Tadeáš Podracký: Engineer Glass

(jiří macek) The Neuron collection by Tadeáš Podracký is based on the search for artificial intelligence and its transformation into the world of design. When one touches the collection, he/she starts emitting light. Thus, this student from the Glass Studio led by Rony Plesl at the AAAD in Prague has responded to the theme of Feast for a Visitor from Another World, which represents the final theme of the AAAD’s installation at Design Week in Milan this year.

“I personally focused on the phenomenon of intelligence because I am interested in human anatomy and certain processes that go on in the human body and mind,” Tadeáš Podracký explains about the essentials of his collection, which contains vases, a beverage glass, and light that flows between one’s fingers. To be more exact, the light switches itself on as soon as one links its two ends with his/her body. But let us watch the procedure as Podracký describes it.

“My studies brought me to the theme of neurons (nerve cells), to the mathematical expression of neurons and their imitation in the field of artificial intelligence. For instance, the set of glasses was created on the basis of dividing cells. I wanted to express surface tension and, thus, to give the shape a certain informational value. Nerve cells are able to regenerate through division. I was fascinated by cell morphology so much that I created minimalist vases on its basis – the more the tension in a line shifts, the vases decrease by one third. I sandblasted marks on them that refer to notations of artificial neuron nets, which create artificial intelligence…

The Neuron light is, in fact, an enlarged transcription of an axon from a neuron, i.e. the longest axon that leads from the neuron nucleus and transfers information from the cell core to a synapse, the other neuron, through an electric impulse. The shape of this light almost copies this reality. However, I also strived to depict the idea of interconnecting the flow of information among people. The light switches on after the two stainless-steel ends touch each other when there is a discharge of ionized gas, which refers to the impulse in the above-mentioned axon. Thus, the lamp switches on only when the two ends are linked through a person or several people.”

When one overcomes the fear of high voltage and the lamp switches on between his/her hands, he/she will become a symbolical depiction of Podracký’s intention – to involve people in his research and work. The familiarity of shapes is not accidental because we carry them inside ourselves.

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