Abstract
The Makers Marks Collaborative, an international team of glass artists, visual designers, composers, and engineers, embarked on a project together from 2015–2016 to use the glassmaking studio as a staging ground for interdisciplinary, collaborative making. The team aimed to capture and preserve the sounds of traditional studio glassmaking, and then to share them outside the workshop domain through digital technologies and glass art objects. The goal was also to fulfill a public engagement grant from the Royal Academy of Engineering to highlight the engineering through the art and the engineers’ vision within the art making. The team recorded and isolated the unique sounds of the glassblowing process and its studio environment, and then used the resulting digital sound collection as the foundation for developing artistic outputs: a virtual instrument library, a glass object-instrument of performance, a series of glass objects translating selected virtual instruments, and a music composition. They questioned the nature and materiality of glass through dialogue between media and conversation among team members, while exploring the practice-based research question: “How can we embed our recorded sounds of the glassmaking process back into the glass itself?” This paper focuses on the collaborative, interdisciplinary making process of the team, the project outputs, and the metaphorical language that was a key process facilitation tool.
Highlights
The sounds of traditional making processes in artist and designer studios are not accessible by the general public, as they are unique to the material practices of the studios
One of the most exclusive and ancient making processes which produces unique sounds is that of glassblowing
Based in Edinburgh, the lead visual designer recruited an international team of glass artists and technicians, audio engineers and composers, and electrical and computer engineers to carry out the aims and fulfill the 2015 Ingenious Award funding the work under the title of “Glass Whispers: Audio and Electrical Engineering Meets Studio Glass for Interactive, Personal Art Experiences”
Summary
The sounds of traditional making processes in artist and designer studios are not accessible by the general public, as they are unique to the material practices of the studios. Even those public studios and museums, which offer free making demonstrations, are few and scattered, and sometimes difficult to reach. Videos demonstrating the making processes are numerous with the Corning Museum of Glass (2002b) even offering regular live streaming, the sounds—a major output of the making process—have been relatively understudied The sounds are both evidence of the making process and remains of the process, in much the same way as is the discarded glass, cast off in the workshop bins. The sounds of the glass studios are an integral part of the cultural and craft heritage of glassmaking
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