"engineers should embrace the role of the arts"

The girls at art school were better looking

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On a sunny day (Sat, 22 Nov 2014 13:00:25 -0800) it happened John Larkin wrote in :

I dunno. I have worked with artist for a large part of my life. either providing facilitis for them (like a TV studio), or designing electronics that made their pipe dream real (theathre).

It is a symbioses in a way. Started aready when I was a child and we had an artist live at home who rented a room from us (painter).

So... and designing IS creatvity.

It is silly to draw lines between all these things.

That rather misses the point that was being made. In the UK engineering is seen as being done by lower class people wearing flat caps and talking with a Northern accent.

Any teenager who wants to get high social status and the high salaries that go with it automatically thinks of studying arts subject as University.

Mathematics is actually an arts subject, and UK engineering education tends to be maths-heavy to cater to the social prejudices of the undergraduates and their parents.

The BBC is well enough plugged into the UK zeitgeist to be aware of the pro blem - which is widely recognised. The UK does go to some trouble to make a fuss about people like Alan Turning and Alan Dower Blumlein, who were spec tacularly creative in engineering, but the lesser lights like Bill Percival , Donald Davies and Godfrey Hounsfield (who happen to be people I'd met) do n't get admired all that often.

s seen as being done by lower class people wearing flat caps and talking wi th a Northern accent.

at go with it automatically thinks of studying arts subject as University.

Then they dont understand much about the prospects of the two!

ake a fuss about people like Alan Turning and Alan Dower Blumlein, who were spectacularly creative in engineering, but the lesser lights like Bill Per cival, Donald Davies and Godfrey Hounsfield (who happen to be people I'd me t) don't get admired all that often.

I think most people have little appreciation of what a big deal engineering , invention and innovation are. They are what give us the length and qualit y of life we have. They seem to be brought up on an airheaded celeb's view on the subject nowadays.

While we're on that point, why would a society celebrate airheads?

NT

Because they can talk faster, and dont need to think a while before saying something. Fits better with the soundbite mentality.

is seen as being done by lower class people wearing flat caps and talking with a Northern accent.

that go with it automatically thinks of studying arts subject as University .

Teenagers don't understand much about anything.

problem - which is widely recognised. The UK does go to some trouble to ma ke a fuss about people like Alan Turning and Alan Dower Blumlein, who were spectacularly creative in engineering, but the lesser lights like Bill Perc ival, Donald Davies and Godfrey Hounsfield (who happen to be people I'd met ) don't get admired all that often.

ng, invention and innovation are. They are what give us the length and qual ity of life we have. They seem to be brought up on an airheaded celeb's vie w on the subject nowadays.

Celebrities are celebrated for being recognisable. Theatrical performances are a widely viewed, so singers and actors are easily recognisable. The fac t that they may not have much to say doesn't prevent them from attracting a n audience who have come to expect they'll perform something worth paying a ttention to.

The cleverer film stars have latched onto popular good causes to get themse lves a part to play when the reporters come calling.

It can work the other way. Stephen Hawking is famous enough - largely becau se he wrote an essentially contentless best-seller - that there's been a fi lm made about his life.

Michael Frayn's "Copenagen"

exploits the fact that lots of people have heard of Nils Bohr and Werner He isenberg.

An artist can make one of something that's unique. An engineer can make something that can be produced in much larger quantities. I don't see why engineering needs to be reduced to the level of a mediaeval craftsman making something one at a time. It would appear that interchangeable parts and the industrial revolution still hasn't taken hold in some parts of the UK educational system.

"About 59% of engineering companies in the IET's 2014 survey feared skill shortages could threaten business."

Well, pay them more then.

Sylvia.

Because they tend to float into Congress?

Daffynition of Comrade Obama..

Many of them can't but get the job anyhow. Case in point: A blower fan in our wood stove just died. Once the fan kit is installed and the pretty much non-reversible strain relief for the power cable is snapped in you cannot get the fan assembly back out without a serious Dremel grinding job. That's just plain stupid.

Then there's air guide panels in back. The angle is so extreme that one cannot really reach the nuts to undo the fan itself. They should have tapped a screw thread instead. Since they didn't you can also not just unscrew the fan without removing the whole assembly. What a dumb design.

Oh, and the topper: They want $140 for the 18W square fan similar to the ones in PCs. Onehundredandforty, for one!

I'd vote for re-introducing the medieval custom of dunking bakers and others into a moat a few times if they made sub-par goods.

If it's any comfort, it hasn't in all corners of the US either. Our stove was made in America, by Quadrafire to be precise.

Exactly. Few people with an arts degree can make a living in the arts. One of my engineers dances (flamenco, just for fun) and she knows how much (or, how pitifully little) most dancers in the San Francisco Ballet make.

What I find strange is that engineering students have to take liberal arts courses, but art students don't have to take engineering, or even science, courses. We engineers are forced to broaden our narrow perspectives, and artsy types aren't.

It's funny how artsy types are usually afraid of electricity, and can't fix a broken lamp or light switch.

That's weird. The arts, and the airheads, didn't give us the things we have today: electricity, clean water, housing, health, books, travel, abundant food and energy, and the freedoms (and art, and trash culture) that result from prosperity. Scientists and engineers did all that.

People with visual arts backgrounds that can participate in webby stuff seem to do okay.

Film and painting; those are an awful, awful lot about how color works. Painters like the British painter Francis Bacon use their own visual cortex to distort images.

Dance seems to be an almost Malthusian discipline. If you think competition solves all problems, study what dancers go through...

It won't hurt us a bit. *The* Liberal Art is rheotoric, and that's critical for any sort of commerce.

Half of what I do these days is help people get the question right.

I have no data to even guess about that. Most of the artists I've known were either visual, and knew at least color physics, or were musicians and were pretty tech savvy at least.

People will pay more money to see an "artist" than reminds them of themselves, somehow. Narcissism is rampant.

"Tech savvy" now mostly means that people have learned to push buttons. Few of the so-described people have any clue about how the gadget-being-pushed actually works. Plugging in cables and turning knobs on guitar amps is a learned skill that requires no comprehension of the technology.

As far as color physics goes, I wonder how many visual artists could estimate the human visual range in nm, or estimate how the colors of a painting might change when illuminated by, say, white LEDs. Few, I would guess.

Most people live way up in the abstraction stack. App programmers don't often understand how computers really work. Apple users don't often appreciate that there is a file system managing their photo collections.

A lot of it; yes. I know for a fact that some artists have considerable technical expertise.

I'd fundamentally disagree, but that's okay. Old saying amongst guitar players - you can buy tone, but it won't be easy.

There's considerable *dis*information in technology sales tactics to artists; being able to surf that takes some chops.

Probably not too many, but it would hurt none of them to be exposed to it. I doubt they're gonna do it as a math problem, but some probably have.

You kinda have to know how colors work to use RGB intensity values, something most graphics people are pretty well into. That may or may not be related to a direct knowledge of wavelength, but you know which is up and which is down.

Sure.

But those that do are doubtless better off.

Modern culture wants to consumer-ize everything. Ignorant people make more compliant and dependent customers.

It began with music being something you go listen to, or buy, instead of being something you make yourself. Then sport - sport has become something you watch, not something you do.

Now the TV is full of shows about cooking, gardening, building homes, travelling, even just getting with your house-mates. They're trying to make all of normal life into a spectator affair - we're meant to watch it and buy the products involved, not do it ourselves.

Reclaim your independence. Make your own music, play your own sport, grow and cook your own food, travel without a travel agent and guided tour, fix your own home, and get on with the people around you. In short, live your own life. Stop trying to buy someone else's.

Clifford Heath

You would be surprised. There was a joke about reading arts & classics at my university which went along the lines of "why be a scientist when you can be a scientists boss?" and sadly it is all too true in the UK.

One of the reasons that major UK government computer projects like the presently doomed DWP Universal Credit project is advancing at a glacial pace will fail is because of insufficiently numerate civil servants. We are overrun with smooth tongued lawyers and prevaricators in politics.

The odd one breaks through into mainstream media but it takes a special combination of good looks, skill and good luck to be successful!

Professor Brian Cox has had a major influence on the uptake of the hard sciences since his elevation to media stardom. He previously played keyboards for D:Ream notable for the hit "Things can only get better".

Prof Jim Al-Khalili has similarly bridged the divide between the hard sciences and presenting public understanding of mathematics and science in high profile and very successful series.

When they have the attention span of goldfish what do you expect?

Even the programme makers are in on the joke we have one quiz show over here called knowingly "Pointless Celebrities" where the objective it to find a correct answer that no members of the public have given.

It would do no harm for engineers to pay a bit more attention to how products actually looked or felt in the hand. I can think of plenty of car dashboards where at least one control is in a really dumb place.

Of course a mechanic is going to think that way. Don't you have some design rules to memorize or something, instead of wasting time reading subject matter over your head?