ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is to reinforce possible applications of digital media use in art therapy, but to also introduce how that use can be mixed, or transcend boundaries, with other materials and art forms. Digital media are not singular devices or materials; they are multiple manifestations which are growing exponentially. Digital media include hardware and software, or tools and tangible programs for purchase, but they are also invisibly embedded platforms, pathways, and locales within in an “interweb” of other users, commercialization, and creative applications and dissemination. One continuing issue for art therapy is that while some art therapists find digital media extremely adaptable to context, client, and therapeutic applications, others have characterized digital media as one-dimensional, nonsensory, and flat compared to the “traditional” multisensory activities of drawing with pencils and paper. An interrelated challenge is that to use materials therapeutically, art therapists must dedicate time and energy to substantiate their own creative explorations and experimentations with any art form. Myself and two colleagues share our professional and artistic media explorations in digital media to describe possible beneficial applications with art therapy clients; at the same time we ask important questions related to the reading of cultural imagery on the internet, the economy of computers and hardware, and what these media could mean long-term for human activity and creativity. This chapter bears no singular conclusion, but describes in multiple ways how virtual and material interactivity create crisscrossed boundaries and mixed realities that defy being of any “one world” or consciousness.
