Beyond the Material: at the Intersection of Glass and the Digital Image.

Abstract

Beyond the Material: at the Intersection of Glass and the Digital Image is practice-led research that investigates how digital images can be realised as activated glass objects and immersive installations. Framed by one central research question 'How can the material of glass and the digital image intersect in ways that expand our understanding of their interdisciplinary potential?' parallel lines of inquiry into figurative abstraction are explored, one in photography and the other through the creation of glass form. These two distinct yet intertwined investigations culminate in three series of new works for examination: Within Matter, Between Intimacy and Trespass, and Pulse. Each of these series tests and resolves the potential of glass objects to embody still and moving digital images, to create new understandings and experiences of materiality, through the activation of light, space and time.

This research is also underpinned by my aim to explore corporeal expressions of unseen human experience, realised through the integration of images and objects. By describing my methodologies of making in the studio and my process for developing works for exhibition, I outline how the development of the final works for this thesis led to a greater understanding of the interdisciplinary offering that exists between glass and digital image making. Image-based investigations of gestural abstraction in photography, moving image and performance choreography draw on the work of artists such as Anne Ferran, Bill Viola and Pina Bausch. The development of fragmented figurative glass form for installation is contextualised by artists such as Magdalena Abakanowicz, leading to new understandings of the materiality of glass, framed by 20th Century Czech glass sculpture and the work of light and space artists such as Larry Bell. The image as a fourth dimension of time within three-dimensional objects is explored, through artist Aurelie Petrel Finally, an immersive environment combining the findings from all these threads is created in Pulse, a moving image, sound and glass installation, which forms the nexus of my research findings. Show more