The two cultures

As a person who wanted to be a Chemist (not a pharmacist) whose first degree is in Fine Art and who spends a working life teaching computers the ‘Two Cultures’ Science and Art are a real concern. The Latin ‘Artibus’ gave rise to two words Artisan – a technician and Artist – a painter. In some ways the development of computers is helping bring the two elements together. It was the development of DTP software for the Apple Mac that helped the personal computer get started and in schools the creative use of computers is very popular. Web Design, Animation, Graphics, Video and Sound are the most popular units on my  ICT courses. Most recent ICT qualifications featured somme of those as elements along with the more commercially oriented offerings of Spreadsheets and Databases. I recently encountered http://azuregrackle.com/periodictable/table/ a periodic table where each element was individually illustrated really beautiful. I am going to see if I can develop it into a poster and put it up at school.