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

The researcher continued developing this proposal for an exhibition and
workshops that would demonstrate the impact of digital technologies on
contemporary art and design practice. This would consist of works 'not limited
by genre' as far as they responded to the legacy of sculptural tradition 70 in some
way. The vision was to solicit works that would represent a broad range of
techniques and creative practices.
In October, 2004 the researcher began the current research project. The
researcher had responded to the call for a visual artist/designer to undertake a
practice-based PhD examining the notion that new creative opportunities exist
for designers/artists because of recent developments in 3D imaging, rapid
prototyping and rapid manufacturing technologies. From this point onwards
the research work and the proposed exhibition would continue to converge and
eventually overlap. Early in 2005 Fast-uk submitted an application for
£36,600 71 to Arts Council England’s (ACE) grants for individuals, organisations
and national touring. This proposal had the working title: ‘Intersculpt:uk 05 -
Perimeters, Boundaries and Dimensions’ 72 . Specifically the request was for
funds to support:
• a physical exhibition of works that utilise diverse technologies specifically
in relation to 3D/sculptural practice, design and architecture by up to 17
regional, national and international practitioners
• a series of workshops/training days for artists
• a panel discussion about how technological innovation in 3D
visualisation and manufacturing is impacting on the disciplines of
sculpture, architecture and industrial design and how the convergence of
these disciplines has been enabled and accelerated by the development
and proliferation of computer visualisation and manufacturing processes
The exhibition was to contain a mixture of existing works (selected from an
open call process) and new works (from practitioners selected and invited to
participate by the curatorial team in relation to curatorial theme/brief). These
proposals were to form the basis for a panel discussion event. The exhibition
70 Fast-uk was founded in 1998, originally to support sculptors working with computer technologies.
71 Completed by the researcher and Cezanne Charles.
72 The researcher had drafted a paper titled ‘Perimeters, Boundaries, Borders: Post-Objects in
the Emergent Field’ on 06/12/2004. The use of ‘Dimensions’ in the title was chosen to make
some distinction from this paper which ended up being submitted as an abstract for the
Computer-Aided Industrial Design & Conceptual Design (CAID&CD) Conference at Delft
University of Technology (TUDelft). This paper was later published (MARSHALL and
PENGELLY, 2005a)
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