ADRIEN DUBOUCHÉ NATIONAL MUSEUM OF CERAMICS - LIMOGES FRANCE

Through the summer there is a collection of exhibitions showcasing Computational Clay in the French City of Limoges. At the Adrien Dubouché National Museum of ceramics, in the recent acquisition display are works by UNFOLD, Charlie Stern and myself. At the Bernardaud Foundation is the exhibition Sand les Mains of international artists. While at FRAC Artothèque du Limousin is an exhibition curated by Michael Paysant from ENSA – see below.

I am delighted with the selection of work that the Adrien Dubouché has acquired from me for their permanent collection. The ‘Seed Bed’ has always been an important piece so it is perfect to have it in a public collection. The ‘Tree series’ was an early group of digitally generated work so also important, while the ‘Sine, Cosine morphology’ I now know will remain as a single collection and will not get broken up.

FONDS REGIONAL D’ART CONTEMPORAIN - LIMOGES, FRANCE

L’arbre de Darwin - this  exhibition representing the culmination of a three year ‘laboratoire de recherche’ that has been on offer at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Art in Limoges. The course has been led by artist, teacher and researcher Michael Paysant who invited me to be visiting lecturer. I have three works in the exhibition.

'I Think' - this work is based on the original drawing in Darwin's note book of his evolutionary branching tree idea. I have one piece of code that generates this evolving morphology. The pots stand on the branching points of the diagram and allude to the evolution of pottery traditions across continents.  The clay body further references population skin colour across the continents and it is important that all the forms come from one original piece of code.

'EcoSystem' - comprising 50 individual porcelain containers, the shapes are once again generated from one piece of code and 3D printed. These pieces are not modelled and 'sliced' as is the convention for 3D printing but the file for the 3D printer is generated directly out of the computer code. I find it fascinating how out of a simple system you can get such complexity

'Refraction ii' - the third work is from the series where I have combined blown glass and 3D printed porcelain.The form is first printed as a waste mould in clay into which the glass is blown. With the aid of computational scaling I can then prepare the same form to be printed in porcelain to fit inside the glass vessel. This series refers to the pottery language of clay body surrounded by glass skin but here there is a gap so that light refracting through the glass patterns the clay surface.

ERASMUS+ VLIELAND – NETHERLANDS

The final event of the 3D education project, E3DU was held on Vlieland Island that lies off the Northern coast of the Netherlands. Hosted by De Jutter School who have been the lead school for the program, they scheduled in a one day Conference on the theme of 3D printing and sustainability. The day consisted of workshops, seminars and lectures and was linked with the Leeuwarden, Capital City of Culture 2018 festivities.
 
I presented a lecture offering an overview of the Comenius project and the Erasmus+ projects going by the title of ‘Five Years is a Long Time in 3D Printing’.  The essence of my talk was to emphasize the importance of teaching 3D thinking, look at how best to teach 3D technology in the classroom and then the importance of including the arts, or at least creative thinking in STEM subjects – to think STEAM.

EUGENIUSZ GEPPERT ACADEMY OF ART AND DESIGN -  WROCLAW POLAND

Back in May of 2015 Renata Bonter-Jędrzejewska of the Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Art and Design  in Wroclaw visited my studio researching ceramic 3D printing. So I was delighted to get the invitation this year from Renata to visit the Academy and present a week long workshop.

Housed in a new build the facilities are tremendous and with studios devoted to ceramic art, ceramic design and throwing there is a great variety of work being produced. With respect to digital work Renata is in the fortunate position of having colleague Adam Abel whose own computer generated ceramic work is realy interesting and working together they have the potential to get computer aided ways of working well established in the academy.

The school has a locally built Gaia Multitool 3D printer for clay that is well built and well engineered but I would suggest it is still in development and improvements could be made. I never came to terms with its automatic levelling device and the pressurised clay container needs redesigning to make it easier to clean and an internal plunger is required.

UCA - FARNHAM

Invited by Ashley Howard, lecturer in ceramics to do a short course workshop with his students at UCA Farnham it was interesting to visit this course with a long history of ceramic education. Like so many BA courses it is now a combined Glass, Ceramics, Jewellery and Metalwork course offering the opportunity to explore all material areas before choosing to either study one area in greater depth, or continue to work across specialisms.

It is also home to the Crafts Study Centre - a purpose built museum, research centre and gallery dedicated to crafts. Unfortunately I did not get the opportunity to find out whether they would consider ceramic 3d printing to be a 'craft' or not.

D-LAB, VR|AR - BERKHAMSTED

A big thanks to architect David Kirkland, the driving force behind D-Lab Berkhamsted for the use of the VR|AR equipment. Using an Oculus Rift it is not the virtual reality (VR) that I am interested in but the augmented reality (AR). I have spent a number of days exploring the ‘Medium’ 3D modelling software and have not worked out what to do with it but it certainly offers a really interesting way to work.

D-Lab is to set up a second base in East Village Stratford, London from January 2019. Considered as a design laboratory the model is of a co-working studio space for the creative community supported by well equipped workshops, mentoring, and support programmes for individuals and small businesses. Follow this link for further information.

SHORT COURSE – RCA, LONDON

After setting up the WASP and LUTUM printers for the Royal College of Art in February I was invited back to present a 4 day short course in ceramic 3D printing to students interested in the subject from the Ceramic and Glass MA first year group. I do not expect workshop participants to have experience in computer 3D software but they must be willing to work with computers.

With introductory workshop I get participants to think about how the computer and computation is offering new ways of working in clay. I want people to be open minded and I am not prescriptive as to what software or direction they follow with their work. I go through the practicalities of how to use ceramic 3D printers and the basics of how 3D computation works but after that try to leave it up to the individual to work out how best they might use the process. 

ERASMUS+ OUTOKUMPU KOULU FINLAND

A first time visit to Finland for me this meeting of the  Erasmus+ 3D Education project was not all snow, the landscape of National Park Koli and driving across an iced lake although that will be memorable.

The staff at Kummun Koulu, Outokumpu  organised a wonderful program within the school and also trips to the Art Museum in Joensuu and Sm4rtLab at the University of Eastern Finland. However snow sculpting for students and visiting teachers at the school was possibly the most original activity.

NCECA, PITTSBURGH

NCECA (National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts) in Pittsburgh lived up to all the craziness I was told to expect. With so much in the main program and all the associated exhibitions I only got to see a small amount. It is a broad church and difficult to navigate but on the other hand an important annual networking opportunity for US clay artists and educators.

Tom Lauerman and I presented a co-lecture entitled Clay, Computation, & Culture. Both of us have reputations as developers of clay 3D printers but for this talk we specifically chose to talk about the why rather than how – why it is important to be introducing computation into clay. Both of us agree that digital ways of working pose no threat to tradition but are an extension, an addon and want to see ways of mixing traditional and these new technologies and processes.

Danny Defelici of PotterBot had a trade stand at NCECA so it was good to meet and discuss the developments they are doing. Ronald Rael, who I had meet at BCB in Stoke have been working together and he was also at there. Ronald gave a lecture and was demonstrating on the PotterBot stand. They have developing a Scara Robot arm for printing big work and with Peter Pugger (who had the stand next door) intend to get constant clay feed for the Scara arm from a pugmill.

PENN STATE UNIVERSITY - PENNSYLVANIA

I would like to thank Tom Lauerman for the initial invitation to Penn State University as part of an ongoing research project of his into clay 3D printing and the use of computation in ceramics. As you will read below and above this invitation, as well as offering a rich period of collaboration between us developed into two workshops and two symposiums in two weeks.


While at Penn State the Stuckeman Center for Design Computing, part of the architecture school held its annual SCDC Flash Symposium for 2018. On the theme of Materiality + Computing this two-day event featured interdisciplinary presentations and workshops on generative design and material computation. The first day was dedicated to workshops so Tom Lauerman and I did a clay printing session while on the second day that consisted of presentations and I did my artist talk, The Form is in the Code.

THE FORM IS IN THE CODE

This is a recording of the presentation I did at the Flash Symposium for the Stuckeman Center of Design Computing at Penn State University, Pennsylvania.

BOISE STATE UNIVERSITY - IDAHO

Caroline Earley, Professor of Ceramics at Boise State University, Idaho saw that I was to attend the NCECA Conference in Pittsburgh so enquired whether I would first do a clay 3D printing workshop and visiting artist talk for them. They had the equivalent of a Chinese AnyCubic delta printer (made for plastic 3D printing) and had converted it to print in clay with a WASP printhead with large clay container that uses compressed air to feed the clay – also known as a Boilie Gun.

RCA - LONDON

Last summer the then head of ceramics at RCA Roderick Bamford (he has since returned to Australia) came and stayed as he wanted to talk through the choice of clay printers for RCA. At that point I had not worked on a LUTUM so could only talk from experience of WASP.

Rod had worked on a PotterBot in Australia and it was off his radar. Rod managed to find the budget to get a large WASP (left) and a LUTUM (right) for the RCA. As he then returned to Australia in November the RCA asked if I would set up the machines that I did.

'FLOW' - OLD BIG SCHOOL GALLERY, TONBRIDGE, KENT

Invited by artist and curator Emily Glass to participate in this exhibition, Flow aimed to explore the ways in which the physical materials that artists choose and use to create work influence and direct the Final outcome. The exhibition at the Old Big School Gallery in Tonbridge included sculpture, painting, photography, film, ceramics and installation. Emily wanted to explore the tension created between the intention of the artist and the potential of accident.

Artworks included the film Singularity by Solveig Settemsdal, paintings by Alexis Harding and Clare Price, an instillation by Harriet Hill, sculpture by Emily Glass and my ceramics. There is a link to the catalogue below and the film made of the exhibition to the right.elebrating the fact that

Exhibition Catalogue

ERASMUS+ 3D EDUCATION AT VAGENS VGS - SADNES
NORWAY

This was the third meeting of the schools Erasmus+ 3D Education program in the current two year cycle.  Held at the Vagen Upper Secondary School, Sadnes in South West Norway it was the first chance in 2018 for teachers from the seven participating school to feed back on progress and to look ahead on how 3D thinking and 3D printing will be included in the classroom.