Art and Technology

Art and technology share common roots - creativity and imagination.  While technology expresses itself more in objects of utility, art captures and creates objects of beauty. Often, technology is not only useful but beautiful. Both technologists and artists have known this for millennia. Think of Leonardo's beautiful drawings of his many inventions.

Google continues to try to document the world and bring it to our desktop, tablet, and smartphone. One of their more recent explorations is the Google Cultural Institute which aims to bring some of the finest works of art from the world's museums to the internet. I thought it would be fitting from time-to-time to highlight a few of the art works found on the Cultural Institute website that depict the world of technology as seen by the artist. Let's start with two works from the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK.  Newcastle has long been one of the great industrial and shipping areas of the UK and it is not surprising that artists have captured this activity in their art.

Here are two examples that depict the history of Newcastle. The Tyne Bridge was modeled after the Hell Gate Bridge of 1916 in New York.

(Click on images to obtain larger view.)

On The Tyne - Shipbuilding
Thomas William Pattison
1954

The Building of the Tyne Bridge
Edmund Montgomery O'Rourke Dickey
1928