Is engineering art?
like, undoubtedly, there are engineers who make art with those skills. take Mark Rober, and e.g. his autonomous piano. there's no practical purpose to that; it's just cool and enjoyable. that's art.
I'm not trying to say engineers can't be artists. most are both. but is engineering distinct from art? or is it an artform?
by "engineering" I really mean here any kind of "means to an end" creation where the creation itself or the act of creation is not the actual reward.
for instance, most people just need a house to live in. so an architect designs the building and builders build it. an architect "draws" blueprints, but it's their job, and there's a clear purpose. drawing is usually considered an artform, but not all drawing is art. drawing a grid to align stuff on a wall also isn't necessarily art. I would say both of these are forms of engineering.
I would broadly classify most forms of creation into "engineering", which is usually to create a tool that is used for a purpose ("tool" also very broadly defined: a house is a tool that you live in), or "not engineering", something created for the inherent sake of it, that wasn't "necessary" for another purpose, but just enjoyable in and of itself.
another example, is in programming: if you are working a 9-to-5 job building a frontend for your sparkling water web store, you are building a "tool". that is engineering, you are paid to create a product to a specification. the website is just a means to an end, with the ends being sparkling water. users want to buy sparkling water from you.
on the other hand, game development is usually done for the sake of creating the game. users want to play the game, the actual thing you are working on, that is inherently enjoyable. this is less "engineering" to me. this is created for the sake of creation.
and with those examples, it might be tempting to call the "not engineering" disciplines "art". but this is a label that feels weird to assign precisely. it basically excludes the entire field of "building houses" from being art. which I feel like it totally can be.
but I'm not sure what else to call the "not engineering" disciplines. it feels like that's what art is. but I want engineering to also be art.
I'm not confused about the boundaries of this division between "engineering" and not. it feels pretty clear and intuitive to me. i just need help placing the label or "art" into this world view.
is it all art, or is engineering distinct from art?
is engineering art?
@sodiboo@gaysex.cloud
My hyper simplified distinction is that craft is about making good choices when there is an optimal solution and art is about making good choices when there isn't.
It's a rare pursuit that doesn't involve some combination of these
@sodiboo@gaysex.cloud
I think that each project exists somewhere along a spectrum of art to purely utilitarian. The example I think of is designing and building a bridge. I've seen bridges that are so beautiful that I stop and stare. That bridge could also have been an ugly featureless slab of concrete. The difference is in the engineer's skills, inclination, budget, and client appreciation.
I don't think it is a meaningful question to ask if engineering is or isn't art. Like drawing or painting implements, the sculptors chisel, and many other such tools, engineering is a set of tools one can use to create art. Or not.
re(architecture specifically):
I thought about this some more and realized that e.g. museum exhibitions, playgrounds, interactive experiences such as escape rooms, are very much so built for the sake of the thing being built, and not as a means to an end. I think these things are unambiguously art.
if "engineering NAND art", then architecture can still be very much be art.
I was too focused on residential construction. which isn't necessarily art. that's not to say it isn't also art; because the point of this post is to ask whether that's art. when I say "isn't necessarily art" I just mean it's not as obvious to me that it should be art. I want to hear what others think about it.
@sodiboo@gaysex.cloud My thought is that engineering is more about mindset and process than the end product. To quote the engineerguy
Engineering is the practice of using known science and rules of thumb to solve problems before we have full scientific knowledge.
(Paraphrased)
So like, you can build a house using an engineer's mindset or you can build it using an artist's mindset. Whether you call the finished product art or engineering I think depends on the circumstances and the goal, but I don't all houses could be categorized as one or the other.
@wanderinghermit@mindly.social
a spectrum of art to purely utilitarian
I would like to correct this terminology as a spectrum of "purely expressive" to "purely utilitarian". this feels perhaps unfair, because I will soon proceed to criticize the terminology that you didn't use.
I really like this spectrum, and it is a nice way to think about creation. but in the classification of "engineering" and "art", I think having one end of the spectrum being "expressive" has a clear problem, because engineering can be very expressive indeed. but art is also clearly expressive; that's like, the whole point, and that's why you even labeled this end of the spectrum as "art".
still, it's clear that engineering tends more utilitarian than most art. so engineering is clearly not at the expressive extreme, but the expressive extreme is surely art.
but something like "a concrete slab to cross a gap" is also hardly engineering. like, I guess it is? in the same way drawing a stickman is art. but it's not really what comes to mind.
I think it becomes quite intuitive that engineering should be everything that tends to the utilitarian side of creation, and art is everything that tends to the expressive side of creation.
but if "engineering" and "art" are the opposite sides of that spectrum, then it feels like they are opposites. that's not quite right, though, because engineering is inherently expressive, as kira explains well. it also seems clear to me by now (after reading some other replies) that there's a lot of overlap between engineering and art. not just in the skillsets as I described above, but in individual applications of those skills. if they're opposites, that sounds like it implies no overlap.
I think it feels more correct, therefore, to say that engineering is more like the middle of this spectrum. because, usually, when we think of "engineering projects", they are utilitarian at their core: there's a purpose. to build a house, for instance. but there's still a lot of expressive parts that go into that. even in just the architecture. it's also clearly art, though that's not necessarily the main "point" of the work.
so I think it seems more correct that art tends to be more expressive, and engineering tends to be expressive and utilitarian. engineering is the center of the spectrum, not an extreme.
what's purely utilitarian, then? i guess these are just Tasks. chores, even. if I'm assembling IKEA furniture, I just need a working table, I'm not creating art. I'm also not an engineer. I'm still "creating" a table, but it's in the most utilitarian consumerist way, it's a means to an end. it's a chore to build this table. it's a chore to screw in the legs.
@celestiallavendar@icedoatmilk.coffee
I like the idea about "an engineer's mindset" and "an artist's mindset". I've never really thought about it that way before. you say/imply we can build things using one or the other, but when put like that, it seems obvious to me that they are not mutually exclusive but also not a a subset/superset of one another. they are entirely independent mindsets that can be used or not, together, individually, or neither.
I think a lot of what I do is both in the "engineer's mindset" and the "artist's mindset" at once. see the quoted post of the quoted post.
I've thought some more about it, and I've come to the conclusion that engineering is NOT art. but that does not mean they are mutually exclusive. in fact, these two labels are orthogonal and do not affect each other.
just as an individual can use the skills of their craft for artistic creation, as well as for engineering. just as a given individual can be an engineer and an artist. I think that any given creation can be a product of both art and engineering. most are.
@sodiboo@gaysex.cloud Yeah I totally agree that they are different approaches but not mutually exclusive.
Like my dad builds houses, and he might use an "engineer's mindset" to design a wooden staircase, but then use an "artist's mindset" to design a decorative trellis arch even though he's using geometry for that.
In my own personal thoughts I think they are very similar and usually combined to accomplish tasks. Like when I'm 3D modeling a coffee shop I'm using both mindsets at the same time.
I saw your quote post, happy to help with your decent into sisyphean madness 
@celestiallavendar@icedoatmilk.coffee
I like the idea about "an engineer's mindset" and "an artist's mindset". I've never really thought about it that way before. you say/imply we can build things using one or the other, but when put like that, it seems obvious to me that they are not mutually exclusive but also not a a subset/superset of one another. they are entirely independent mindsets that can be used or not, together, individually, or neither.
I think a lot of what I do is both in the "engineer's mindset" and the "artist's mindset" at once. see the quoted post of the quoted post.
I've thought some more about it, and I've come to the conclusion that engineering is NOT art. but that does not mean they are mutually exclusive. in fact, these two labels are orthogonal and do not affect each other.
just as an individual can use the skills of their craft for artistic creation, as well as for engineering. just as a given individual can be an engineer and an artist. I think that any given creation can be a product of both art and engineering. most are.
@sodiboo@gaysex.cloud Yeah I totally agree that they are different approaches but not mutually exclusive.
Like my dad builds houses, and he might use an "engineer's mindset" to design a wooden staircase, but then use an "artist's mindset" to design a decorative trellis arch even though he's using geometry for that.
In my own personal thoughts I think they are very similar and usually combined to accomplish tasks. Like when I'm 3D modeling a coffee shop I'm using both mindsets at the same time.
I saw your quote post, happy to help with your decent into sisyphean madness
@sodiboo@gaysex.cloud Yeah I totally agree that they are different approaches but not mutually exclusive.
Like my dad builds houses, and he might use an "engineer's mindset" to design a wooden staircase, but then use an "artist's mindset" to design a decorative trellis arch even though he's using geometry for that.
In my own personal thoughts I think they are very similar and usually combined to accomplish tasks. Like when I'm 3D modeling a coffee shop I'm using both mindsets at the same time.
I saw your quote post, happy to help with your decent into sisyphean madness
@sodiboo@gaysex.cloud Yeah I totally agree that they are different approaches but not mutually exclusive.
Like my dad builds houses, and he might use an "engineer's mindset" to design a wooden staircase, but then use an "artist's mindset" to design a decorative trellis arch even though he's using geometry for that.
In my own personal thoughts I think they are very similar and usually combined to accomplish tasks. Like when I'm 3D modeling a coffee shop I'm using both mindsets at the same time.
I saw your quote post, happy to help with your decent into sisyphean madness
sodiboo :pride_heart:
