Taking Vis 40 changed my perceptions toward art. Before arriving at UCSD, my work consisted of paintings, pencil drawings and a few digital renderings. In High school, they only taught traditional practices. The teachers rarely spoke of contemporary art of any art movement for that manner. After graduation, I went to San Diego Community College where I took my first formal art courses. At Mesa, I was introduced to contemporary art methods and understandings. At first, I felt strongly toward Surrealism because in high school, my artwork focused on replicating life. As a result, my work did not develop conceptually.

Afterwards, I transferred to UCSD. My first quarter at UCSD consisted of Vis 1, Vis 40 and Vis 84. The Vis 1 course helped developed my thoughts in my projects. I kept trying to make things too complicated such that the audience was not able to read the message. My first project was a close up pencil drawing of a portion of my keyboard as a self-portrait. That was my attempt at technology integrated into art. It was not until the Vis 40 class where I learned of media art. The lectures in that class helped me understand the potentials of technology and art. It was then that I was introduced into interactive pieces, internet and game art.

In particular, the video game lecture talked about Anne-Marie Schleiner inspired me the most. Schleiner as an artist and as a woman in a male dominated activity provided someone that I could strongly identify with. Having interest in video games, I became inspired to turn my past time into something more purposeful. In addition, I started to integrate video games in my projects. The first game based art that I made utilized an image of an online game and transformed it into a triptych. The TA in that class felt that piece was the strongest of all my previous attempts. It was much more simplistic than my previous projects and presented a clear idea regarding popular media, “high” and “low” art. Since it utilized my personal interest, I felt that my projects from that point onward had a larger emotional connection.

Thanks to my first quarter at UCSD, I was able to finally come up with a focus unique to myself. Prior to that time, I had struggled with a concept for a theme that would be my own. I like to show the connection of cyber reality and physical reality together. Cyber reality perspectives will be taken from online games, in particular MMORPGs (mass multiplayer online role-playing games). The online gaming portions of this concept will my unique to myself. More specifically, I would like to deal with the in game drama that develops in these role-playing games (e-drama). They interest me because this substitution for cyber reality as the physical reality creates interesting situations. With the power of the internet growing, e-drama may spread and become a new trend (although perhaps a negative trend).

In addition, the persona of people in real life compared to their online persona is also of interest to me. Presently, I’m working on a project involving people that I have met via an online video game. As a statement towards reality and cyber space, I have collected images of people in real life and placed them next to their in game avatars. This comparison will present sometimes a split personality within people. Perhaps this will add to the ideas that cyber reality is replacing physical reality since people tend to show their “true” self-online. I would truly like to expand my thoughts more on this concept. Any additional information regarding these topics would help my theories and projects.