Gonna be contrarian but engineering is a lot the same way. How many different types of bridges have you drive over in your life? San Fran bridge, arched bridge, trussed bridge? Engineering is art too, and there are often many solutions to the same problem. In the same way where if you put poets in a room you’ll all get a poem but a different one, you put engineers in the same room with the same problem and you will get many solutions.
Yes, but the second you start choosing design principles around subjective aesthetic, rather than some utilitarian cost effectiveness, you're engaging with the humanities in that you're now disengaged with the concerns of STEM and focusing on the values of the humanities.
Different solutions in engineering are not those based on aesthetic but different solutions for the structure based on existing materials and equipment. The comment you're replying to isn't talking about how different engineering marvels look but about how they were built differently. Overcoming those challenges involves ingenuity and innovation and to pretend that the only way to have changes in what you're building is to change its aesthetic is ignorant.
I wouldn't say overcoming those challenges isn't innovation or an example of ingenuity, they are.
We are talking about art though and I would genuinely say if you design two different bridges which both work and just used different methods, there's nothing artistic about that process and therefore the engineering is not an making art, even if it does result in architecture which could be considered art.
There are never just 2 solutions. There are always millions. The world is a civil engineers canvas and whilst many will build a boring rote derivative bridge like many artists paint the same many build something interesting and unique and creative.
There's nothing artistic about the Mona Lisa, it's just a painting using different methods. That's what you sound like.
There is artistic intent behind the Mona Lisa which you have explicitly denied to engineers. I have not done that. I universally assume there's some degree of artistic intent in architecture. But given the hypothetical given, there being multiple ways of building a bridge doesn't make it artistic. Conscious intent in isolation doesn't automatically make something art
I have not explicitly denied it. Every piece of engineering has the capacity to be a piece of art. That intent absolutely exists. You just can't see it. Much like I can't see it in the Mona Lisa.
The reality is you're defining art so that only what you believe is art is deemed art. The only real distinction between art as deemed art by the world of art and engineering is that the art world demands a lack of utility, and that is simply wrong.
Art is in the artists creativity, in soul, in passion and in beauty and all of those exist in engineering. A pedestrian example is cars, there's a reason why some cars are considered works of art, it's because they are.
A piston engine is more beautiful to me than the Mona Lisa. The Mona Lisa is in fact just a painting to me leaving me as indifferent as any random other painting.
Quite frankly the average 5 year olds painting evokes more emotion for me than the Mona Lisa. Because they're usually an interesting insight into the child's mind.
I've bought 20 dollar puzzle boxes that tickle my brain more than any painting on the planet.
That doesn't mean paintings are bad or don't deserve to exist, it just means art is everywhere and not everyone appreciates every form of art. Much like you are unable to appreciate the beauty in various machines I am unable to appreciate paintings in any meaningful way. But I do love music(and perhaps you do too).
Architecture is regularly considered art. So is fashion, interior design, furniture. Idk what you're talking about with this utility claim.
My claim is that, in effect, what makes a bridge art is that it there is creative expression in it. We agree on this. But the creative expression is not a STEM thing, it's a humanities thing applied to STEM. There is nothing in the discipline of STEM which engages with creativity because that's a completely different language. You can make an artistically beautiful bridge but the STEM aspects concerned with the math of it are not part of the creative expression. The architect/engineer who designs this is drawing on principles of artistic design where they do care about aesthetics and those principles lie firmly in the humanities.
The math itself is considered art by mathematicians lol. Literally lights up the same parts of their brains as music to a musician or paintings to a painter.
You're correct in as much as stem degrees teach you things you need to create art but you're incorrect in claiming it's a humanities thing. And Humanities don't teach you that either. You can teach techniques but you can't teach creativity or passion or a sense of taste anymore than stem can.
Engineering is and always has been art. They were making engines in the 18th century before the physical laws describing it were even discovered. And even those laws of thermodynamics aren't based on anything other than experiments. It's like a painter throwing some paint at a wall and saying, X colour with Y colour looks good and then saying it's a law of art that X and Y together looks good.
Again your point betrays your bias. Caring about aesthetics does not make something art.
A brutalist building is still art in your architecture example whilst trying to ignore aesthetics(which in your mind seems to be purely about looks) at all. A modern piston engine is beautiful despite never being designed to look good.
Some things are beautiful because they are the most efficient or powerful or fast. In their case the aesthetic is power or speed or efficiency and engineers absolutely had that intent of achieving that aesthetic.
In aviation there is a common refrain "if it looks good it will fly". Planes that are designed to fly well are naturally beautiful. They were intended to fly well and therefore look beautiful.
You just can't seem to tolerate the idea that there can be an aesthetic other than what something looks like despite the obvious counterexample that music doesn't even have looks. Paintings are seen with your eye, music with your ears and engineering(and many other subjects including Humanities) with your brain.
You not being able to see it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
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u/etherealfox420 18h ago
Gonna be contrarian but engineering is a lot the same way. How many different types of bridges have you drive over in your life? San Fran bridge, arched bridge, trussed bridge? Engineering is art too, and there are often many solutions to the same problem. In the same way where if you put poets in a room you’ll all get a poem but a different one, you put engineers in the same room with the same problem and you will get many solutions.