Altared book of the self

I believe that combining technology and the human body in the way she did in the video was not a bad thing at all. She was exploring new ways to alter the appearance and functions of the body to give a new point of view or even a new presence overall for the person being altered. This way of thinking and creating is certainly a unique field of work, but definitely pushes many boundaries of what is accepted by society, and even what is typically expected of normal human bodies. I believe combining a media arts and science project with my own body would definitely push my limits in many different methods and give me some kind of new perspective on how I approach new media. I started with a textbook that I have had for many years and have always dreaded, my “Scholastic Children’s Dictionary”. This book had always been the most cumbersome issue for me to worry about for many of my grade school years. For some reason in many of my classes during this time I had frequent assignments that involved looking up definitions in my dictionary for certain vocabulary words of each week. I was always hesitant to do these assignments because I hated having to flip back and forth pointlessly for hours just to find little words to write down for homework. I always wanted to just use the internet to look up definitions, as that would have taken a lot less time, but back then I still had dial-up internet, and my parents would not let me use it just for homework that had other ways of being completed. Ever since that time of my life I have always seen this book and just remembered the exasperating times that it always brought about.

This course has taught me many great things about being a digital artist and a creative thinker. I feel that through all I have done to the book I have represented myself well. I cut out pictures and word groups relating to the assignments we had in class over this past semester. I took one picture, of a bear catching a fish, and put it on the cover of the book. This picture represents the media round robin project, in which I created my own design and sweatshirt. This project stood out to me, as it related much to what I might actually want to do as a career someday, and therefore I felt that I needed to put it on the cover of the book to stand out. On the back cover I placed the rest of the images that I found to be relating to the other assignments in the class. I also cut out a hole in many of the pages of the book In order to plant a small leafy plant in the square-shaped area. This was a very important aspect of the project to me, as it allowed me to show the new life and creative ambitions I have gained ever since I started focusing on my future career goals. This plant growing out of what once was my least favorite object is a symbol to me that something good can always come out of anything bad that happens in life, and that I need to make it through certain struggles in order to reach the outcome that I am hoping for someday.

Identity of self in the digital world is what we want everyone to see from us. Based on the media and celebrities being shown as everything needing to be perfect, we always tend to overthink our image online that everyone sees in order for us to be content with ourselves. I feel that people need to step away from this mentality and approach life with a much more meaningful thought process. Much of what we do today will affect the rest of our lives every day after that. You never know what will happen next or what could be good or bad in the future that we’ll have to deal with.

This book has changed me in the sense that I now have a better understanding of who I am and what I want to be. I am very grateful to have taken part in this activity, and am very certain I have shown what I feel and am willing to create in order to represent much of my life thus far.