Is Engineering an art?

[Solenoidclock]

call an engineer an artist they will laugh at you (i know this because im an engineer)

Call a dadaist an artist they will kick you in the dick, but that doesn't keep what they do from being art. Also, think of Renaissance men; they were artists and engineers at once. Who is to say that their creative efforts should be sorted into one field or another?

[AvocadoClock]

you were saying something about the internet

damn

your backpack must be really heavy

[Maltese]

all design is a form of art.

.

[INoodleClock]

I think the answer is pretty simple, in the same way that learning how to shade and draw a straight line isn't art; bending copper around someone's bog isn't. However manipulating material in a creative fashion such as metal sculptures, this is clearly art.



I believe it is taking the taught A, B, Cs and applying something new from thought makes it an art. Perhaps the key word is imagination, anything created from imagination is art.

[Loki Clock]

A demonstration of artistic intention in engineering is the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, or the chasis of any machine. Both use concealment to the end of the user's experience with the technology. The Hanging Gardens used pumps to make the irrigation process transparent to the observer, which is kind of the same purpose of web usability. A chasis conceals the machine to make it feel and look different. What the designer thinks the machine should feel like to the user is a matter of opinion and creative philosophy. Machines are at a basic level a form of expression. Whether that expression is simply to fulfill a function or to give an emotional impression. Think of the wide range of feelings a machine can invoke in someone. Torture devices. Back massagers. Kilns. Power tools. Regular tools. Good tools, bad tools. '90s printers. You, as an engineer, can apply devices to achieve any emotional reaction you want in a user or observer, which means the emotion or thought you choose to convey through what you've engineered is a matter of selection from an infinite palette of purpose. Anything you have that much range of expression in is a matter of art.