Short Essay: How does technology mediate the artists' experience?

Digital Media is, in some ways, far more complex than a studio medium like painting or sketching. While both can be mastered and utilized to communicate an idea or expression, digital media could actually be that idea being expressed itself.

The rapid pace at which our modern world is discovering and implementing new technologies is astounding. Last semester, my Understanding Mass Media professor told our class that each semester's covered material is different from the last. We cover more and more every semester, she said, because media technology is currently advancing so quickly.

Naturally, this whirlwind pace really impacts our lives in fascinating ways. Generational gaps widen because children born today do not know the world without cell phones. The internet is no longer a new-fangled or groudbreaking idea. People drive cars that don't run on gasoline and we video-chat with our best friends in college across the country.

Yes, technology in the media and everywhere else has created a startlingly different but still familiar world. And we have a lot to say about it.

Most painters cannot create an interesting peice that comments on the simple subject of painting itself. But artists working with digital media can create works that utilize their medium as subject matter, synthesizing form and function.

I really think that working with digital media has been the catalyst for my thought process in terms of creating art. It has led me to many great questions regarding what can be used to create art. I've thought of so many possibilities, and at this point, my new question is what can't be used?!