HN lurker here, apologies for the throwaway. Just wanted to add my bit because I'm currently finishing a PhD in Fine Art which is entirely coding/computer based. It's at an elite art school that has absolutely no provision for CS of any kind. I also couldn't do a CS PhD anyway as I have no other math or CS training.
It's difficult to justify in some ways. Most of the practice-based work I'm doing I wouldn't really show as commercial art, it's introverted and 'academic' (in a Fine Art sense). Things like simulating a DDos of an online artwork and looking at that as a performance within the history of iconoclasm. Also anything technical is self-taught so I feel fairly certain I couldn't step into a coding role straight away - too many holes.
However, I've learned loads of assembly, python and general reverse-engineering skills and really smart & weird people constantly make me prove the point of what I'm doing within a context that I believe in. It's a context that's not exactly native to the materials I'm using, none of my peers have experience with what I'm doing on a technical level, so I'm forced to both "code switch" with my language during critique + think about computers in a way I never would in a CS degree (having spoken to many people with CS degrees). I love it. Art school forces you to lay down your own markers. Mine are that in the end I like what I'm making and I hope that it can add a small piece to our knowledge.
It's difficult to justify in some ways. Most of the practice-based work I'm doing I wouldn't really show as commercial art, it's introverted and 'academic' (in a Fine Art sense). Things like simulating a DDos of an online artwork and looking at that as a performance within the history of iconoclasm. Also anything technical is self-taught so I feel fairly certain I couldn't step into a coding role straight away - too many holes.
However, I've learned loads of assembly, python and general reverse-engineering skills and really smart & weird people constantly make me prove the point of what I'm doing within a context that I believe in. It's a context that's not exactly native to the materials I'm using, none of my peers have experience with what I'm doing on a technical level, so I'm forced to both "code switch" with my language during critique + think about computers in a way I never would in a CS degree (having spoken to many people with CS degrees). I love it. Art school forces you to lay down your own markers. Mine are that in the end I like what I'm making and I hope that it can add a small piece to our knowledge.