Recently I’ve been reading several books by Michio Kaku on the future of science and technology. Its thought provoking stuff, not only as regards future technology but also the importance of education. As I have been reading I’ve also been considering the impact of science and technology on art, and in particular my own field of digital art which would not exist without technology. I decided that I wanted to write some on the importance of both science and education to any field of art, but particularly to the various forms of digital art.
When I was still in school I took two years of Algebra, one year of Geometry and another year of advanced math in high school. I did this because everyone said it was important, it was what I should do. But as I sat through four years of mathematics I often found myself wondering why, what was it all for, how would I use it. Unfortunately my teachers at that time couldn’t answer that question very well. Often I only got a general answer of “well its important to computers and computers are the future”, but nothing more specific. Sadly, my teachers simply didn’t know how math or science would become very important to my life and to art. I realize that although that was more than 30 years ago, it is still a question educators and students alike may wrestle with. Why is math so important? What does science have to do with art? And why are all three likely to be important to anyone’s future? With the benefit of hindsight and a lot of personal experience what I want to do here is answer those questions to some degree.
I want to start by discussing briefly how digital art impacts the lives of many people and how this will likely increase in the future. Digital art covers a wide range of forms, from the entertaining 3D animations of companies like Pixar to retouching and refining photos used in magazines to creating illustrations for book and comics to computer game development to web site graphics to art for its own sake. We live in an increasingly visual digital world and there is a growing demand for people who can illustrate that world. If you’re pondering a career and you like art, digital art is worth considering. Its also a field that robotics and automation can enhance, but not replicate. No robot can create original art, imagination is something uniquely human.
Imagination is also increasingly becoming an essential career skill in almost any field, not just art. Science would make little progress without imagination. Even in business management imagination is necessary to come up with solutions to various business problems. Art promotes and encourages the development of imagination so teaching art to students helps prepare them for almost any future career by helping to cultivate what is and will increasingly be a necessary ability.
Art in turn is impacted heavily by both science and mathematics. If you actually want to pursue a career in any field of art, and particularly in digital art, you’re going to need a good education in mathematics and a general education in the sciences. That might surprise some of you, why do you need to study chemistry to be good at digital art? Or why is algebra important and what will you use it for?
Why are Science and Mathematics essential to Art?
Its a fair question, and one that students need answered in order to help them find the motivation to be engaged in learning. There are four areas I want to cover specifically and give examples of why they are important to the digital artist. They are Biology, Chemistry, Physics and of course Mathematics. If you want to be a digital artist in the future (whether that be in the fields of game design or 3D animations or movie special effects or even just web site graphics) you’ll find all four of those sciences useful and mathematics in particular a necessity.
You might guess why biology is important to artist. Most art students today take at minimum a class called “anatomy for artists”. In the past these courses taught art students the basics of bone and muscle structure in humans and animals to help them und