Currents - Digital Ceramics

the old with the new

Currents was an experiment in working electronics into the physical structure of a pot. A great interest of mine is the physical ramifications of digital artifacts. This pot was designed digitally in Rhino, then 3D printed. Then, a low-fire luster glaze was used for its conductivity. An Arduino runs digital code to power the LED “display” on the front of the piece. Rather than run wires through the piece, the glaze is the wires. A low current runs through the gold lines where wires are soldered on either end to bridge the electric current. Because of the low melting point of the glaze, soldering the wires to the glaze was quite difficult, as it requires very fast soldering to melt the solder but not the glaze.

This piece shouldn’t exist. What I mean by that is it was made entirely ethereally, and yet there is a physical artifact left behind. It displays images in a random way which are intended to be ambiguous and captivating, like an interface communicating in a language we don’t understand. It is bridging a gap, but not completely.