My MFA Thesis.
Ok, how many boring graduate theses have you ever read? I am guessing in the zero to partial, unless you are part of the weird realm of academia that actually enjoys these modules of education. I had only read ones assigned to me before grad school, but while preparing for my thesis I had to read TONS. I realized, these theses aren't just a paper we write for the purpose of graduation (or at least grad school theses) its a culmination of what our academic lives have become, and we hope to see in the future.
Communication arts draws my interest because of the personal relation it can create. The way we show our thoughts in typography, layout, image selection are the modes that we design our life around. As the world has become a more and more 'connected' place our roots to what traditionally tied us together via generations has slowly began to evolve, change and recreate the way we will see history. At this pivotal point in human history, I am not the only one asking these questions and trying to find answers. What I can tell you is that my MFA Thesis from Savannah College of Art and Design is my development and collection of thoughts on what makes us who we are for those in the future looking back on our lives via social media.
Do you have handwritten letters saved somewhere? Why did you keep them? Did you print out emails from relatives? Do you still have them? How many email accounts do you have, did you always have them or have you lost personal information based on losing email accounts?
Do you expect Facebook to be around in five years? Ten years? How about 50? How much of yourself is available publicly online? Have you ever googled yourself? Have you ever found yourself unable to access your old external hard-drive because of obsolete technology?
Questions like these should be prevalent in a fast-changing society. From the industrial evolution to the significant technological changes of the twentieth century, the world of communication has changed in infinite ways through these booms in knowledge and the form in which we communicate this knowledge. These changes affect not only the societal interaction, but how we perceive ourselves and our relationship to the world around us. With changing forms of communication, how does one establish a tactile connection to the world around us when more and more things become digital?
Social media has created the ultimate temporary space for us to store our memories and daily thoughts, images and information, yet the lasting effect of the internet, especially social media is yet to be determined. This paper will examine the connection that we have to the objects from the past, and how if we translate these objects to the digital form we are losing the sensory experience which ties us to the past, and eventually defining our own personal histories for generations to come.
Below is the INTRO + THESIS STATEMENT for my thesis, and the link to the final paper also found on the SCAD theses archive.