Eliciting Plasma Illumination as a Responsive and Relational Medium within Blown Glass.

Abstract

This practice-led research investigates plasma illumination within blown glass as a responsive and relational medium through creative practice. Unlike the distant spectacle of auroras or lightning, plasma illumination invites proximal engagement with these phenomena. Drawing on the dual etymology of plasma, as both the luminous fourth state of matter and a vital component of blood, the illuminated objects and installations created through this research evoke circulatory pathways as a metaphor for connection and presence.

Using a diffractive methodology, I combine techniques from glassblowing, neon fabrication, and scientific glass working to make a plasma vessel. I draw upon the tripartite process known in the neon lighting trade as "processing", which involves: 1) glass vessel formation; 2) atmospheric manipulation; and 3) electromagnetic activation. I subject this tripartite process to a craft-intensive methodology that I describe as leaks and tangles. Subsequently, the varied interior surface of the vessel actively contributes to the plasma's behaviour, while the glass's transparency allows those behaviours to remain visible.

Informing this doctoral project are interviews with eleven international plasma illumination practitioners, documenting the language of makers alongside field research examining histories of scientific apparatus. Resonant with the relational interpretation of quantum mechanics, the principle that phenomena emerge through interactions rather than existing as isolated entities, I reframe plasma illumination as a relational medium. Through iterations of encasing plasma phenomena within glass objects and installations, the artworks demonstrate oscillatory behaviours in relation to the glass surface and the viewer's proximal engagement, revealing our otherwise unperceived interconnectedness.