Theo Harper is an artist, researcher, and senior lecturer at HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg, where he leads the Ceramic Art MA and contributes to the New Crafting Futures programme and cross-disciplinary pedagogical development in the Craft MA.
His work sits at the intersection of ceramics, digital fabrication, material culture, and emerging technologies, with a particular focus on how artificial intelligence is reshaping creative production, artistic knowledge, and embodied making practices. Trained as an artist with a PhD by practice, Theo maintains an active studio-based research practice alongside his teaching and international project work.
Data Flow; Extraction, Incubation & Cultivation
This project traces how the gestures of shaping clay can open a passage between physical and digital worlds. Beginning with material extracted from the land, the work emerges through a process of transformation: the clay records the pressures of the hand (an extension of the body) while motion, sound, and surface change are gathered as another kind of raw material (data collection).
These traces become signals, fragments of human action that can be processed, reinterpreted, and grown into new potentials through computational modelling and visualisation as well as further physical iterations.
