A Tipping Point: Technology in Ceramics

A G N I P P I T T N I O P

Technology in Ceramics

ADAM CHAU

Michael Eden

Jenny Sabin

Adam Nathaniel Furman

Rael San Fratello

Olivier van Herpt and Sander Wassink

A G N I P P I T T N I O P

Technology in Ceramics

SEPTEMBER 23 – NOVEMBER 6, 2016 NORTHERN CLAY CENTER MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA CURATORS: MICHAEL ARNOLD AND HEATHER NAMETH BREN ESSAYIST: HEATHER NAMETH BREN EDITOR: ELIZABETH COLEMAN

Foreword / Note

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Foreword

Note

Sarah Millfelt Director

Michael Arnold Exhibitions Manager

After an exploration of emerging ceramic art, a closer look at the influences of clay makers, and an homage to the array of possibilities in clay with a floral-centric subject matter, Northern Clay Center ends the 2016 year of special exhibitions with examples of ceramic art from the new ceramic artist toolkit.

A Tipping Point: Technology in Ceramics brought to life examples of new approaches to making — with the power of a small factory, prototyping, rendering and altering on a computer — while bringing together ceramic artists, designers, and architects into a singular show and space.

© 2016 NORTHERN CLAY CENTER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE USED OR REPRODUCED IN ANY MANNER WHATSOEVER WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION, EXCEPT IN THE CASE OF BRIEF QUOTATIONS EMBODIED IN CRITICAL ARTICLES AND REVIEWS.

This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

FOR INFORMATION, WRITE TO: NORTHERN CLAY CENTER 2424 FRANKLIN AVENUE EAST MINNEAPOLIS, MN 55406 WWW.NORTHERNCLAYCENTER.ORG MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES FIRST EDITION, 2016 INTERNATIONAL STANDARD BOOK NUMBER 978-1-932706-40-2 UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED, ALL DIMENSIONS: HEIGHT PRECEDES WIDTH PRECEDES DEPTH.

This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund, a grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation Minnesota, and by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Additional funding for A Tipping Point: Technology in Ceramics comes from Continental Clay Company, George Reid, and the Windgate Charitable Foundation.

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A Tipping Point was the brainchild of Northern Clay Center’s exhibitions manager, Michael Arnold, and Heather Nameth Bren, member of NCC’s exhibitions committee, professor, NCC board member, and ceramic artist. The exhibition brought together a diverse cast of makers, including Adam Chau, Michael Eden, Adam Nathaniel Furman, Rael San Fratello (a collaboration between Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello), Jenny Sabin, and Olivier Van Herpt and Sander Wassink.

In conjunction with this exhibition, Ronald Rael visited NCC for a 2-week residency, during which time, this professor of architecture created new work for the exhibition, as well as participated in a conversation with NCC’s curators and fellow participating artist, Jenny Sabin. Rael and Tethon 3D, the printing company that generously agreed to provide 3D printing for one of the artists in the exhibition, jointly presented during a daylong workshop.

In addition to the generosity of the visiting artists, the curators, and Tethlon 3D, A Tipping Point was made possible by generous support and resources from many institutions and individuals. Many thanks to our loyal and long-time exhibition funders: Continental Clay Company, George Reid, and the Windgate Charitable Foundation. Also, Adrian Sassoon, London, generously shared Michael Eden’s work with Northern Clay Center.

Additionally, this activity was made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund, a grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation Minnesota, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Finally, thank you to Northern Clay Center’s exhibitions committee — Heather Nameth Bren, Kelly Connole, Ursula Hargens, Mark Pharis, and Robert Silberman, for enabling NCC’s exhibitions program to continue to challenge people’s perception and understanding of the ceramic arts, and for playing such a pivotal role in the vision and execution of NCC’s exhibition programming. Thank you as well to Michael Arnold, NCC’s exhibitions manager, and his exhibitions assistant, Brady McLearen, for the long hours, gorgeous installation, and enthusiasm.

Given the intersection of ceramics and new technologies — 3D printers, CNC routers, digitizers — Heather Nameth Bren and I had an exciting opportunity in curating A Tipping Point: Technology in Ceramics. We sought out makers and thinkers of varying professional backgrounds, disciplines, and experience in clay.

The resulting conversation about the burgeoning relationship between clay and new technologies was charged.

While the ‘now’ is indeed a tipping point, there was consensus that this is also just the beginning. The dialogue surrounding the potential of these technologies in the hands of artists, craftspeople, architects, and designers means the ceramics community will become that much richer as we welcome new voices and welcome back old voices.

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A Tipping Point: Technology in Ceramics

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Installation view.

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Michael Eden, Full Bloom, 2015, additive layer manufacturing from nylon material with soft mineral coating, No. 2 in an edition of 18 in various colors, 13.5” x 7.25” x 7.25”. Courtesy of Adrian Sassoon, London.

A Tipping Point: Technology in Ceramics

Essay

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A Tipping Point: Technology in Ceramics

Heather Nameth Bren

“Ceramics is man’s oldest technology.”

— Garth Clark, 2016 I recently attended a lecture titled, The Present Future of Ceramics, presented by ceramics aficionado Garth Clark. Clark discussed the shifting economy as ceramic production becomes designcentric, due in part to emerging technologies.¹ He celebrated the collaboration between the oldest technology — ceramics — and the freshest technologies — new digital tools — and illustrated how this collaboration has already begun to challenge many foregone assumptions about markets, industries, consumer behavior, and ideologies. By sheer coincidence, his slide lecture included many of the artists in the exhibition, A Tipping Point: Technology in Ceramics, which included Adam Chau, Adaptive Manufacturing (a collaboration between Olivier Van Herpt and Sander Wassink), Michael Eden, Adam Nathaniel Furman, Jenny Sabin of Jenny Sabin Studios, and Rael San Fratello (a collaboration between Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello).

During the lecture, Clark stated something that struck me as blatantly obvious, profoundly significant, and ironically relevant: “Ceramics is man’s oldest technology.” Reflecting on the statement, I identified with pride as an active participant in the ancient field of ceramics, but I also responded with pride to the legacy of innovation as a ceramic artist during a booming digital era when ceramics

is being rediscovered, in a sense, by architects, engineers, designers, and tinkerers. Even contemporary artists and related institutions are rediscovering this archaic language of humanity’s oldest technological material. Still more exciting is that this primitive material continues to find relevance as ceramics plays a role in shaping the future.

Innovation in both digital fabrication and virtual design of the ceramic avatar have expanded the breadth and reach of ceramics. Digital fabrication has created a new iteration of the machine aesthetic,2 impacting contemporary design.

Also, advances in design software and digital outputting methodologies have allowed for extreme precision and a beyond-the-hand form previously unattainable through traditional means. Software has contributed to the realization and visualization of form in ways never previously imagined. In other words, ceramics as a relevant creative medium is collaborating with cutting edge technology in a diversity of fields of study as the world is rapidly evolving.

Anticipating all of these converging factors, it is clear that all of this has a tremendous potential to impact the art and craft of ceramics. This begs, “Is ceramics on the eve of a conceptual re-birth?” Looking back to the last significant innovation to happen to the field of ceramics, during the Industrial Revolution when ceramics technology industrialized with the innovation of multiples via slipcasting, it appears

1 Garth Clark, “Present Future of Ceramics” (lecture presented by Northern Clay Center at the American Craft Council Library, Minneapolis, MN, June 23, 2016).

2 Hermann Muthesius, “Art and the Machine” in The Craft Reader, ed.

Glenn Adamson, trans. Peter Adamson (London: Berg Publishers, 2009): 111-114. First published 1902, Dekorative Kunst, Vol.6.

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A Tipping Point: Technology in Ceramics

so. Any time there is significant technological innovation, cultural thinking is affected. Hence, art is affected. So, maybe the tipping point is not in the actual use of technology in the field of studio ceramics, but maybe the conceptual reconsideration of the object and its means of production on every level.

As a community of makers, we need to contemplate our role at this critical juncture of a new industrial revolution, or what some also call the de-industrial revolution. The artwork in the exhibition, A Tipping Point: Technology in Ceramics, tackles the evolution of thinking that happens when art and new technology collide.

A Way of Making Reveals A Way of Thinking

The concept of technology affecting thinking is nothing new. Historians have long been aware of the significance of the unique object and its ability to communicate culture, process, technology, time, and place.

Looking back to the primitive roots of ceramics, the first ceramic object was formed as wet earth in the hand.

Through an immediate engagement with nature, humans were able to collaborate with nature in the most primal way — by hand-forming earth.

3 Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, trans. A.J. Underwood (New York: Penguin Adult, 2008). First published 1935.

The technology of water + earth + fire combined with hand-formedearth is the human manipulation of plastic material into a something new and original. The scientific process of vitrification mystically transforms pliable earth into permanent form.

The resulting handcrafted object contains an attribute born of the ritual of making; this quality is known

as aura. In the 1935 essay, on The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,3 philosopher and cultural critic Walter Benjamin used the terms ritual and aura to describe the spiritual quality of the handformed artwork. Aura is what the ceramic artist knows and testifies to through intimacy with the materials.

The ceramic artist cannot deny this primal language of materials.

The next major innovation in the evolution of the ceramic object was clay formed on a wheel. The banding wheel and/or throwing wheel contributed mechanical, centrifugal movement to the existing primitive hand-formed-earth technology.

Wheel-thrown objects are still created with direct force from the human hand, each object being a unique and authentic creation.

This process of forming ceramics is hand + machine, but the hand is still a dominant force for generation.

This collaboration with technology continues to explore the quality of aura as a primary goal.

The third major historical innovation in ceramic formation is slipcasting.

Slipcasting is a process of formation that favors reproduction over the authentic, original, hand-formed object. It is an innovation of duplication through the interaction of materials — plaster and deflocculated liquid clay. The impact of this technology revived the economy of the ceramic object by way of the produced copy. Although the human hand handles, fettles, and cleans the product, the human hand is not engaged in formation — the shaping of earth through physical engagement — of the object, technically. Issues of value,

Heather Nameth Bren

authenticity, and originality were and are continuously conceptually raised especially when compared to the hand-formed object.

Regardless, the lack of direct manipulation is pretty critical to understanding the separation of art from craft, according to Benjamin.

Benjamin calls this shift in formation, from human manipulation to machine manipulation, a shift in art from the ritual of making to the politics of making. In other words, art became primarily focused on the political, while craft practices continued to insist on the primacy of ritual. If you think about it, ceramic artists are always yammering on about the spiritual connection with their material, the physical knowledge and intimacy of material.

Ironically, the resistance in the craft traditions to collectively shifting primary focus away from the ritual of making has become a manifestation of a political position, confusing and segmenting the conversation of art and craft.

To summarize, if we connect the definition of art and craft to Benjamin’s ideas on how art evolved, the primary function of art is political through the vehicle of conceptual innovation. Craft’s primary function, on the other hand, is the generation of aura created innovatively within an understood construct (a.k.a. tradition).

Getting back to legacy of thought, to the same extent as the machine product flooded material culture, so did the persona of the studio potter as the demand for the ever more elusive aura was also increased. It is exactly here, at this moment in time,

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when the studio potter grew from resistance, that art and craft chose different outcomes. To continue to practice craft in this landscape meant to risk obsoletion or minimization.

Ceramics as art — as opposed to ceramics as craft — was introduced to the world by the revolutionary ceramic movement in 1960s California, with artists like Voulkos, Mason, Melchert, Arneson, Woodman, and many more. Each of these artists had a keen knowledge of the craft and history of ceramics, and yet they transcended the craft label by venturing into the world of the conceptual, validating the material and archetypal forms as language. This cohort of California ceramic artists liberated the ceramic artist to be either artist or artisan working within a newly legitimized modern material.

Some ceramic artists have successfully constructed a subculture that resists evolution and resists an understanding of art, while other members in the subculture embrace art and all of the politics of art. Ceramic artists as a whole continue to abide by this principle of aura, insisting that this is critical to an object’s authenticity and ultimately its value. In the end, rigid categorization, due to limited understanding of motive, history, and critical theory, perpetuates the supposedly dead art versus craft debate.

In fact, Clark declared the art and craft debate dead during the same lecture mentioned earlier. Yet, he acknowledged the hierarchy that exists between the technology of wheel+clay and the technology of

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A Tipping Point: Technology in Ceramics

plaster+clay, stating that he observed the preference of what is described as “warmth” from wheel-thrown objects versus the “coldness” of slipcast objects. Clark did leave room for the odd, “warm” slipcast object, however.

Perhaps the art-craft debate is alive within the construction of personal preference for technologies, like the preference for the wheel-thrown over the slipcast, as Clark mentioned.

Within ceramics communities, we perpetuate the art-craft debate and embrace an overlord-underdog status. Some fuel this argument by requiring human hand involvement and manipulation. The issue of hand involvement becomes a real issue when the maker’s hand is removed altogether, replaced by an outputting device. Yet none of these ways of making are better or worse. Each ceramic practice — hand, wheel, cast, and digitally fabricated — is valid as a technology and as a creative language.

4 Jonathan Keep, http://www.keep-art. co.uk/resume_statements.htm.

5 Sander Wassink, Adaptive Manufacturing: A Sensory Machine That Feels Its Environment, 2014 – ongoing. http://www.oliviervanherpt. com/adaptive-manufacturing/.

How will the introduction of a fourth ceramic category of making, digital additive manufacturing (a.k.a. 3D printed ceramics),4 impact the art and craft of the handmade object? Keeping in mind a selfconscious perspective that the 3D printed objects of our current age are perhaps the most infantile objects to some better adapted and more advanced future, we may need to make room for larger conceptual possibilities involving a foreign aesthetic, collaborative interdisciplinary practice, and new categories of classification like objects of the mind.

A Revolutionary Aesthetic

For starters, we can assume that 3D printing will challenge the aesthetics of the object. Earlier, I introduced the phrase, machine aesthetic, as proposed by German thinker Hermann Muthesius. This descriptor refers to the aesthetic shift that happened as machine processes emerged. The resulting “look” is the inevitable conclusion of a tool’s interaction with any given material.

This information is contained within the structure of the machined object and is reflective of the history of the object. In the case of virtual design and digital outputting via additive manufacturing, the resulting objects communicate a collaboration between the virtual and the real. This new way of realizing form in virtual space rather than in the mind allows for a new kind of object: pixelated, precise, and approaching perfection.

Adaptive Manufacturing is a collaboration between designers Olivier Van Herpt and Sander Wassink that explores external, environmental information that manifests as a new kind of object.

To generate this new object they “design scripts, which distill shapes and textures from external phenomena.”5 The once ephemeral is translated into a topographical surface on a biomorphic form.

The collaboration insists on the aura of the craft object, derived from the meta-intellect of this new kind of object.

Let’s just chew on the significance of this shift in the formation of concept from the visualization of the maker’s brain to the realization of form in virtual space. If you think about it, the mind space has materialized on

Heather Nameth Bren

the screen, in x, y, and z coordinates.

This mind space also has a virtual tool kit to generate and manipulate the concept further. The novelty of this new way of realization of concept has lead to the birth of a new kind of software-influenced virtual object.

The leap from the virtual object to the physical object is no small feat, nor should it be understood as one in the same. Virtual realization is a sandbox for ideation, while an outputting device generates the physical manifestation of the idea in real space. Regardless of the way an object is made, each creative act is birthed in the mind. Similarly, each impulse requires physical manifestation and a manner of realization.

This leap has always been a magical leap: from hallucination to image, from thought to structure, from observation to paint, from light to photograph, and now from mind to machine. Sure the hand might type, click, fuss, and adjust, but the brain has done the difficult work of formation by way of virtual space and avatar. The hand functions as an assistant to the machine versus the assumption that the machine or tool is an assistant to the hand.

The shift in the actualization of concept and formation raises more questions than answers. Why must we compare the hand-centric object to the mind-centric object?

Is it possible to conceive of a new classification of object type? Digital precision allows for the creation of the previously unattainable object.

The precision that is attainable in this binary-based software language has

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also contributed to a new aesthetic that has evolved beyond the maker’s hand. It seems essential then to allow for a new breed of forms and new archetypes yet unevolved.

Technology allows British artist Michael Eden to make what he calls “the impossible object.”

Understanding history and technology as lovers, Eden crafts objects modeled after classical, archetypal ceramic forms decorated with intricate and unfeasibly deep reliefs. The digital hybrid maker is liberated from the limitations of the hand. Eden articulates the commonality in thinking and in making, which happens as a direct result of the hand and the sense of touch, from the making that happens in the mind’s eye and asserts that technology is like any other craft: Ideas lead the way and…tools of one form or another need to be utilized in order to realize the idea as a tangible object.

There is a misconception that the ability to engage with new technologies doesn’t require a similar development of skills to that of learning any other craft.

The interaction with a virtual, onscreen object via a mouse requires the same conceptual leap of imagination as when a material is directly manipulated.6 The intellectual act of creating requires the same adaptability and sensitivity to design and material.

A Revolution in Participation

The intersection of emerging fields of practice and avant-garde thinking has attracted a new kind of creative

6 Michael Eden, “Q & A.,” download from http://www.michael-eden.com/about/, ©Adrian Sassoon, London, n.d.

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A Tipping Point: Technology in Ceramics

participant. No longer is the field of ceramics limited to the analog maker.

Artists and ceramicists have long identified with the label “maker,” though the term maker has evolved as a primary identifying label used to describe the new creative individual unbound by medium that includes “independent inventors, designers and tinkerers…[The term describes] a convergence of computer hackers and traditional artisans.”7 Eden is an example of this new kind of artist. With a background in studio pottery, he transitioned his career from self-described potter to maker.8 Artists have long called themselves makers, but this was secondary to their primary identifier, artist. The term maker affirms a new hybrid in the fractured family tree of the creative: artist, artisan, designer, and now maker.

7 Joan Voight, “Which Big Brands Are Courting the Maker Movement and Why: From Levi’s to Depot,” http:// www.adweek.com/news/advertisingbranding/which-big-brands-arecourting-maker-movement-andwhy-156315, March 17, 2014.

8 Michael Eden, “Q & A.,” download from http://www.michael-eden.com/about/, ©Adrian Sassoon, London, n.d.

9 Tim Bajarin, “Why the Maker Movement Is Important to America’s Future,” http://www.time.com/104210/ maker-faire-maker-movement/, May 14, 2014.

The concept of maker goes beyond tinkerers as this descriptor continues to evolve with the open source age of the Internet and is increasingly representative of the creative working in an interdisciplinary practice: the architect, the cellular biologist, the engineer, the bio-engineer, the designer, the mathematician, the physicist.9 Noteworthy is the relationship that this new participant has with clay.

This creative likely inadvertently found ceramics as a possible material because of its worldwide ubiquity.

As a result, the advantageous physical attributes of clay have also enticed new engagement with a more democratic and inclusive creative — without the hang-ups of material legacy and hierarchy.

These creatives work in other

mediums — plastics, cells, bioplastics, and proprietary materials — as an interdisciplinary approach to learn from the experience of the other. This new participant has an interdisciplinary, collaborative practice with a new skill set and new curiosities.

One such participant is architect, artist, maker, practitioner, and adaptive materials researcher Jenny Sabin. Sabin is a conceptual materials researcher, the sole proprietor of Jenny Sabin Studio, and the founder of Sabin Design Lab at Cornell. This integrative practitioner highlights the value and necessity of having intersecting “bodies of knowledge” and observes the thread of continuity that loops throughout various disciplines. Her practice is dependent on the interaction with experts in other fields of research. Sabin is representative of a more diverse participant that is emerging on the scene and is responding to new ways of engaging the physical world through emerging methodologies.

The forms generated from her collaborative research embody a similar intelligence to an enlightened form and more intelligent materials and design. Nature on a micro level, specifically bone density and cellular networks, informs the structure of Sabin’s Polybrick. The interaction with light, minimal weight, and integrated dovetail joints allow the Polybrick to anticipate a larger structure. The concept of Gestalt seems to be at the core of Sabin’s forms. Her sculptures reflect a more integrative way of designing, thinking, and being.

Heather Nameth Bren

A Revolution in Thinking

Throughout human history, technological innovation and interdisciplinary collaboration have been catalysts for new ideas. With additive manufacturing technology in its infancy, is it possible to conceive of how our collective thinking will change?

A Tipping Point exhibition participant, Adam Nathaniel Furman, creates futuristic landscapes born of innovation and collaboration.

His miniature-scale, saturated architectural forms represent a new landscape: hopeful, integrated, and self-aware. Furman, a multidisciplinary architect, has illustrated this democracy in thinking in the artwork titled, Gerusalemme (Jerusalem in Italian). In this artwork, Furman juxtaposes various architectural styles commonly referenced in Italian Renaissance paintings.10 The artwork is a series of three identical towers connected on a common triangular base. It is a busy bright-yellow form reflective of hyperactive new media and eccentric fashion. Furman democratically resolves the complex compositions of patterns and space, a metaphor of inclusion realized. The sculpture explores the conceptual relationship between various significant historical architectural innovations referenced in the physical form of the segments.

A Revolution of the Hand

It is important to remember that the digital age is not an age that is against the hand, the human touch, or humanity in general. It is instead, a language reflective of and evolving from the change in human thinking in relation to an evolving digital reality.

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The ceramic artworks included in A Tipping Point negate the employment of the hand almost all together. Ceramic designer Adam Chau tackles the spiritual attributes of the human hand versus its digital surrogate, a conversation rooted in the aforementioned aura. Chau ironically designed a series of handshaped plates modeled after his own hands. The form is slipcast from a mold made of a CNC-routed master form. The surface of the plates are digitally decorated, as an invitation to consider the possibility that the mechanical arm is still an extension of the artist and can therefore contain the attribute of aura.

Exhibited with the wall installation are a series of traditional animalhair paintbrush heads adapted to a plotter. The open-palm plate form is decorated with cobalt blue calligraphic marks. The brushstrokes are varied from organic, to rigid, to occasionally unintelligible. The path of the brushstroke is digitally identical and is generated using the lines in the hand used in palm reading. The mark is created with a digital arm holding a traditional artisan brush loaded with varying degrees of pigment saturation on the brush. The result is a series of marks that are far from identical, addressing skepticism, truth, and belief. The artwork makes the comparison between old and new thinking as related to superstition and culture, as well as the old and new thinking about a conceptual hand.

A Call for Change

It is precisely here, when thinking about the hand, that a segment of the ceramics community responds to the results of the digitally assisted

10 Adam Nathaniel Furman, email to author, September 12, 2016.

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A Tipping Point: Technology in Ceramics

form with ambivalence, curiosity, value judgments, and fear. “What about the handmade object?!” What about it?! Just because there is a new method of forming an object does not make another method of forming invalid. The hand, the wheel, and the mold are all valid methodologies that collaborate with and predetermine form. Consider that one should employ the technology that is most appropriate for the realization of concept and form.

Additionally, the invention of a new method of forming material does not de-legitimize the cultural significance of the visual language that evolved with various forming methodologies.

Rather, like Abstract Expressionist painter Jackson Pollock, I propose changing the perspective on new technologies. He claimed: New needs need new techniques.

And the modern artists have found new ways and new means of making their statements... the modern painter cannot express this age, the airplane, the atom bomb, the radio, in the old forms of the Renaissance or of any other past culture.11

11 Jackson Pollock, “Quotes,” http:// www.jackson-pollock.org/quotes.jsp.

12 Ronald Rael, Artist talk and discussion panel (Northern Clay Center, Northern Clay Center Library, September 22, 2016).

An excellent example of this kind of thinking about new ways and new means is the collaboration between formally trained architects Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello. Their collaborations, Rael San Fratello and Emerging Object, focus on applied architectural research inspired by the ingenuity of ancient adobe and rammed earth structures, in pursuit of the ideal materials and the ideal form. With twenty-first century technological potential, Rael San Fratello hybridize the material

wisdom of early humans with the insightful understanding that the hut was never primitive.12 Their hybrid thinking is a direct result of an age of information overload and the resulting hybridized culture.

Considering the potential of the newly possible object, Rael San Fratello explores this emerging field through unconventional means. Discovering the limitations of this emerging technology, the collaboration intentionally seeks out mistakes. These mistakes manifest in digital code errors that impact the path of the printer nozzle; in other words, the mistakes define the otherwise obvious form, pushing and pulling the surface like a knitted structure. Another “mistake” that is explored in the vessel-hut forms is clay’s downward response to gravity and how this is counterintuitive to an upright additive structure. However, gravity is dealt with as a collaborator and is embraced as an attribute of the material. In this pursuit of exploring materials and considering form from a new perspective, this team has expanded potential for innovative building materials and designs.

The artworks selected for this exhibition are reflective of the idealistic sentiment that we are better together. The artwork is hopeful, optimistic, and naively curious.

Maybe the “tipping point” is a transformation from ignorance to enlightenment, exclusion to inclusion as a means of ending the infighting and transcending the limitations of the individual. There can no longer be attitudes championing either the

Heather Nameth Bren

idea of “engaging the new” or the strict celebration of the “preservation of past.” One approach is not valid over the other. Art can survive without craft and vice versa in the long run. Art and craft must coexist and evolve into a more generative, inclusive practice, and a lesscommodified, elitist practice.

Design for a better world.

Peace.

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Adam Chau

Palm Plates Palm Plates are a part of the Digital Calligraphy series that uses handmade brushes on a CNC (Computer Numeric Controlled) machine. The programmed toolpath used on these plates is never altered, meaning that the movement for the brushstroke is the same throughout each piece, but since the handmade tool is different every time, the stroke is different.

The plates were formed using a lasercut template and a pie-mold technique, where a slab of clay was formed in between two flat molds.

The form references two hand silhouettes and the strokes represent palm lines, a metaphor for how unique tools are like unique people and how individuality can create beauty/spontaneity/creativity within a larger system.

This hybrid system of using handmade tools within a digital environment brings a new way of working to both industry and studio practices. Mid-level production allows for a streamlined workflow without losing the integrity of nuanced design/craft decisions and makes for a smarter object.

A Tipping Point: Technology in Ceramics

Adam Chau

Adam Chau, a ceramic designer residing in Port Chester, New York, has a background in studio ceramics, with a Master of Design from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

He is currently the program manager at the Clay Art Center in Port Chester,

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New York. His most recent project, Digital Calligraphy, investigates the hybridization of handcraft and digital technology. He has shown at the Salone di Mobile at Rossana Orlandi in Milan, Italy, and the NADA art fair in New York City.

Adam Chau, Palm Plates, 2016, slab-molded from laser-cut template, decorated with handmade brush on CNC machine, porcelain, glaze, stain, 11’ x 11’ x 1”.

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Michael Eden

Additive Manufacturing Michael Eden is a maker whose work sits at the intersection of craft, design, and art, exploring contemporary themes through the redesign of historical, culturally familiar objects, utilizing digital manufacturing and materials.

An MPhil research project at the Royal College of Art allowed him to explore how his interest in digital technology could be developed and combined with the craft skills that he had acquired during his previous experience as a potter.

Additive Manufacturing investigates the relationship between hand and digital tools. Eden is particularly interested in how the tacit knowledge and sensibility to the 3-dimensional object, developed through extended ceramic practice, can influence the approach to creating objects using digital technology.

As a member of a unique generation that has bridged the digital divide, he firmly believes that he is able to contrast and compare life before and after the invention of the personal computer. For Eden, it is a matter of choice, as life at the beginning of the 21st century has furnished makers with a wider choice of tools, materials, and processes with which to realize ideas and concepts. All have their place; the new does not replace the old; the key is to make appropriate use of them.

A Tipping Point: Technology in Ceramics

Michael Eden

Michael Eden was a professional potter until 2006, when he changed the direction of his work after pursuing a Masters degree at the Royal College of Art. His work has been exhibited in England, Russia, Slovenia, Germany, Italy, Poland, and the US, among other countries. Eden

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is represented by Adrian Sassoon, London. He has received numerous awards, such as Fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, and most recently, the Cumbria Life Culture Award — Designer Maker of the Year.

Michael Eden, from left to right: Curved Blue Bloom, 2015, additive layer manufacturing from nylon material with soft mineral coating, No. 1 in an edition of 18 in various colors, 15” x 11.5” x 7.25”; Tall Yellow Bloom, 2012, additive layer manufacturing from nylon material with soft mineral coating, No. 3 in an edition of 12 in various colors, 16” x 8” x 8”.

Courtesy of Adrian Sassoon, London.

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Adam Nathaniel Furman

Gerusalemme Gerusalemme —Jerusalem in Italian — is so named as it was designed to be a physical realization of the depictions of Jerusalem that are featured so often in the backgrounds of early Renaissance Italian paintings. Taking buildings that the artists were acquainted with from their European home towns, they would extrude them to fanciful proportions and heights, and by giving them a golden hue, render them exotic, and yet familiar enough, to be the inspiring image of a land and time worth longing after. Gerusalemme is a return to the representations of an imaginary past through the physical technology of the future.

A Tipping Point: Technology in Ceramics

Adam Nathaniel Furman

Adam Nathaniel Furman, educated in fine art and architecture, works as a designer in London and pursues his creative interests through product design, writing, architecture, and teaching. He has been recognized in many artistic fields, and recently

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received the UK Rome Prize for Architecture in 2014 – 2015, and the Blueprint Award for Design Innovation in 2014. He is a founding director of the Madam Studio and Saturated Space.

Adam Nathaniel Furman, Gerusalemme, 2016, 3D printed stoneware, glaze, 24” x 19” x 19”. Courtesy of Tethon 3D.

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Jenny Sabin

Polymorph Swath Included in the exhibition are 3D printed molds, cast ceramic components, and drawings for the Polymorph project, a large spatial structure composed of 1400 digitally produced and hand cast ceramic modules. Polymorph showcases the next steps in the integration of complex phenomena towards the design, production, and digital fabrication of ceramic form in the design arts and architecture. This work includes advances in digital technology, digital fabrication, advanced geometry, and material practices in arts, crafts, and design disciplines. Techniques in parametric and associative environments are incorporated with feedback derived from material constraints as well as performance assessments. The project interrogates the physical interface between networking behavior and fabricated material assemblies, in order to address novel applications of non-standard ceramic components, towards the production of 3D-textured prototypes and systems.

Credits: Jenny Sabin Studio Architectural Designer and Artist: Jenny E. Sabin Design and Production Team: Martin Miller, Jillian Blackwell, Jin Tack Lim, Liangjie Wu, Lynda Brody, Ngaire Stuart-Gongora, David Rosenwasser On view as part of the 9th ArchiLab, FRAC Centre, OrlĂŠans, France.

This project is funded jointly by Jenny Sabin Studio, the Pew Fellowships in the Arts, and the PCCW AffinitoStewart Grant at Cornell University.

A Tipping Point: Technology in Ceramics

Jenny Sabin

Jenny Sabin operates Jenny Sabin Studio LLC, based in Ithaca, New York. Her studio investigates the intersections of architecture and science, and applies insights and theories from biology and mathematics to the design, fabrication, and production of material structures. Her studio

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collaborates with scientists and engineers and employ architects, designers, and artists. They have had various collaborations with clients such as Nike Inc., Cooper Hewitt Design Museum, the American Philosophical Society Museum, the Exploratorium, and the Frac Centre.

Wall: Jenny E. Sabin, Polymorph Swath Drawing, 2013.

Left pedestal: Jenny E. Sabin, PolyBrick, 2014. A Project by Sabin Design Lab, Cornell University: Design and Production Team: Martin Miller, Nicholas Cassab.

Center pedestal: Jenny E. Sabin, Polymorph 3D Printed Mold, 2013.

A Project by Jenny Sabin Studio: Design and Production Team: Martin Miller, David Rosenwasser.

Right pedestal: Jenny E. Sabin, Polymorph Cast Ceramic Components, 2013.

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Rael San Fratello

GCODE.Clay GCODE.Clay explores the themes of repetition, and rote action — a defining peril of modernity. In this project, the unpredictability is the fundamental aspiration of the object making. Patterns emerge and disappear in the variations of the experiments explored. In addition to vessels, a series of experiments in ceramic wall cladding assemblies were explored as well. Each assembly is hung using custom 3D printed hardware, and they serve as prototypes for ceramic cladding systems for building.

In each object, texture, pattern, and surface make the objects tactile, and gather light and shadow in beautiful ways. Architecture, lighting, and pottery all come to mind when considering the objects through several scales. Ceramic becomes soft to the eye, dynamic, with detail that could not be achieved by hand — yet the hand of the digital designer is present in every artifact.

A Tipping Point: Technology in Ceramics

Rael San Fratello

Rael San Fratello, a studio collaboration between Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello, focuses on applied architectural research.

Encompassing every aspect of architecture, the team “studies architecture, teaches architecture,

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talks about architecture, and makes drawing, images, and full-scale-study models that evoke and question architecture.” They have explored numerous materials through the 3D printing process, and recently ventured into printing with clay.

Ronald Rael & Virginia San Fratello, GCODE.Clay, 2016, 3D printed porcelainious stoneware, dimensions vary.

Left: Ronald Rael’s 3D printer with recently printed form, 2016, porcelainious stoneware.

Far left: Ronald Rael’s 3D printer with in-progress form, 2016, porcelainious stoneware.

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Olivier Van Herpt & Sander Wassink

Adaptive Manufacturing Adaptive Manufacturing, a collaborative project by Sander Wassink and Olivier Van Herpt, began in 2014. An essential part of their concept is to highlight the production process. Adaptive Manufacturing takes as its point of departure the question of how technological production has replaced the craftsman and thus removed all traces of human and local influence.

At the foundation of every product, there is the production process.

When we replaced the craftsmen by machines, we lost the translation of local influences into our products.

What if our machines could become more sensory? What if the machine could sense the local environment and incorporate it into the production process?

This research looks into ways we could regain that lost connection with the production of objects. To do so, we designed scripts that distill shapes and textures from external phenomena. External information, measured by sensors, is eventually translated into specific behaviors of the printer through software. You could call it a sensory machine that feels its environment, translating input into a document of a specific time, location, or raw material.

However the machine does not operate autonomously. Indeed the designers’ role is about selecting and distilling only certain features from the complexity that surrounds us.

A Tipping Point: Technology in Ceramics

Olivier Van Herpt & Sander Wassink

Olivier Van Herpt and Sander Wassink work collaboratively to produce the body of work “Adaptive Manufacturing,” an ongoing experiment in which they research the relationship between the machine and its context. Van Herpt, a designer based in the Netherlands, produces his own 3D printers to explore the

possibilities of 3D printing in clay.

Wassink, born in 1984 in Harlingen, the Netherlands, graduated in 2011 from the Design Academy in Eindhoven and has since worked as a freelance designer and artist. In 2013, Wassink was one of the finalists in the “Dutch Design Award – Mini Young Designer” category.

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Olivier Van Herpt & Sander Wassink, Adaptive Manufacturing, 2016, 3D printed stoneware, tallest form 22” high.

A Tipping Point: Technology in Ceramics

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Northern Clay Center

Northern Clay Center’s mission is the advancement of the ceramic arts.

Its goals are to promote excellence in the work of clay artists, to provide educational opportunities for artists and the community, and to encourage the public’s appreciation and understanding of the ceramic arts.

Staff Sarah Millfelt, Director Michael Arnold, Exhibitions Manager Brady McLearen, Exhibitions Assistant Board of Directors Lynne Alpert Bryan Anderson Nan Arundel Mary K. Baumann Craig Bishop, Chair Heather Nameth Bren Lann Briel Robert Briscoe Phil Burke Linda Coffey Nancy Hanily-Dolan Bonita Hill Sally Wheaton Hushcha Christopher Jozwiak Patrick Kennedy Mark Lellman Brad Meier Alan Naylor Rick Scott T Cody Turnquist Ellen Watters

Director Emerita Emily Galusha Honorary Directors Kay Erickson Warren MacKenzie Legacy Directors Andy Boss Joan Mondale

Unless otherwise noted, all photographs are by Peter Lee. Design by Joseph D.R. OLeary, VetoDesign.com

2424 Franklin Avenue East Minneapolis, Minnesota 55406 612.339.8007 www.northernclaycenter.org