This is my amendment to my last blog, “Caves and CAD,” as I had a new development when I went to my art history class later that week. I’m taking this class as a follow up to my “Introduction to Architecture: 1400 to the present” class last year. I loved learning the influences of the architecture at Tufts and around the world, so I can appreciate this beautiful campus that I interact with every day. This class changed the way I operate within space and made me realize architecture can even change my mood.
Back to my art history class, the professor gave a brief overview of the class and we started discussing prehistoric art for the rest of the lecture. She proceeded to talk about the Lascaux caves, the same ones I "visited" virtually! We had some reflection time to try to capture all the details of the art and decipher what these beautiful objects meant to the people who created them.
In the case of Lascaux, the artists depicted animals that they admired but interestingly enough, not ones they ate. Researchers believe that painting was a ritual before hunting. They chewed the pigment and used a spitting method to paint these animals, something you don't see every day nowadays! As the medium and surface is different, these paintings are abstract but hardly primitive.
After lecture, I talked to my professor about my past blog and the artistry associated with my internship this summer. I’m pretty darn happy I am taking this class now, because I am realizing that art is everywhere, even engineering. Mechanical engineering is often based on creating products, and if these products are meant for consumers (as opposed to other developers who are making products for the consumers) then often the design of the product is crucial. Who doesn’t love a good iPhone or Tesla? Even one of these ostrich pillows requires a ton of design. In particular, computer aided design depends more and more on art as each new edition renders more realistic products.
At this point, I am just a walking advertisement for CAD. I love how it has changed the engineering world and how it is so visually based. It merges my favorite fields into one computer program, without having to divide up art, math and science as separate sections. I hope to keep CAD an active part of my Tufts education and hopefully my career.
Feature image credit:"Lascaux II Hall of Bulls (with a bear)" by Adibu456 licensed under CC BY 2.0