Slashdot Mirror
Computer Art For a CS Dept Office?
philgross writes "My university's Computer Science Department has just renovated its main office, and is looking for artwork for the walls. Do you have any recommendations about your favorite posters or images that address the algorithms, the history, and/or the aesthetics of Computer Science?"
Why not just wallpaper in xkcd comics?
If your school just spent a lot of money making the building look nice, you might want to go with something a wee bit more classy than posters on the walls. Just sayin'.
Dilbert everywhere. Let the students know what they can look forward to.
-- Dear God, please save me from your followers.
Lend some credibility to visitors by showing what computer science does for everyone. Escher? No CS required. You might as well put up the Mona Lisa. Fractal Art? Yawn. Nothing says useless to the public like fractals and magic eye. Slashdot Story Art? Even this audience didn't have much nice to say. How about modern architecture, transportation or electronics? CSs are a varied discipline. Let's remember, the submitter says this is a university. Let's keep the Fractals and pi to a thousand places to individual cubes.
You *might* want something that will be just a little more. . . accessible, to the general public.
In the spirit of the makers of 'Tron' and 'Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow,' I hereby offer a VERY hearty, "EFF THE GENERAL PUBLIC!"
Ahem.
Agreed. Show what REAL comp-sci is about:
Photos of the Apollo AGS / LEM Guidance Control control panel.
http://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/Documents/LM-Panel-Sept1968.jpg
Maybe with a snippet of the source code (Luminary 131 and Colossus 249) which were written in assembly, inset in the image?? http://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/hrst/archive/1701b.pdf
2,000 15-bit words of erasable core memory and 36,000 words of read-only ("rope") memory, yet this software helped land men on the moon and got them back to earth!!
How 'bout a shot of the Mars rover, the one that was nearly lost due to a bug, then the VxWorks OS was upgraded from 65 million miles away @ the rate of 2K/sec for three days. "interplanetary roadside assistance!"
http://science.howstuffworks.com/mars-rover1.htm
Designed to run for 3 months, they've run for YEARS!
That is what Computer Science is all about!!
I will vomit so hard it comes out my eye sockets if I see another CS department with M.C. Escher, rainbow-colored 3d plots, or fucking fractal art pieces. These look SHITTY and show no A) imagination nor B) taste.
Show the world that engineers have *some* creativity instead of cloning the halls of every other CS department. Even Kandinsky or another Dutch artist (besides Escher) like Mondrian would work.
Just take a second to choose pieces with less obvious and literal connections to math and computers. Maybe try a tasteful theme: look for classical examples of art that utilize the Golden Ratio. Perhaps try hanging a one-point, two-point, and three-point perspective paintings next to each other (but not some overly-complicated, geeky-as-fuck six-point perspective) and see how many people notice the theme. Art is about the joy of discovery.
BTW, a little color coordination would go a LOOONG way. Try to match your pieces instead of throwing up (and I do mean "throwing up") a crapload of clashing pieces.
IF you hang up even one Escher, fractal, 3d plot, polyhedron or god forbid Celtic knot you're fucking fired. If you don't like Kandinsky, fine. But don't hang up the CS department cliches. Show some depth.