The Glass Path and the Visual Culture of Glass: What Does All This Glass “Do” in the World, Anyway?

Glass has fundamentally changed our cultural landscape over the last one hundred years. Yet, the aesthetic qualities of glass have predominantly been the preserve of designers, makers and artists and its discourse mostly limited to the field of art history. Collaborative creative thinking in the fields of art, technology and science has yielded a synergy that transcends the fields. We are led down the “glass path” by the questions of how glass science and technology have contributed to the visual culture of society, and how glass has influenced how we perceive culture. We hope that this will be the opening of sustained dialogue around the idea of genuine collaborations as a means of being better equipped for future challenges. This discussion is rooted in an exchange of ideas among the three panelists at Glass Reflections, the 2015 Society of Glass Technology conference, in Cambridge, UK