Science via Art, and Vice Versa

Our professor invited Joey Tanedo from the College of Fine Arts to talk about the upcoming video presentation of our review paper. I thought we'll just deal with the technicalities of video making like the framing, the camera works, the gestures and the like. But what we talked about was something deeper. It was the marriage of Art and Science.

I first heard about this while reading Steve Job's biography (I blogged about it here). The reason why Apple remains to be the icon that it is, is because they were able to merge technological genius with a fine taste for art. You can see it in the way they planned their operating system, from the all the nitty gritty connections, to the design of their phones - everything is well thought of.

Now if they CAN do it, why can't we?

I was amused by how Prof Tanedo summarized our course just by it's mere name: "Material's Engineers… kayo yung nagaaral ng materyales para mas maging kapaki-pakinabang, tama ba?"

Just like everyone else, in UP we are taught that our courses are geared towards being of service to the greater majority. The purpose of civil engineering is not because you just want to learn how to build houses and bridges, it is because you want to build good quality of houses and bridges for your customers and for your fellowmen. We study math not because it's fun to play with numbers but because we want to learn how mathematics aids our daily life - from the arithmetics of sales, to modeling of important natural phenomena. We learn chemistry not because we want to mix and match liquids in the lab, but because this is the building concept that our bodies, the plants, the animals, and all others follow. Ultimately, we learn not for ourselves, but to be of better help to the world around us.

Knowing how 'intimidating' our courses tend to get, how do we translate that into something that can be digested by the majority that we aim to serve?

This is where our friends from the liberal arts and fine arts can very much help us. People are visual, they don't like numbers and formulas and figures (lets admit that at some point all of us didn't :p). They want something that can easily be understood, either in print, or visually. And it takes a lot of effort, for someone to translate something so complicated into simple bite sized bits.

In fact, it's a two way street. As Prof Tanedo pointed out. The artists can teach us how to better illustrate our theories and technologies, while the engineers can help the artists implement their brilliant ideas. This is already ongoing for private companies, we just need to bring this to our local industry where it will be more useful.

And I think that has always been one of my dreams. Maybe not now, but in the near future, to translate all these bazingas into a-b-c's. And for people to see the beauty of science. I remember how amused I was, as I read how Einstein struggled to find a "unifying theory" that will explain most natural phenomena into a single beautiful thread. His vision is so vivid, like he was trying to paint the universe in one huge canvas. It's not hard to see it, really.

It doesn't need to be expensive, we just need to be a little more creative. And a little more persistent and patient. I'm not one of the best nor the brightest but I would love to work in the backstage for these kinds of advocacies. :)