Image: Capacitive touch sensors created with glass and electroformed copper
Explorations combining glass and emerging digital technologies - an Internet of Glass Things
The desire to investigate interactivity with glass grew out of my search for new ways to engage and affect viewers. Creating a sense of a living presence and animacy is one way of doing this, Concerns for 'play' and 'playfulness', for a body-centred, rather than solely visual engagement, also run through my practice, informing imagery, performance, and structure.
I coined the term ‘Internet of Glass Things’, or ‘IoGT’, as a term for glass blended with computational materials, equivalent to ‘e-textiles’, ‘smart textiles’, ‘paper circuits’, ‘smart jewelry’. ‘wearables’ etc. During my PhD (Towards an Internet of Glass Things: glass artworks as digitally communicating objects), I investigated the expressive potential of blending glass and other art materials with microcontrollers, sensors and conductive traces to trigger audio, moving image, lighting effects and connect with data. I blend the qualities of glass with the capabilities of electronics for creating interactions and incorporating media in order to create new kinds of artwork that can communicate a wide range of narratives.
You can can see more about my creative journey, work in progress and experiments in glass and technologies, new and old, by visiting my Instagram @lizwaughmcmanus
She’s got the wrong end of the Stick …
Interactive artwork (Click image to watch a video and learn more)
Ground Up residency
GroundWork Gallery
On this residency I focused on the extraction of silica, the raw material for my main artistic medium, glass. Silica features in multiple ways in my practice, from the silica in the moulds I make for glass casting, to the silica in the glass itself, the use of actual flints in artwork and even, in my interactive installations, in the silica used in silicon chips inside microcontrollers.
Please click on the images to learn more.
When We Touch Again
Click on image for details
Lockdown Walks
Interactive drawings (Click image for details)