' work and the fact that he had 'collaborated' with his namesake in America, which seems like a particularly 'digital' situation - one which could not have come about ten years ago. It was interesting to see a format I'd associated mainly with free gifts in breakfast cereals used in a fine art context and to learn about the complex processes involved in building up the holographic effect.

Bruce Gernand's digital head sculpture also stood out. It was interesting to note that there were still some inaccuracies in the digital process as opposed to the traditonal one.

surface is..

the outer face of something, the point of interaction, the mask that may or may not reflect what's contained within.

MANOVICH'S ESSAY

"It is only a matter of time before constant broadcasting of one’s life becomes as common as email." The rise of reality television has been well documented, but on a much larger scale people appear to be broadcasting (at least certain aspects of) their lives via internet sites like Facebook and Youtube. Perhaps the moment I first consciously thought about this idea was when I noticed that people were writing things which would previously have been said in person or in an e-mail on each other's Myspace profiles (in the section which was designated for testimonials on its predecessor Friendster). This phenomenon is even more marked on Facebook, to the extent that to send someone a private message implies quite a high level of intimacy - it's almost odd not to be seen to be displaying your social arrangements. Facebook is also interesting because a certain amount of control over how much of your life is actually broadcast has been taken away. Unless you specify otherwise, other people can tag you in photos without your permission. The constant advance of technology like cheap digital cameras fuels all this, as well as the likes of Flickr and Youtube. People take photos and videos of parts of their lives, and it seems almost inevitable that they will want to show them off to a much wider audience than was possible with, say, a slide show for the neighbours in the past, if they can.

My personal experiences definitely support the statistics about media use. In around 2001 I kept a (very embarrassing) online journal. It was public because the idea of anyone I knew in 'real life' stumbling upon it seemed unlikely. Today I expect the likelihood of it being discovered would have increased dramatically. Also, recently I received a Flickr message from a girl who had googled my previous address because she was now planning to rent the house. She had found a picture I'd taken of the house and tagged and decided to ask me about how I'd found living there, and we realised we had mutual friends. These examples seem to go along with the idea of the internet moving from being about publishing to being about communication.

DIGITAL IS

a system of representing information where the values are discontinuous, as opposed to analogue systems which are continuous. The most obvious example I can think of to illustrate this concept is the difference between 'traditional' radios (and early televisions) where the user has to tune into a station by a process of trial and error and a tiny movement of the dial can cause a distortion of the sound, and digital radios and televisions where the user simply selects a station or channel with no opportunity for variations in the signal: the station is either on or off.

'Digital culture' refers to the implications of a society increasingly dominated by digital technology.