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Portrait
Landscape
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100
Portrait
Landscape
Yes
Yes
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Yes
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In our Auckland workshops a soft spherical vessel of glass is carefully mouth-formed. As this bubble cools, a ball of molten glass is placed atop its open mouth and a bespoke, digitally-formed tool plunged into its malleable core.
This is an action that demands equal measures of force and delicacy: executed in the precious seconds that precede the cooling and solidification of that toffee-like glass, the tool’s blades extrude and stretch it into the crystalline form at the heart of Torchon.
The piece is finished with a wafer-thin bespoke LED lamp, suspended from a pair of super-fine wires. Filled briefly with an etching liquid, the roughened surface of Torchon’s inner form conceals the LED source while catching and diffusing its output. A soft, crystalline filament results, suspended impossibly inside its delicate bubble and glowing with an inner light.
We are convinced that digital technology is at its most interesting when applied to analogue process, and at its most potent in the service of humane, sensual affect. Torchon probes this conviction, seeking to draw from both glass and light a new kind of character and tactility.