Between Scientific and Sensory Knowledge: Exploring the Enactment of Clay Sensibilities Among Clay Artists in Singapore

Abstract

This article explores how clay artists in Singapore utilize both their scientific and sensory knowledge of clay-making in producing clay works. Based on a study of the biographies and sensory experiences of clay artists, clay artists rely simultaneously on their scientific knowledge and understanding of clay firing processes, temperatures, and glazing, together with their sensory judgment and experience of the same set of processes, to produce clay works of different design, effect, and form. Thermoreceptive understanding and knowledge of how clay reacts and behaves toward the different styles of firing are deployed by clay artists through both a scientific calibration of temperature, as well as one’s sensory evaluation—including visual and sonic judgments—of fire-control toward producing intended textures and forms. Through making sense of how scientific and sensory knowledges are concurrently enacted but not without contradictions, we make a case for how creative clay work-making straddles across different domains of learning, knowledge use, teaching, and evaluation emerging through kairotic moments. The article contributes to extant debates on art worlds, material culture, sensory knowledges, and embodied experiences through clay work as a medium of analysis.