Re: Question

[Ruey <tmi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

mark@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

I am not sure they ever did Ed.  An engineer is just wired differently than most folks.  I speak from experience.  I am married to one.  An engineer is what you need when you need something done to a tolerance of 10,000ths of an inch, but don't tell her you are only an eighth of an inch off when doing a home improvement project.  Doesn't matter if the blade of the saw you cut with is 3/16ths of an inch, ITS OFF!!!

Give them a meter and tell them to find the density of X value on Y film, and they are in their element.  Its numbers.  Test how long you need to develop x to get y and they have no problem.  Yet for most when you tell them to use that knowledge to go make a great photo, they wouldn't recognize one that was unique and different any quicker than a Democrat would vote for a major tax cut.  It might happen, but surely not very often.

An artist is far more likely to use the TLAR school than an engineer.  What does TLAR stand for ???  That Looks About Right  An artist will recognize a different an unique photo immediately.  But most are not numbers people at all.  A painter might look at a landscape and see the color for the sunset and add a bit more burnt umber where an engineer would want to reach for a color meter.  Many artist would see a print that is too dark and just reprint with 5 seconds shorter exposure and see if its what they were looking for.  If not make an adjustment till they find exactly what they are trying to create.  The engineer would reach for the calculator.

Rare is the person that can do both in balance.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Question
From: Ruey <tmi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, December 18, 2009 6:38 pm
To: List for Photo/Imaging Educators - Professionals - Students
<photoforum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Why is it that in earlier times science and art could coexist
comfortably and today so many artists seem scared to death of learning
any science and so many engineer-scientists find no value in art or
desire to create it? I wonder if this modern extensive degree of
specialization and complete distrust of the other or their knowledge,
hasn't a great deal to with our inability to solve the problems we face
in the world today? What could an instructor do to bridge that gap?

Ed Scott

Living in the dual worlds of having been an artist, then an engineer and now sort of a little of both I can tell you for certain there are times that your way of doing things will seem as bazaar as you describe of her. What intrigues me is that there have been people for whom living in art and science was the most natural of conditions and that doing that had some benefits for civilization. My sense is that we moving a light speed away from being able to be that kind of generalist and that this will have ... already does have consequences. We are such a fractionalized society even within art or science. One wonders in America today if the country will ever again have a common goal.

I will also say that not all engineers are as you describe. Working in R&D at the edge of what technology can accomplish, measurement capabilities are less important than innovation. I guess there are similarities in art. Craft becomes more a matter of getting what a customer will buy or what fits your desires for art than innovation. I have a sense that traditional people blended art and technology, and were very relaxed about co-mingling the two.

Ed