Cambridge 7th to 9th September
Presenting Author:
Saulo Alvarado
<jefeestudios@esvidrio.es>
article posted 21 Apr 2015
Saulo Alvarado
I was born in Segovia (Spain). I earned a BA of History of Art (1997-2001) and MA
of Cultural Heritage Preservation from USEK (2001-2002) and MA of Philosophy from
Madrid UNED (2003-2005). Between 1997 and 2002, I was scholarship holder of the
SEK Foundation.
Currently, I am completing my PhD studies in Philosophy. In 2006
I moved to San Ildefonso (Segovia) to fill the position of the Head of Studies at the
Higher Education Institution of Glass (Fundación Centro Nacional del Vidrio). From
2006 to 2010, I worked as Educational Expert Consultant at Spanish Ministry of
Education in order to create the New Curriculum of BA studies in Glass Design.
Since
2008, I have been working as Educational Expert Consultant at Spanish Ministry of
Labour in order to elaborate Glass Professional Qualifications and Certificates of
Professional Standards. I am currently member of the EGE project (European Glass
Experience). The EGE project objective is to support Glass Art both as European
Common Heritage and as a platform for innovation by visual artists and designers
(www.egeglass.eu).
Experiments with Light and Glass: Art, Aesthetics and Technology
Saulo Alvarado* & Mª Concepción Juárez
Higher Education Institution of Glass (S. Ildefonso, Spain)
This paper examines artworks that experiment with Glass and Light, in the last twenty years, using them beyond their conventional application. More specifically, we focus on the way these works could tell us something about the relationship between Light and Space.
Based on Contemporary Continental Philosophy' view of Space as something more than a vacuum and homogeneous structure that exists independently of things, we analyze James Carpenter Design Associate?s ?Light Matters: Glass beyond transparency?; Susan Liebold?s installation ?Badenar Wald? or Teresa Almeida?s works with luminescent glass enamels, among others (EGE Artist), as examples of experimental artworks that use technology to experiment with Light, Space and Place, outside of their common representation.
Contemporary Continental Philosophers work theoretically with a concept of Light and Space that produces new visions of Glass Art. For Continental Thought in order to understand Space we need to abandon subject-object framework, instead adopting a model of aesthetics, which integrates different spaces together. This paper examines how a set of artistic experiments with Light and Glass modify our concepts of Space and Place, providing new opportunities to aesthetically experience.
In the later Eighties, Continental Philosophers' work took a turn, marked by ephemeralness, more attention to communication processes and associativeness. This makes them an ideal theoretical framework to be encountered with the experimental art described in this paper, with its emphasis on pushing technologies beyond their usual function. There is thus association emergent in both experiments in philosophy and experimental glass art, which could provide a new way to understand Space.