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Put a Little Art in your Science

by Katie Idziorek

Exercising your creativity may give you a new perspective that extends far beyond the studio.

The closest most IT students get to art is doodling on the chalkboard before calculus recitation. IT's rigid, intense degree programs keep many of us from taking advantage of the broad range of subjects offered at the University. In particular, we in IT tend to overlook the arts. By forgoing this opportunity, we're not only missing out on valuable exposure to top-notch University programs, we're also robbing ourselves of a chance to explore our creative nature.

Creativity is an essential part of being human; everything we create promotes our individuality and expresses our personal values. Creation helps us to get to know ourselves better, and in turn, helps us to better understand each other as a people.

Learning to turn things around, flip them inside out, and look at them backwards is sometimes a challenge for the engineering mind, but once you achieve a different perspective, the possibilities for its application are endless.

The options

Many IT students say that they don't want to take art classes. The reasons range from "I don't have enough time" to "They're too touchy-feely" to "The West Bank is too far away."

Whatever the excuse, eschewing the art department's substantial resources means forgoing a valuable opportunity. So what if you're not "artsy" and fear a lower-than-par grade may damage your precious IT GPA? Take an art class pass/fail!

To meet the University's liberal arts requirements, every IT student must complete at least one course in the arts. There are two ways to satisfy this requirement. You can either take a slide course like "Netherlandish Art, 1200­1600" and immerse yourself in the joys of rote memorization of the who's and where's or get down and dirty with the process and creation of art. What could be better than sitting at the potter's wheel, feeling that wet, cool clay take shape beneath your fingers? Or how about donning a leather apron and goggles (sound like Chem lab?) and spending the afternoon doing a little welding? Honestly, which answer sounds like more fun? Often, the best way to learn is by doing.

"The best art appreciation is making art," says Assistant Professor Lynn Lukkas, who specializes in electronic art.

"If you want to learn about what it means to make art, you need to actually do the process and learn what the process involves and what parts of your brain you use."

And who knows? By the end of the semester you may have some dazzling examples of your talent to give to family and friends.

One of many examples of the blurred line between art and science, this image is a graphic representation of a second order Newton's method applied to the cubic equation z^3-1=0 (with a rotation added).

The benefits

An experience in the arts offers many benefits. Lukkas sees IT students who enroll in her classes learning to "think outside the box."

"These students are used to a very structured educational system with strictly imposed boundaries," says Lukkas. "When you put them in an art class, they don't know what to do because they don't have those boundaries by which to gauge their progress. I try to get them to think past those boundaries."

Taking a different approach to creative problem solving opens up a whole new realm of possibilities. As an IT student, it's easy to forget that the scientific viewpoint isn't the only way of looking at the world. There is another perspective, one that involves subjective, sensual, and qualitative analysis as opposed to the objective, factual and quantitative process that we are trained to use in the sciences. Neither one of these approaches is right or wrong, nor need they be opposite means of reaching a solution.

Physics professor emeritus Roger Jones has spent his career integrating physics and other scientific disciplines with the arts and humanities.

"Art is an essential part of life," says Jones. "It's fundamental to everything including the sciences and engineering and all aspects of technical fields."

"Just look at what engineers and scientists do ‹so much of it has to do with visualization, three dimensions, architecture, sculpture, and painting," he adds.

"If nothing else, just learning the techniques is helpful. But in addition to the techniques is the whole mindset of the artist‹learning how artists think and feel and do things would be enormously helpful [to those working and studying] in other fields."

Combining our scientific knowldege with our human feelings allows us to realize a comprehensive problem solving method, one neither purely creative nor purely technical. We can actually use art to become better scientists and engineers. If we learn to look at the world with new eyes, we'll be amazed by how different the view is.

A new renaissance

Leonardo daVinci is often referred to as the ideal "renaissance person," an individual versed in both the prose of science and the poetry of art. Today, this sort of ideal has become all but impossible to attain. No one person has the time or ability to master any great number of individual areas of study; there is just too much information to absorb.

In the last few decades, we have seen a reversal of the trend toward specialization. This century's renaissance person might be like R. Buckminster Fuller ­ an inventor, architect, engineer, mathematician, poet, and cosmologist. Though few of us attain the broad scope of Fuller, educational base-broadening has trickled down to the general population.

The average American changes jobs five or more times during his or her lifetime, so degree programs are becoming less rigid and more customizable. Interdisciplinary initiatives and build-your-own-degree programs allow students to merge creative and scientific disciplines.

Occurrences of occupational drift are significantly higher among IT professionals. For example, computer science graduates change jobs every 18 months on average.

In addition, fewer positions are becoming available in what are thought of as "traditional" fields; interdisciplinary occupations are becoming the order of the day. This new dynamic has driven job hunters to secure for themselves a range of qualifications in order to make themselves more attractive to potential employers.

Jones has seen this type of movement in physics at both graduate and undergraduate levels. "Things are changing because there simply aren't enough jobs. The physics community has realized that if it wants to keep graduate students coming, which is essential for the field to stay alive, it has to provide other professional opportunities for them," says Jones.

A physics graduate doesn't necessarily have to become a traditional physicist, says Jones. Rather, the critical reasoning learned in a physics program can be applied to many loosely-related fields like law.

"So many lawyers are dealing with technical issues. It's obvious that any lawyer who has a background in engineering or science is going to have a tremendous advantage over other people," he says.

As technology permeates all segments of society, fields that didn't previously require technical capabilities now depend on techno-savvy workers. Combining our knowledge of science with another discipline - whether it's law, medicine, business, or any of a host of others - will make us more marketable as well as more well-rounded and interesting.

Leonardo daVinci, famous artist and engineer, was an individual versed in both the prose of science and the poetry of art.

The Design Institute

One way to branch out and make ourselves more marketable is to consider the Design Institute's new undergraduate design minor, an interdisciplinary course of study that teaches students about the role design plays in everyday life.

Created as part of University president Mark Yudof's 1997 design initiative, the Design Institute brings together design-related researchers and scholars from IT, the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, and the colleges of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, Education and Human Development, Human Ecology, and Liberal Arts.

The 14-credit minor is intended to broaden students' understanding of design and encourage collaboration between students and area design professionals. To complete it, students must participate in three core design courses, one lab or studio course, and one approved upper division design course.

So what does this have to do with IT? Think product design and modeling. Think ergonomics. Think presentation and rendering of client proposals. The design initiative is a push for all students, including those in IT, to become aware of how aesthetics plays a role in the work that they do.

A panel of University faculty, staff and students as well as local design professionals helped create the minor curriculum from design-related courses in existing degree programs. Many of these courses - including BAE 2113 (Introduction to Design), ME 2011 (Introduction to Engineering), and Th 3513 (Design & Technical Production) - are geared specifically toward design in engineering.

This new program offers IT students an opportunity to learn how to create products that are not only practical and functional, but also streamlined and elegant, pleasing to consumers and to the public eye. The design minor provides a starting point for the integration of the sciences and the humanities. The rest is up to us.