Our Studio is currently setup for kiln work (slumping, fusing, limited casting) and cold work (engraving, brilliant cutting, shaping, polishing). However, to make these pieces requires furnace casting. So, we rent a glassblowing studio, (hotshop), in downtown Seattle, complete w/ a furnace charged w/ about 1 ton of molten glass (Spruce Pine batch) kept at 2100 degrees F 24 hrs/day. In addition, we hire 2 master gaffers who specialize in glass casting, 2 apprentice gaffers, and myself to round out the pouring team. The furnace is raised to 2250 F for casting, the annealing kiln programmed for a 70 hr cooling cycle, and the molds are prepped w/ graphite release then pre-warmed w/ propane torches. Everyone is assigned their tasks. We put on our protective gear and pour for about 3 hours nonstop.

White Hot glass is ladled from the furnace into a mold. The mold is constantly kept hot w/ torches so it doesn't pull too much heat from the surface of the object while the glass cools to about 1000 F, passing from bright orange to a dull reddish green in appearance. Then the glass is taken out of the mold as quickly as possible and placed into the annealing kiln where it will very slowly cool to room temp w/out breaking. We are still having some problems getting pieces out of the molds b/c the steel contracts as the glass cools. Between that and the loss in annealing very thick glass peices, we did manage to get about 60% good objects in our last session which isn't too bad considering the technical challenges. I'm redesigning the molds again to attempt to restrict the loss rate to just annealing failures. The molds now range in size to produce pieces from 4" in diameter by 2" thick to 8" in diameter by 6" thick.

3 Days later, the pieces are removed from the annealing kiln and I go thru them to decide which ones need coldworking (cutting, grinding etc w/ diamond tools). We may reshape them just to make them move differently or bring out some form that appears to be lurking w/in or leave them just as the process made them- interesting warts and all.

Presently, motion is accomplished simply by setting them rocking w/ a touch of your hand, but plans are in the works on ways to use random sequences to start them going w/out any visible means. Each object seems to have a different period and length of time before the initial motion decays to a complete stop. The longest time from a single touch to a dead stop so far is a little over 15 minutes.

The Video captures the interplay of several of the pieces alternating between asynchronous and synchronous movement. When the last one's motion dies out and they are all started again, it is always a little different w/in a familiar sameness- sort of a visual déjà vu.

A Room w/ hundreds of these actuated by a random generator software program is the end goal. Photo-eyes will tell a computer when all motion in the room has stopped and to then fire a new sequence. The program will be interactive in that viewers can change parameters to make more or less random the sequences. And the software will learn what settings are more popular so it can generate variations on them. More could be done from there- the introduction of special lighting (laser or LED) controlled by the same software and so on... 

- Thomas Kite, 2008