“Cutting through disciplines, our invited speakers will shed light on glass from multiple, often complementary perspectives. An archeologist will review three thousand years of glass making, an art historian a thousand years of stained glass from the Romanesque period to the present. An architect considers light through glass as science and poetry; a physicist grapples with dislocations, and with them glass relaxing, flowing. A historian of science and a chemist report jointly on the deciphering of ancient texts with a kiln at hand; a computational materials scientist simulates the deformation, the fracture of glass. Guided by a visual artist, we follow the primal energy of a glass making workshop feeding the fancy of contemporary artists; then conclude as we must with a critical theorist questioning “the very idea of a medium that transposes an immediacy beyond mediation”. Part hall of mirrors, part kaleidoscope, and you the listener, the virtual glass maker, assembling a mosaic as you probe the heart of the matter, the probe the heart of the matter, the heart of glass.”
Resource submitted by Helen Lee