I don’t mean to be plugging the LA Times again, but it is the only newspaper I get, and there was a great article today on how a number of scientists are on the production teams at Dreamworks animation studios. This is another good example of how media arts is not only interdisciplinary, but “integrative” in the seamless interweaving of disciplines, and pushes the creation of new knowledge and content. In the article it is explained that these high level aeronautics and physics scientists sign-up for this work, not just for the money, which is better than their normal research salaries, but because it is so interesting and exciting to solve these kinds of fantastical problems.
In a small, utilitarian office in Glendale, Ron Henderson methodically jotted down equations for Isaac Newton's Three Laws of Motion on a whiteboard next to his desk. The equations, the physicist explained, are the mathematical building blocks for constructing a three-dimensional, bubble-like sphere. Henderson could easily have been preparing a lesson at Caltech, where he once was a faculty member. Instead, he was at DreamWorks Animation's Tuscany-style campus, doing his part to bridge the divide between art and science. Henderson was explaining the math behind a fluid-simulation technology that would help artists working on the upcoming movie "Home" draw soap bubbles inhabited by a race of diminutive aliens called the Boov.
In this way, media arts provides a culturally based product, a fantasy film, to investigate and create very technical and complex virtual events and experiences. This is applied engineering and design, loaded with in-depth knowledge of physics, math, 3D modeling and programming. Putting students into teams to solve these kinds of problems, albeit at a greatly simplified level, may provide a bit more motivation to learn the math, by seeing it in action, testing it, and playing with parameters towards a mind-bending, and believable result.
When I learned the basics of the Unity game designing platform, I soon realized that the sky is not even the limit to what I could produce there. Literally, one begins with a black, infinite space, and infinite variables in the various forces of mass, resistance and gravity to work with. I fairly easily designed a primitive game, with a basic table top platform, a dozen blocks, and a rolling ball that could move the blocks. The idea was to maneuver the ball around certain blocks, while pushing others into place, without falling off of the table top. This actually gave me a tangible sense of the algebraic formulation of these variables like I had never known before. Suddenly, I experienced what algebra was really about! And it was fun and exciting!
Students should at least be provided the opportunity to apply these math skills in this kind of environment while they are learning the processes in pure abstraction on paper. And perhaps someday, it would make sense that the system could recognize the value of this kind of production as evidence of actual mastery.
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