Glass Mutation V

2020

Nylon (black), 3D print, (Selective Laser Sintering SLS),glass (blown)

47 cm (h) x 33 cm (w) x 17 cm (h)

In the work Glass Mutations, I discuss the amalgamation between digital workflows and the analogue crafting techniques of glass blowing. I focus specifically on the aspect of time as one of the main discrepancies between analogue and digital processes. Throughout the last chapters, I have alluded to the importance of time in my projects and its significance for the establishment of a digital craftsmanship. The core problem of time and timing of processes, synchronising digital and analogue processes, is the lack of time in the digital object. The digital object is essentially timeless in its production and form, and does not age. In comparison, the 3D print is time-based, ages, and has a half-life.

The materiality of the digital object, the voxel data, is simulating a materiality and thus does not have an aspect of change embedded. The printed object is part of a time-based process of withering and change.Thus, the negotiation of time processes in the creation as well as after the making, the growing discrepancy between the digital object and the physical 3D printed part, is a quality of a digital craftsmanship. I investigate the temporal difference between an essentially time-less digital, and the poetic dichotomy in the formation processes of a glass object using blowing techniques. This last chapter articulates a problem of synchronisation between timed and time-less processes that technically and poetically is expressed in the resulting material amalgamation of polymer and glass.