Doomed ideas (II)

We present another project that almost certainly won’t happen.

For several years our astronomer tried to get a permanent college-level teaching job.  Unfortunately for him there are many more applicants than there are jobs, so he spent much time and thought working out ways to make his application stand out from the crowd.  One idea, worked out together with our photographer, was to present a cross-disciplinary class in photography.  The successful students acquire quite a background in the intersection of art and science as well as the ability to work together in a disparate group.

The class would require roughly similar enrollments of visual artists and scientists.  They would be broken up into groups containing some of each, which for argument’s sake we’ll take as a painter, a printmaker, a chemist and a physicist.  Each group would be given a kit with light-tight boxes and lenses, along with other bits useful for optical designs.  They would also be given access to materials for standard silver-halide photography as it is still practiced by film photographers.  But in addition there would be the option for other historic processes, like albumen, salted paper, cyanotype, carbo, even gum dichromate.  (We draw the line at daguerrotypes; the prospect of boiling mercury does not attract us.)

The class would be given basic instruction in how to use the optics to form images and the chemicals to capture them.  Then each group would formulate a plan with an artistic aim, using some combination of the materials, and carry it out.  At the end, the art majors would be given science credit and the science majors art credit.  We think the end-of-term show just in itself would be well worth seeing.

The project would fail, of course, for many reasons.  Most of the historic chemicals seem to be either carcinogenic or just poisonous.  The Administration would never allow students near them.  Even given some way around the liability issues, it takes a great deal of time and practice to get proficient in these techniques (there are reasons they were discarded in the past).  One term would almost certainly not be enough.  Making a working camera from a box and a lens might prove too difficult for many students.  Most prominently, the vocabulary and ways of thought of artists and scientists might be already too different at the undergraduate level to allow much communication.  A minor but possibly unavoidable sticking-point might involve how to teach and grade the course.

But our astronomer would still like to make the attempt.  He remembers his one experimental history-of-astronomy course, which was a disaster the first time through.  However, he learned enough then to make the second year a success.  (Unfortunately, his teaching job ended and there never was a third year.)  The first try at a chemical-physical-artistic photography course might follow a similar trajectory, which he thinks could be very interesting.  Alas, he is no longer a candidate for a teaching job.

Would you have taken the course?