Of All Things Seen and Unseen

INGRID MURPHY

This paper explores how new and emergent technologies have influenced my practice based research in ceramics. We are entering an ever more hybridized reality where we co-evolve rather than co-exist with technology, a world where atoms become bits and bits become atoms, we now speak of digital materiality- how does this influence the material practice of ceramics?

There has been a significant rise in craft makers working with digital tools and processes in recent years, seamlessly moving between screen and workbench. However much of the discourse on integration of digital forming or fabrication processes with traditional making skills places the emphasis on the notion of ‘facture’, on how the thing is made.

Through a series of projects I explore how ceramics, and in essence craft practice, can adopt technological constructs to look beyond ‘facture’ and to see if it can change how we perceive a crafted object. For this I focused on the ‘augmented object’, the ‘hacked object, the ‘connected’ object and the ‘smart’ object; the work created for Breaking Ground explores a range of these constructs and their inherent technologies. I.O.Touch is an Internet of Things enabled ceramic hand, which exploits the conductivity of gold lustre as a touch capacitance sensor. When touched the hand illuminates, utilizing the translucency of the bone china, and simultaneously a partner hand illuminates in my home the UK, allowing me to know when someone is engaging with the work 6,000 miles away. This idea of connectivity between maker and viewer disrupts our conventional relationship with objects within the museum. The Space Plates of Jaipur depict flattened 360° imagery of sites within Jaipur, these images are in fact Augmented Reality (AR) markers enabling viewers to access through a smart device the 360 world of Jantar Mantar and Amber Fort. Although still a functional domestic object the plate becomes a portal to embedded digital content.

‘Technology is therefore no mere means. Technology is a way of revealing. If we give heed to this, and then another whole realm for the essence of technology will open itself up to us. It is the realm of revealing, i.e., of truth’

- Heidegger