Hot Nights: The Intersection of Traditional Systems of Making and New Technologies
Hot Nights is weekly programming for the community of the Rhode Island School of Design supported by the Glass Department and the Division of Foundations. Hot Nights promotes collaborative making, creates opportunities for interdisciplinary learning and exposes the community to the possibilities of glass as a material. For the Fall 2013/2014, collaborative projects, workshops and demonstrations built around the tradition of glassmaking were executed within the theme, History of Glass Technology: demonstrations of time and place. This programming demonstrated techniques, processes, forms, and styles unique to a geographical location and period, and significant in the evolution of glassmaking. Collaborative experiments with digital fabrication experts and workshops coalesced with traditional demonstrations to explore how traditional systems of making intersect with new technologies. Several collaborative projects will be presented: Robotic Glass casting, the Glass Robotics Lab (both collaborations with Nathan King) and Advanced Computation: Digital Fabrication (a collaboration with Eduardo Duarte). These workshops are examples of innovation that can occur at the intersection of art, design, technology and physics. With an advanced tacit knowledge of material properties, I am able to collaborate with digital technology experts to direct how processes can be manipulated using emerging fabrication processes. Instead of a technology-driven approach, we can approach emerging digital fabrication from a place of profound material understanding. Such works shops are evidence that the traditional technical arts will not be replaced by digital fabrication, instead, the technical arts will help to drive and support the direction of future making.
Critic, Division of Experimental and Foundation Studies and Division of Fine Arts
Rhode Island School of Design
Stefanie Pender received her BS from Cornell University and her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Her interdisciplinary background is conducive to experimental approaches in material and process. She analyzes systems using empirical techniques and computational methodologies and then attempts to manipulate the behavior of these systems into sculptural form. She is interested in the modulation between synthetic and natural processes. Pender’s current research inquiries are the manipulation of light in space, the emulation of geologic formations, and digital fabrication techniques using glass. She is the co-founder of the Glass Robotics Laboratory.
She is a recent recipient of a Fulbright Grant in Italy, where she apprenticed with master craftsmen to experience the passage of tacit glassmaking knowledge. She has exhibited and lectured internationally, most notably in New York, Providence, Seoul, Sofia, and Venice.
