The Influence of Interactive Art of Visual Music on the Creativity of Science and Engineering Students

The main objective of engineering education is to cultivate students to possess capabilities demanded by industries. Of capabilities, creative thinking is the most crucial one. Generally, art-related fields are classified with high creativity while science and engineering arc classified as a field dealing with numbers, calculations and realistic phenomena. However, the real-world situation is that students majoring in science and engineering need the skill of creativity to face emerging complicated engineering problems. Our question is that: can art foster creativity of students majoring in science and engineering? This study is to explore link of art and creativity of mater students in science and engineering through the experience of interactive art and aesthetic sense to realize its effect on creativity by using the Processing Software and Leap Motion to create visual and music interactive art works. The total of 70 subjects are students in Colleges of Science and Engineering and College of Electronical Engineering and Computer Science from a university in Taiwan. The research measurement tools are Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults (ATTA) for pretest-posttest research design and the Study Preference Questionnaire (SPQ) to differentiate the cognitive styles. Using descriptive statistics, One-Sample t test, Paired-samples t test, One-Way ANOVA and Pearson Correlation etc. for statistical analysis. Our findings indicate that students in science and technology fields, their creativity falls on average standard (Creative Index, CI), not particularly outperforming. Different genders, cognition styles and different institutes and colleges of master's degree students in science and technology demonstrated also no significant differences in creativity. Nevertheless, after introducing the experience of visual and music interactive art works, it has significant effect on the creativity of students in science and technology. The study may provide a cross path of art, science and engineering in STEAM education if conducted further.