about failure 10.02.2023

It takes years for designers to create something and put into their design into production. There are endless negotiations and compromises. Furniture and lighting will be discontinued if there are any kind of design or manufacture failure, market demand and supply mismatch, even company being acquired by another is in some sense being regard as a failure of monetary/ business operation, but in fact sometimes it is just the timing to change for a more sustainable future, e.g. Skagerak and Fritz Hansen. However, sometimes it is just a good and beautiful piece of work but the market is yet to accept or to adapt themselves with the creation. There are furniture that could only be put into production after the designer was dead, which the initial draft or protocol was the only clue. Due to all sort of availability and constraint, it was such a shame that certain designs were not able to be visualised or put into production.

When result does not come as expected, some will regard it as a disaster or a failure. But I found it as some sort of direction to go for improvement and so as to carry on. Like, 7.2. The idea came with forming a bowl from cutting a circle with 6mm float glass sheet, while the remaining material around the circle are generally being regard as waste that staying on the shelf of the basement forever. What if I can do something with them or at least make use of the entire piece of sheet? In which, this is the beginning of 7, the experimental and entire cycle of a piece of float glass sheet that commonly use in creation as a prototype instead of the ultimate piece due to its materiality nature.

I always doubt about the definition of “failure” as if it is just a level or a form of material that matter itself may become and I just accidentally reveal the vitality within it.

Or the word “epiphany”/ “divine moment” in the book of Omer Arbel.

In which, clear float glass is showing everything within with its transparency, including its cross-section, the form and so as any flaws like dust or particles that stay there in the kiln and being picked up during the forming process. I have been thinking about what if it goes exactly what i want at the first place, what will be next and what can I manipulate to go for a different results? Should it be about the methodology like fusing and slumping or pate de verre that I always want to give it a try? What about trying levels of temperature in kiln forming, adding varieties in grinding process, or another way to locate them into the plaster bed? “Failure” that people generally defined may be kind of valuable to somebody else, which may be the opportunity and even direct them to certain other possibility that they have never imagined.

Although I see “it” as a continuum, it has never been easy or comfortable to do so. I described it as a labour work to my friend in the studio and started calculating the quantified attempts in the process. It comes to over 2 hours of drilling circles, grinding them at the same time soaking hands into cold water in another 2 hours, hours of design and preparation about what to do with them and so as the tensioned wait while the piece is assembling herself in the kiln. There is a string that getting tight to drag me moving and which is also the motivation of not just sitting or procrastinating and reading philosophical books without trying to linking back to what I am doing in my practice. Practical and philosophical things go as the two sides of one sword, while I always tell myself and so as to the others

“it is fine, it will be alright, it is okay”

after mumbling to myself about what gone “wrong” or not as expected.

Preparing for kiln formation, sandblasting and cutting glasses have been sharp and hard work, yet it is what I am trying to do and posing myself into a flow of experiment, so as to sort out the ways and focus of my yet to be developed glass maker/ artist journey.

Taking the team Omer Arbel Office saying in their 113 material experiment took place in Victoria and Albert Museum last year as the end of this journal, fail as fast as possible and be an explorer, not just a glassblower.

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about failure