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Art and Engineering

kuranes

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Today people from these two ( some might say ) disparate fields collaborate frequently on projects. But back in 1960's America it was highly unusual or "not on" as they might say in England. Here is a brief capsule life history ( obituary ) of a man who brought the two worlds together. Billy Kluver.

Billy Kluver, 1927-2004 - Artworld - Obituary Art in America - Find Articles
Hertz, Garnet. "The Godfather of Technology and Art: An Interview with Billy Kluver," (19 April 1995)

Discuss how the thinking processes involved in Art vs. those involved in Engineering might only seem mutually exclusive. Or perhaps disagree and say that even though they ARE very different, they can still each "hire" the other. Or mention some Art projects you know about which required a lot of engineering knowledge. Or other posts in this general direction.

What other fields are still wide open for collaboration ? One person talked to me about Art and Neurology being his interests, which led to a discovery that we had both read Ramachandran.
 

raincrow007

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Meh. If a project is big enough, there's a certain amount of required "engineering" that's just part and parcel of artistic craftsmanship/showmanship.

I don't see the two as mutually exclusive at all, depending on end goals.

Take this dood for example. Or this one.

I suspect lots of gaming software involves a certain chimera of art/engineering....

but bleah... I'm rambling and there's yet another bottle of scotch that requires a minimal amount of engineering on my part.... :D
 

kuranes

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RC - Yes, I remember the guy who "wrapped' bridges ( Christo ) and, naturally, projects of that size would require engineering. But I don't think we need to limit such collaborations to only those projects whose scale demands it. Intereesting to see machines which destroy themselves, for example.

Small projects might require engineering, too, eh ? Perhaps Architectonic or Hypnos could tell us about some nano-art projects.

I became interested the other day in naturally occuring Magnetite, which shows up in living creatures such as birds, dolphins, bees and micro-organisms, allowing them to navigate and orient themselves.

In the area of transhumanism it would be interesting to see how this might be useful and aesthetically progressive as well. Such as in haptic feedback. Here's a guy who used it in a crude fashion somewhat along the same lines as "piercing".
The Gift of Magnetic Vision [The Publisher’s Ring]
Magnetoception - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 

Zergling

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Other fields open for collaboration:

Economics, politics, psycology

These three seem like a natural combination, with ideas abut individual humans from psycology (perhaps some economics studies on this as well) used to explain/predict what will happen in different economic and political situations. (Unfortunatly, what I've seem of psychology is not up to thew taks, a lot of it seems to focus on middle/upper class type of people in western culture, which ignores effects from money, ethnic/religious differences, etc. on people. There does seem to be social group research that could help with this, though.)
 

Nighthawk

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I find that web development is an excellent combination of art and engineering. Graphic artists create the visual front end, and software engineers create the software behind it. There are integration points where each side must know a bit about what the other does and how they do it. As an engineer in this field, I have grown to appreciate the artistic side and even dabbled a bit with Photoshop and other tools to create front ends. I also know graphic artists who have learned to write code ... especially Flash crafters.

One could say that software engineering is an "art" in itself. It takes a lot of creativity to craft solutions to vague and/or open ended problems. Unfortunately, most people cannot admire the "art" of an elegant software solution as they could a visual representation.
 

kuranes

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It takes a lot of creativity to craft solutions to vague and/or open ended problems. Unfortunately, most people cannot admire the "art" of an elegant software solution as they could a visual representation.

I can see what you mean, in both cases. It's true that I was referring to what is traditionally thought of as Art. And yet there is an "art" to many other things in life, including software architecture.

It's funny when they were talking about "automating" Sales in a recent trade mag article, this one guy said that he believed that it could only go so far, because much of Sales was an Art vs. a Science. Convincing buyers that an idea you planted in their head was their own, for example. How does one do a "process map" of that, which would be the same for everyone that used it ? Or offer predictability ? Considering how different a buying decision was for each company.

You're right about web design being an example of the two working together.

Other fields open for collaboration:

Economics, politics, psycology

These three seem like a natural combination, with ideas abut individual humans from psycology (perhaps some economics studies on this as well) used to explain/predict what will happen in different economic and political situations.

Conan created a thread about this on INTPC. Interesting.
 

Nighthawk

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It's funny when they were talking about "automating" Sales in a recent trade mag article, this one guy said that he believed that it could only go so far, because much of Sales was an Art vs. a Science. Convincing buyers that an idea you planted in their head was their own, for example. How does one do a "process map" of that, which would be the same for everyone that used it ? Or offer predictability ? Considering how different a buying decision was for each company.

A sophisticated computer neural network might be able to learn the art of sales. However, I doubt we are at that stage yet.
 

wildcat

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Today people from these two ( some might say ) disparate fields collaborate frequently on projects. But back in 1960's America it was highly unusual or "not on" as they might say in England. Here is a brief capsule life history ( obituary ) of a man who brought the two worlds together. Billy Kluver.

Billy Kluver, 1927-2004 - Artworld - Obituary Art in America - Find Articles
Hertz, Garnet. "The Godfather of Technology and Art: An Interview with Billy Kluver," (19 April 1995)

Discuss how the thinking processes involved in Art vs. those involved in Engineering might only seem mutually exclusive. Or perhaps disagree and say that even though they ARE very different, they can still each "hire" the other. Or mention some Art projects you know about which required a lot of engineering knowledge. Or other posts in this general direction.

What other fields are still wide open for collaboration ? One person talked to me about Art and Neurology being his interests, which led to a discovery that we had both read Ramachandran.
Disparate fields, some might say.
Look what they have done to our cities.
 
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