Dissemination of results

Through the establishment of the triangulation framework I have attempted to supply a trustworthy array of viewpoints to accompany the qualitative empirical material; consequently, the results of the explorations have been disseminated through several sources including: two juried exhibitions, a design talk, a lecture, a conference paper, a magazine article, contact to several businesses and a series of teaching obligations.

Juried exhibitions

The participation in the juried exhibitions has been a complementary way of receiving feedback on the subject matter of the project.

By submitting the epistemic artifacts to juried exhibitions they have been judged as

Recycle. About Sustainability in Glass Craft & Design ● Maria Sparre-Petersen ● KADK 2016

173 works of craft or design. This has been for

the sake of receiving evaluation of the artistic merit of the work, even if the objects are considered epistemic artifacts in the context of the research.

“The Spring Exhibition” at Charlottenborg Kunsthal

“The Spring Exhibition” at Charlottenborg Kunsthal is the leading juried exhibition in Denmark and attracts 6-800 international applicants, of which 70 – 10 are accepted.

The Jury is also international and feature new artists every year.

The epistemic artifacts submitted and accepted for “The Spring Exhibition” were titled Epistemic Artifact CK2_2015_11 and Epistemic Artifact CK4_2015_11. These titles were made up to communicate that the pieces were samples rather than works of art.

It was not communicated that they were made from recycled container glass, to avoid biases based on ethical preferences and instead get an evaluation based on the formal aesthetic content of the pieces. Based on the participation in this venue, I assume it is safe to claim that these two works have proven successful judged by the merits of aesthetic innovation.

“GlassLab” at Officinet

Officinet is an exhibition space run by the Danish Craft and Design Association (DKoD). The work submitted for the Officinet exhibition space consisted of the entire collection of epistemic artifacts. The conceptual framework orchestrated by the exhibition committee was to present a series

of four projects as work in progress, over a period of one month where my project, titled

“GlassLab”, was one of the featured projects. Officinet only show the work of members of the organization DKoD, with few exceptions of invited exhibitions.

Becoming a member of the organization requires graduation from a recognized BA level or MA level design or crafts school or passing a juried selection procedure. The members can submit applications for exhibiting in the Officinet, and projects are chosen based on an evaluation by an exhibition committee. Hence, it is quite competitive to get an exhibit in the space, which makes it prestigious even if the exposure does not attract a large audience.

This project was selected on the basis of an application including a project description and visual documentation of a selection of the epistemic artifacts. The project description included a description of the research project and a description of my idea for the format for the exhibition. The idea was to have the epistemic artifacts exposed as a series of scientific samples organized into types on low plinths with the tools by which they were made presented under the plinths.

The space is on the gallery strip of down town Copenhagen, but few visitors show up outside of the opening night where mainly my own network showed up. The few visitors that came were interested and respectful, and asked questions as I had expected. My preconceived assumptions

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about art-interested audiences were positively affirmed.

To get feedback from strangers the street intervention format is more effective. To get attention from like-minded audiences the established venues offer good opportunities.

Lecture, paper and article

The paper “Sustainable Innovation of Glass Design and Craft” has been subjected to triple blind peer review, and was accepted and presented at the conference “Sustainable innovation 2014” (Sparre-Petersen, 2016) (see appendix A).

I was invited to submit an article to the special edition of the journal KUNSTUFF published in celebration of the 40^th anniversary of the DKoD. The article “Glass and Sustainability” offers a short user friendly glimpse into the experiments done with pressing glass and casting glass in this project (Sparre-Petersen, Glass and Sustainability, 2016) (see appendix B).

Contact to businesses, practitioners and other partners

My glass peers as well as businesses partners in and outside of Denmark have helped me at several occasions, and I have been able to show and discuss the work with colleagues inside and outside of the academic realm, students, editors, suppliers and production companies. This exposure has secured reflection upon the entire lifecycle of the realm of glass craft and design as well as upon detailed aspects of the subject matter.

Teaching

It has not been possible to dedicate all of my teaching directly to the project, but I believe my ideas and approaches have fed into my teaching philosophy and influenced my work as a teacher. The activities have included a cross disciplinary course on ethics, two courses specifically on glass and sustainability described in section 5.2, two courses on design strategies and business collaborations, advising several graduation projects, ranging from visual communication to glass and a class on history and theory of craft and design. I have taught smaller workshops on creative writing, professionalization, cold glass, cutting glass, fusing and slumping and contributed to Hansen’s digital/analogue techniques workshop. I have offered specialist consultant support to students and colleagues at the KADK, as well as anyone else with questions regarding glass that I have been able to answer or direct to someone else who could.

In hindsight, the teaching has been rewarding both for the project as they have contributed to the empirical findings and because they are a future generation that the project aims to support and sustain. The students at the KADK Copenhagen Campus have shown interest in and motivation for the project throughout the entire four years.

Their curiosity, openness and enthusiasm for the project have been most inspiring and has provided the possibility for collaborative experimentation and feedback throughout the project period.

Recycle. About Sustainability in Glass Craft & Design ● Maria Sparre-Petersen ● KADK 2016

175 The glass students at the KADK Bornholm

campus had the necessary skill level and artistic inclinations to respond to the issues raised in the workshop in a critical analytical manner. The discussions and the experimentation, although rudimentary, and with only four days of actions, were informing the project at an early stage which enabled a jumpstart that I could not have accomplished alone.

The framework of the education based research methodology enabled testing the relevance of the research on the target group in focus in the project. The positive feed-back from the students in all of my teaching activities have confirmed my assumption that the work is relevant and that the findings are useful for others.

5.5.1. Summary of the outcomes of communication and distribution of results A premise for scientific projects is that they must be disseminated to gain relevance, which is also given by the requirements for the fulfillment of the degree. Where artistic practice-based projects, like the one reported in this dissertation, are differing from other research projects is in that they have to prove their relevance both in the scientific realm, in the artistic realm and in practice.

Therefore, the work has been subjected to juried exhibitions, to the judgments of my peers in the Danish Craft & Design Association, to a design executive, a magazine editor and to the students. The

positive feedback has contributed to rendering the contribution of this project viable and relevant.

5.6. Discussion of research activities