John James Marshall thesis.pdf - OpenAIR @ RGU - Robert Gordon ...

Since 2002, the researcher has also been working with US-based public artist,
Malcolm Cochran. The researcher’s role was to create digital visualisations,
renderings and construction drawings of Cochran’s projects. These included:
Hudson River Park, New York City; The Ohio Supreme Court Building and
Goodale Park, Columbus, Ohio; and Changhua National University campus in
Taiwan.
The researcher’s practice is located across art and design disciplines in both
industrial and cultural contexts. This practice was initially located within a fine
art (sculpture) context but has expanded to involve the use of computer-based
technologies in consumer product development, artist-architect collaborations
and curating exhibitions featuring practitioners that make use of computerbased
tools. The current research proposition is informed by this crossdisciplinary
experience.
1.2 Rationale for the research
The rationale for this study has emerged from the researcher’s professional
practice. This practice has involved the use of various computer-based tools
within several contexts. This previous experience suggested the current
research proposition that the use of these technologies might enable new
models of practice that yield a greater integration between the 3D art and design
disciplines. The aim of this study is to establish a clearer understanding of the
use of computer-based tools in object-making within art and design practice.
The focus of the research is to explore and evaluate work happening across
traditional disciplines through the use of common digital technologies. The
researcher expects that this will help to find out if the work being produced in
this manner suggests a trend towards a new hybrid model of 3D art and design
practice.
This research is important now because the art and design disciplines are
experiencing discontinuities with previous models of academic and professional
practice arising out of increasing globalisation and the spread of new
information-based economic paradigms. Computer-based tools are implicated
as both cause of and potential solution to these issues. These changes are
themselves responses to greater changes taking place on a worldwide scale. The
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