Qualia, is a touch responsive interface made of hand-blown glass.
Building on research regarding the changing relationship each of us formulates with material, Qualia aims to expose glass' materiality and question not only our relationship with it, but the potential that engagement has to expose ideas of craft and consumption.
Our relationship with the surfaces we interact with has changed. Our appreciation of the materials we encounter everyday have become flawed, misaligned. We are no longer connected to the craftsman behind the materials we encounter, material becoming the invisible interface, a thing that gets in the way, rather than something to be experienced within itself.
Crafting from digital to real, and exploring the tension and fusion of the two modes of experience are a way to anchor a form of material consciousness. The universal design of glass and it's flatness does not represent all the types of data that we can acquire knowledge from. There is a tension that exists only as a sensation of understanding an object's tactility between the user and the screen.
Part of the material research for Qualia built upon experimentation with glass and learning the craft of glassblowing to make bespoke pieces. In order to create a renewed physiological experience exposing our current misalignment with this material, Qualia innovates with techniques producing conductivity in glass.
Qualia, as a tool and interface, has a great number of potential applications in multiple fields.
At essence it is a conductive glass form that is transparent and touch responsive, though the theoretical questions it raises about how we interact with, play with, and order the world around us, what we prioritise and indeed notice when we interact, enable the reinstatement of the physicality of this often obscured, though transparent, material.
Programming - Hayden Anyasi
Carpentry - Benjamin Bailey de Paor
Text - Laura Vent