As I began my journey in Journalism and Communication Arts at UW-Madison, I decided to take an Art course to offset my other courses and keep my creativity progressing. This course, Art 107: An Introduction To Digital Forms, was revolutionary to my academic and career path. The course offers an introduction to various digital art mediums and advanced programs in graphic/vector/web designs. This course helped me in gauge my career interests and provided me with the tools necessary for success. The course helped me in three large ways in advancing my academic career and interests.
History of Digital Art
The first way this course helped me was by providing a lengthy history of digital art from the early 20th century to contemporary art. This was heavily influential to my thoughts on digital art. I wasn’t aware of the long history or of many of the great medium-bending digital artists that are currently working. From the early machine art of Desmond Paul Henry to the hacked video game art of Cory Arcangel, the course introduced me to a huge variety of computer digital art from many different mediums that inspired me to pursue this deeper.
Understanding of the Mediums
Secondly, this course gave me hands-on experience working with many different digital art mediums. This includes using Photoshop, creating gifs, 3D vector designs, website design and applications. The instructors were very helpful and gave amazing instruction to understanding and using these programs easily. This is important because it gives a large range of skills and techniques that are applicable to various career paths.
Promoting Criticism/workshopping
Lastly, the class critiques during the course gave me good experience getting advice on work. The class gave good feedback on all our assignments and gave me real-world experience getting criticism. This, along with the history of digital art and learning how to use different mediums, shows the way the course can be overall beneficial to your academic or career interests.
