This article was taken from the September 2014 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by <span class="s1">subscribing online.
This sculpture was designed to mess with your mind. "Glass allows you to create paradoxes," says London-based glass artist Shelley James. "Your visual system just doesn't know what to do <span class="s2">with something transparent."
James's inspiration came 15 years ago, when doctors diagnosed her with myalgic encephalomyelitis --
AKA chronic fatigue syndrome. "I stopped being able to filter out different kinds of sensory stimulus," she says. After recovering, James decided to focus on the biology of sensory perception -- in particular how vision could be manipulated. She has since collaborated with Bristol Eye Hospital to create sculptures based on retinal scans, and worked with an x-ray crystallographer at King's College for a series based on the structure of DNA.
This piece, part of a series on Platonic solids, will be exhibited at London's Jerwood Space in August. To create it, James developed a new technique for capturing intricate patterns within each piece. The designs are first etched on to a lump of glass, before being carved out with a sandblaster.
After heating in a kiln, an additional layer is melted on (molten glass is too viscous to drip into the grooves) and the process is repeated. "My work lets people play with their own sense of perception," says James. "The themes that I've been exploring -- perception and illusion, patterns and rhythm - are all around us, all the time."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
