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

37. How would you identify the community of practice or discipline
that you most closely relate to?
Design I guess would be the one that’s closest. There are a few that might be
called art pieces, but it’s still a piece of design more than art. I wouldn’t do
something that’s purely sculpture, there would be some function there even if it
wasn’t its primary objective so design.
38. How would you define the relationship between your work and
its audience?
I never really think of selling anything. I don’t think of myself as a
designer/maker. The people who buy it would be buying it from a third party. I
see them as an audience and I want to amuse and interest this audience and I
want them to want the stuff, or at least appreciate it in some way. I see them as
an audience. I guess I’d hope they’d be consumers and buyers, but I don’t see
them in those terms - as punters to do X, Y and Z.
It’s in a magazine or a gallery. A magazine primarily, I guess. It depends on the
piece and the future of the technology. It’s unrealistic to expect everyone to own
it at the moment because of the way the technology is. In the past, pre-digital
times I designed things which were affordable, so I don’t see why that can’t be
the case again.
39. Do you think there is a trend towards an emerging, hybrid
discipline?
40. If so, what role if any does technology play in this?
Yes, I think there are definite opportunities there. The fact that there’s a
commonality and we’re all working in similar ways…if we all move to digital
production and we are all exchanging files...well, I was making a fatuous remark
earlier really when I was saying well “does this make me a ceramicist.” Well in
the same way that I’m here on a weekend which is primarily about ceramics and
I could easily produce things in ceramics. Now I couldn’t if we were working
conventionally. The idea that I could produce some whacky shapes, but walking
into the clay shop and saying; “I’m a ceramicist now” would be absolutely
ridiculous. Whereas the idea that I could produce a shape and manufacture it
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