Crossing boundaries

We put forward an idea for a college class that will probably never happen.

Our consultants have some experience with classroom teaching, though none is now doing it, and there are no prospects of it happening again that we can see.  Still, we think about it and discuss it now and then.  And if we’re not careful, we get ideas.

Our photographer works mostly in old-fashioned film imaging, a chemical process based on silver chloride and silver bromide.  Of course that means our chemist is often interested.  This happens especially when we discuss other chemicals and processes that have been used in photography; and indeed, are still being used by some practitioners.  We admire the results of wet-plate collodion work, without being motivated to take up the process; and the chemicals used for daguerrotypes are frankly frightening.  But there are plenty of other processes less dangerous and onerous, each giving a distinctive look.

The understanding and handling of the lenses that form the image (or the pinhole, which also works), at the basic level, is a subject found in undergraduate Physics courses.  So one could imagine a class in which the students must put together the optics as well as the chemical process for a camera, choosing from among materials provided.  It would be shared by the Physics and Chemistry Departments; how happily, well, that depends.

But we’d go one step further.  Require a mixed class including students majoring not only in Chemistry and Physics, but the visual arts.  Split them up into teams containing representatives of each.  The term assignment would be to produce a body of work with an overarching artistic plan, implemented by an optical design and chemical process deliberately designed to best contribute to the desired effect.

The possible results are tremendous.  Artists talking to scientists, and vice versa; working together in diverse ways for a common goal; chemists and physicists thinking more about why they are doing what they’re doing; artists being forced to articulate their vision to non-artists.  Give the science majors credit for an art course, and the artists credit for a science course.

There is also the possibility of disaster.  Undergraduates are not always very eloquent at explaining why they do what they do, and there’s the possibility of a great deal of simple mutual incomprehension.  Ideas that initially look wonderful may turn out to be simply unworkable.  And being graded as part of a group can seem unfair.  Indeed, which department would do the grading?  A messy combination seems to us the mostly likely result.

Indeed, it seems improbable that something like this would ever happen, because it would take too many enthusiastic people to make it work.

But we’d really like to see the end-of-term show.