Light and the Arts:
A New Course for Engineers
Arthur David Snider
Professor Emeritus
Department of Electrical Engineering
University of South Florida - Tampa FL
Abstract
An exposure to the arts is an essential part of every undergraduate's curriculum, but we feel that the
course offerings adopted by most universities to acquaint their engineering students with the fine arts fail
to meet their objective. Herein we describe a different type of fine arts course for engineers that
approaches the subject matter through an avenue that they can see as valuable and empowering. The
key objectives of the course are to approach the subject of fine art from a perspective where
technology-oriented students would have an advantage, rather than a handicap; to exploit the
experience so as to reinforce some aspects of engineering science by reviewing them in a new context;
and to place the engineering students in an environment composed mostly of others in the same
discipline.
Keywords
Education, optics, wavelets
Introduction
Background. Although many engineering students would argue otherwise, an exposure to the arts is an
essential part of every undergraduate's curriculum. This is underscored by its de facto inclusion, in some
form, in the required "distributional elective" hours imposed by virtually every degree program in the
United States. Educators recognize that many young people who select technology as a career objective
at an early age tend to nurture a technological perspective in all they do, and thus neglect to develop
their artistic side.
The unpopularity of the university's attempts to compensate for this derives, we propose, from the ways
in which they are implemented. In most institutions the technologist's introduction to fine art takes one of
two formats: a first course in an intended sequence, or a survey course for nonmajors.
The Introductory Course of a Sequence for Arts Majors. Engineering students typically shun this
type of course because, upon being injected into a environment studded with many classmates who
possess a gift for drawing and a heritage of art appreciation/experience/knowledge, some of whom are
themselves budding artists, the engineer feels (and is) handicapped. He/she fears that the diversity
acquired will come at the cost of hurting his/her grade point average.
The instructor can assuage this somewhat by using an "A for effort" grading policy, as is done in physical
education classes to avoid biasing grades for the athletically gifted. But this is less than satisfactory. Who
among us feels any sense of pride in his A in "Basketball 101" when he can't make the school team?
The Survey Course Designed Especially for Engineers. Many instructors have a condescending
attitude towards survey courses, considering them "watered down" and not genuine parts of the
curriculum. Students in these classes may tend to acquire a lifelong perspective of an "observer" of the
discipline, with no prospect of ever being a participant, a connoisseur, or an enthusiast.
Herein we describe a different type of fine arts course for engineering students which approaches the
subject matter through an avenue that they can see as valuable and empowering. The key objectives in
the course are to approach the subject of fine art from a perspective where technology-oriented
students would have an advantage, rather than a handicap; to exploit the experience so as to reinforce
some aspect of engineering science by reviewing it in a new context; and to place the engineering
students in an environment composed mostly of others in the same discipline.
Literature Review
Part of the inspiration for this project was a somewhat similar course developed at Emory by Sidney
Perkowitz for physics students [1]. The technology-related topics in our course, however, are rather
different; they are slanted for engineering, and they are accessible for a lower level student.
Description: General Features of the Course
The first and foremost goal of this course is to impart an appreciation for fine art in our students. In a
sense, it is comparable to a physical education course, where the student learns new types of recreation.
We view the appreciation of fine art as a recreational, not a professional, activity for engineers; but (as
with skiing) some instructional guidance is necessary to get started.
The novelty of our approach is that the instruction is imparted through venues that are familiar to and
biased towards engineering majors. Rather than discuss color through the traditional artist's notions of
hue, saturation, and value, we take advantage of the technologists' skills and focus on wavelength,
amplitude, and degree of polarization. We consider technologies that can detect forgeries, achieve
lighting without damaging materials, enhance artists' productivity, and open new pathways for the
practice of artistic endeavor. This approach matches our goals of changing the engineering student's
perspective from handicapped bystander to empowered facilitator and of creating an experience that
manifestly advances their professional qualifications
A very valuable spinoff of the course is that it provides a review that reinforces the students' grasp of the
basic principles of optics and light, as well as other engineering disciplines (statics, vector analysis, signal
processing). Although some of these skills are downplayed in most engineering curricula, they remain
important in the industrial sector, and we take a secret pleasure in the fact that we can “double-dip”
distributional credit requirements by inserting this review into a humanities course.
We have made available, for downloading from the author's web page [2]
(http://ee.eng.usf.edu/people/snider2.html), a set of fourteen PowerPoint lecture slide files (with notes)
and about 60 PowerPoint files containing hyperlinks to representative works of famous artists.
(Ownership issues dictate that only hyperlinks to other sites are given, rather than the images/animations
themselves, so the user will have to run the files once and cut/paste to fill in some of the content.) Our
experience at USF indicates that any professor with a well-grounded knowledge of basic engineering
and an appreciation for the arts can use these and teach this course successfully; the artistic expertise
can be acquired (and enjoyably so!) as the course progresses. (Indeed, this author hardly qualifies as an
expert.)
Highlight Examples of the Lectures
A synopsis of the lectures follows. We point out that there is a wealth of clever, instructive animations
on the web, and the PowerPoint files contain pointers to these as appropriate. (In particular note [3-9]).
1. Sculpture. (2 hours) The well-known story - how the young Michelangelo's peers had been
intimidated by the size of the marble block from which David was ultimately carved - raises the question
in an engineer's mind as to whether the stresses in the piece infringe upon the compressive limits for
marble. In the context of exploring this, students are exposed to the rest of Michelangelo's work, as well
as the sculptures of Donatello and Bernini.
2. Speed of Light. (1 hour) When invited to conjecture how to measure the speed of light with
nineteenth century technology, students often concoct variations of the schemes devised by Galileo and
Romer. The analysis of the timing in Fizeau's captivating apparatus gives strong reinforcement for their
studies in basic kinematics
(http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/lightandcolor/speedoflight.html).
3. Wavelength and Frequency. (1 hour) Young's diffraction experiment, which can be inexpensively
demonstrated by taping a hair over the aperture of a simple laser pointer, shows that light propagation
must be regarded as a wave phenomenon (the photoelectric effect notwithstanding)
(http://www.cavendishscience.org/phys/tyoung/tyoung.htm). The agreement of Fizeau's measurement
with Maxwell's calculations of the speed of propagation confirms the electromagnetic nature of light.
Working with the relationship c = νλ (in the visible spectrum λ ~ 10-7 m) gives the students practice
with scientific notation in a meaningful context.
4. Refraction. (1 hour) Snell's law is motivated through an (admittedly shaky) analogy with cars
traveling on different surfaces. With the notion of how lightwaves are bent by media with differing
propagation speeds, one can envision prisms as building blocks for optical devices that refocus light and
separate
white
light
into
its
constituent
colors
(http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/particleorwave/refraction/index.html).
5. Color Theory. (5 hours) Trigonometry analysis demonstrates that Young's diffraction experiment can
be used to determine the wavelengths of all the colors in the spectrum
(http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/particleorwave/refraction/index.html,
http://vsg.quasihome.com/interfer.htm). However the phenomena of light additivity produces, in the eye,
colors that are not attributed to monochromaticity, because the cones in the retina act like imperfect
transducers exhibiting such familiar (to engineers) nonidealities as clipping, hysteresis, cutoffs, and
ambiguities
(that
can
be
exploited
in
optical
illusions)
(http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/lightandcolor/humanvisionintro.html). Colors in paintings, etc., on the
other hand, combine subtractively and depend on the nature of the illumination sources
(http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/primarycolors/additiveprimaries/index.html). The physical
red/green/blue description can be mapped mathematically to the aesthetic hue/saturation/value
description; the C.I.E. chromaticity diagram (http://www.nd.edu/~sboker/ColorVision2/node17.html)
provides
experience
with
contour
mapping,
and
the
Munsell
color
tree
(http://www.aprilnet.com/dental/application.htm) exemplifies the cylindrical coordinate system. The
works of da Vinci, Rembrandt, Carravaggio, Dali, Derain, Modigliani, Picasso, Matisse, Kincaid,
Seurat, Lichtenstein, Durer, and Goya illustrate how artists can manipulate color to invoke mood,
contrast, and depth.
6. Converging and Diverging Lenses, Mirrors, Orientation, Telescopes and Microscopes. (8
hours) Basic principles of ray tracing are used to explain and predict the workings of all these optical
devices and phenomena. Inexpensive optics experiment kits available from Edmunds [10] reinforce the
physics and encourage discovery (http://scientificsonline.com/product.asp_Q_pn_E_3098900). A
discussion of the controversies surrounding Hockney's [11] (http://webexhibits.org/hockneyoptics)
claims that the old masters employed optical aids weds the optics theory with the art aesthetic.
7. The Eye. (1 hour) By analyzing the eye an as optical device students can understand its workings, its
limitations,
and
the
corrective
measures
used
to
offset
its
defects
(http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/humanvision/accommodation/index.html).
8. Perspective. (3 hours) Looking for examples of good and bad perspective can be an excellent "ruse"
for exploring whatever groups of artists the instructor favors. The history of the discovery of perspective
by Brunelleschi
(http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/math5.geometry/unit11/unit11.html) leads naturally to a study of the
art of the Renaissance. Brunelleschi's and Leonardo's engineering feats, of course, provide further
motivation. The laws of perspective themselves can, we have found, be simplified and clarified by
readdressing them through the language of vector analysis. The works of Massaccio, Leonardo, Panini,
Raphael, Ucello, Magritte, Durer, Vermeer, and Johns exemplify the incorporation of perspective;
Matisse, Picasso, and most of the Impressionists show that, on the other hand, it is not indispensable.
9. Photography. (5 hours) Chemical engineering comes to the fore in providing the means to fabricate
permanent records of the outputs of the optical instruments of the day. The clever schemes for
manipulating black-and-white (silver halide) replicas of red/blue/green-filtered images, and in particular
their implementation through the layered technology of color film, strongly reflect the procedures
employed
in
today's
semiconductor
processing
industry
(http://www.intel.com/education/makingchips/index.htm).
Camera technology is a vital part of this lecture. (The reader is warned against trying to reverse-engineer
a camera in the classroom; the author discovered, to his dismay, that simply opening the lens system
required the removal of 50 screws!) The works of Steiglitz, Adams, Leibovitz, Mutter, Eisenstadt, and
other photographers are viewed in this context.
10. Wavelets. (2 hours) The prime force behind the adoption of the JPEG standard was the efficiency
with which wavelet decomposition can code electronic images, but recently several engineers and
scientists [12-14] have explored the reverse issue: identification of artists through mathematical
characteristics of wavelet transforms of their works. We have formulated our own technique for this
(manuscript in preparation), and it is surprisingly successful. All television/movie-industry indoctrinated
students are familiar with "morphing," the trick of blocking-out details for visual effect. We explain how
these images constitute the multiresolution scaling-function projections in the Haar decomposition, and
how the omitted details, the differences between adjacent blocks, are the wavelets; but more to the
point, we argue that mean-square energies in the wavelet coefficients might be characteristic of the
artist's style. Our MATLAB™ codes, which compare these "multiresolution norms" to a library of
representative norms for about 50 artists and pick the closest, are distributed to the students for
experimentation. (The refinement of these algorithms is a project for the author's future research.)
These lectures constitute only about one-half of a semester's contact hours. Other issues that can be
explored according to the students' or instructor's taste include art preservation and restoration, the
cited Hockney debate and the Stork rebuttal [15], museum and stage lighting, art theft, and of course
the history and aesthetics of any desired school of art. In the latter vein, a list of movies that have proved
successful is cited in the references [16-18]. An excellent textbook is [19], with [1,20,21] providing
valuable supplemental reading.
Assessment and Conclusion
EGN 2080, "Light and the Arts: A Quantitative Approach," was first taught by the author in the spring
of 2003 to 40 students at the University of South Florida. It has been offered every semester since then,
engaging other instructors, always generating highly favorable student evaluations, and growing to
(unmanageable!) enrollments of 160 students on occasion. Currently it is being captured on tape for
possible future webcasting.
Students projects have included the construction of pantographs, camera obscura, telescopes, art
material displays, led displays, and the compilation of some very clever PowerPoint presentations of
different artists and schools.
The main objective of this course is to expose engineering students to a new form of recreation namely, art appreciation. It was felt that if they were to learn to recognize, say, 80 well-known works
by 40 famous artists, they would derive great pleasure during their professional visitations to such cities
as New York, Paris, Madrid, Florence, London, etc., in viewing the originals in the noted museums. In
this regard, the course has succeeded measurably. At the onset of each semester we administer a
diagnostic test, asking them how many of about 40 famous works they can recognize; inevitably the
class average is 5 or 6. By semester’s end they are scoring over 80% in identification of 100 works by
50 artists. They accomplish this with an enjoyable, nonthreatening classroom experience that also
enhances their mastery of concepts in electromagnetics, optics, signal processing, and other areas of
engineering.
Summary
Light and the Arts: A Quantitative Approach is a course designed for distributional credit for the
engineering undergraduate curriculum. It approaches the study and appreciation of works of fine art
through the technological, physical, and mathematical issues that are involved. The dividends of this
innovation are the nurturing of an awareness of the aesthetic issues and an opportunity to apply previous
technical studies in a fresh venue.
Acknowledgement
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No.
0343740.
REFERENCES
[1] Perkowitz, S., Empire of Light, 1998, Joseph Henry Press, Washington DC.
[2] http://ee.eng.usf.edu/people/snider2.html .
[3] http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer .
[4] http://vsg.quasihome.com/interfer.htm .
[5] http://www.thetech.org/cgi-bin/color .
[6] http://kiptron.psyc.virginia.edu/steve_boker .
[7] http://www.engineering.uiowa.edu/~aip/Lectures/eye_phys_lecture.pdf .
[8] http://hort.ifas.ufl.edu/TEACH/floral/color.htm .
[9] http://brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/esplora .
[10] Edmunds Scientific, Tonawanda NY 14150, www.scientificsonline.com .
[11] Hockney D., Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Knowledge of the Old Masters,
Studio Books, New York - 2001 - ISBN 0670030260.
[12] Kobayasi, M. and T. Muroya, "A Spatial Wave-length Analysis of Coarseness or Fineness of
Color Variation in Painting Arts," Pattern Recognition Letters 24 (2003) 1737-1749.
[13] Lyu, S., D. Rockmore and H. Farid, "A Digital Technique for Art Authentication," Proc. Nat.
Acad. Sci. v. 101 #49, Dec. 7, 2004.
[14] Shachtman, N., "Software Detects the True Artist", NY Times Nov. 22, 2004.
[15] Stork, D. G., "Optics and the old masters revisited," Optics and Photonics News 15(3) 30-37,
2004.
[16] Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance, Public Broadcasting System,
http://www.pbs.org/empires/medici/
[17] The Private Life of a Masterpiece series, Ovation, The Arts Network, http://www.ovationtv.com
. (In particular: David, The Kiss, Rokeby Venus, Dejeuner sur l'Herbe, Lichtenstein, Rembrandt,
Picasso/Matisse, Degas, Renoir, Whistler) .
[18] National Gallery of Art Education Resources, Landover MD, www.nga.gov/education/index.shtm .
(In particular: Masters of Illusion, Seeing the Color, Lichtenstein, Lautrec, Rousseau)
[19] Falk, D.R., D. R. Brill, and D. G. Stork, Seeing the Light : Optics in Nature, Photography,
Color, Vision, and Holography, Wiley NY - 1985 - ISBN: 0471603856.
[20] Waldman, G., Introduction to Light: the Physics of Light, Vision, and Color, Dover
Publications, New York - 2002 - ISBN: 0-486-42118-X
[21] Kemp, M., The Science of Art, Yale University Press, New Haven - 1990 - ISBN: 0-30004337-6.
Biographical Sketch
Arthur David Snider is Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering at the University of South Florida.
He has also served on the faculties of Mathematics and Physics. His degrees are in mathematics (MIT
'62, NYU '71) and physics (BU, '66), and he is a Registered Professional Engineer. He has
(co)authored five textbooks in applied mathematics and over 100 technical papers in mathematics and
engineering modeling. Currently he is a consultant for Modelithics in Tampa, FL. His hobbies include
stringed instruments and acting.