Ask HN: Does anyone here have an art degree?

I studied both Computer Science and Fine Arts and Design. I was always interested at the intersection of these two disciplines. At certain point I discovered the work of John Maeda (at MIT Media Lab at the time) and realized that what I want to do is to make images with code.

At the time there were very few people taking this type of approach to art/design making. Digital arts meant using Photoshop not writing scripts. Nowadays more and more creatives from various disciplines use code as a tool of creative expression. Processing.org (direct descendant of Madea's ideas) is a huge community of artists who code.

What I find interesting is the cross over inspiration between the disciplines. Learning some new tech or algorithm feeds my ideas for visual works. And studying (traditional) artworks pushes me to develop programs to create similar visuals. One side very often inspires the other.

Often working on multidisciplinary teams (on multimedia type projects) I feel like people who have exclusively one type of background are somewhat handicapped. Artists who fear code are dependent on geeks to implement their ideas. And coders have to hire designers to create interfaces to their inventions. A lot gets lost in the translation!

Individuals that have knowledge and skills on both side of art/tech equation seem tremendously more innovative and can move forward much faster with their ideas. Ability to create complete functional prototypes or demos that work and look/feel good without having to ask/pay other people is freedom! I wish education systems recognized this and brought technology to art schools (beyond mousing in Photoshop) and arts and design into engineering schools.

In practical terms I use my dual skills working as UI/UX and data visualization designer/developer and I have an art practice creating dynamic images with code. Recently I won commissions for digital fine art frame company to create series of generative art projects. (I was told I was the first artist who codes they work with...).

In summary, amazing creative thinking and innovation happens at the intersection of fields and it might be difficult to quantify, but individuals that step outside of their main area of expertise always benefit in my opinion.

Correct. See his very interesting book Hackers and Painters.

Doesn't help with coding at all according to my story. I enjoy coding, and did it as job for years (still do part time), but my formal art training contributed zero to all things technical.

It helps with general product solutions and obviously design and content choices and strategies. It helps with big picture concepts and with confidence in experimentation. I believe it sharpens general intuition, which could be handy in IT.

Studying art thoroughly over a few years by looking at other artist's work in detail and doing your own art, sharpens your command over "less is more". You become better at peeling away layers to get to the essence of things. You become better at avoiding nonsense and you may learn to communicate ideas in new ways.

I got my MFA in poetry before I became a fulltime software engineer. I feel a connection between balancing metaphor, narrative, description, and the mechanics of language in poetry and solving complex problems with software. Would love to hear more of your story at some point--do you blog about the the workshop at all? Good luck with your thesis, and congrats on finishing!

A coherent life narrative that makes the parts of life fit together in a meaningful way is a cornerstone of human happiness. This inevitably biases the answers you will receive.

You may get more insight with the following question "Have any developers coded with someone who had an art degree ?"

My experience with a former artist proved challenging mainly because they refused, almost out of principle, to adhere to our company's design patterns and best coding practices. They felt that coding should be an expression of creative writing. The result was a collection of anti-patterns and dismissal of our naming conventions.

It was like explaining to a poet who now works with physicists that there is one and only one word for "force" and that word always means mass x acceleration. If you want to destroy the spirit of a poet, take a way all synonyms and metaphors.

There is certainly creativity in software development, but it is in extracting simplicity out of complexity. It is not forcing it into the embodiment of the code itself. The heavy constraints imposed in software development can be a source of frustration to someone from an art background. It is not too hard to overcome with awareness. My comment is not meant to be discouraging. It is also a single data point, as are all the other responses.