Born in Toulouse in 1994, and currently working in Eindhoven, the French Netherlands-based artist and designer Audrey Large designs objects that merge the physical and virtual realm in one single dimension. Questioning the matter itself, in the last years the artist has carried a research that is able to address the key issue of our contemporary era: the role of the unknown, of the doubt and the human “error” in a society that is increasingly driven by technologies and that is crawling for predictability. Yet, Large leaves the floor to a non-dichotomous interpretation of reality, and as a result, her pieces – made possible through drawing, modeling, 3d printing, all blended together – challenge the viewer’s perception. Large earned her master degree in Social Design at Design Academy Eindhoven in 2017, and since then she has developed her practice through digital image manipulation, often combined with digital fabrication processes. We had the chance to interview her in a compelling conversation about the key aspect of her work.
Your research merges the physical dimension with a virtual aesthetic. What is your point of view on the real/virtual dichotomous opposition?
To me these 2 aspects don’t oppose each other, they are part of the same continuum. Also, binarism is reducing and not representative of actual ways of being and navigating living experience. I prefer to think in terms of multiplicity and continuity than binaries and opposition. I try to convey this with idea in the objects I make but also explore it in the design method/process.
I often feel stuck in between what we conceive as virtual and real – It feels like we are inhabiting 2 different worlds, one material that is designed and thought as solid, heavy and truthful / and the digital/ image realm that is the one of the representation, lightweight, fake news, untruthful, etc.
Somehow, my experience is not really of 2 worlds, ‘hop now I jump in the digital’, but it feels more like the experience of one reality, but a reality that is much more complex than this binary, that is more of the one of the transition, that passes from very different formats and states. The digital and the physical don’t oppose each other, they are embedded together. Designing these 2 as opposition never totally fits, we are torn down in between 2 worlds that resists each other and a spiritual gap comes out of it.
In my work, I am trying to exhaust this entwinement on the very trivial level of the matter – it comes in through perceptual ambiguity, but also from the very methodology, that ambiguity in the status of the file and the role of the designer, whose role is to blend image making techniques to digital fabrication. (Drawing, modeling, 3d printing, all blending together in my method, with no specific order.)
Are there any other conceptual binarisms, besides the real/virtual one, that you are trying to overcome with your practice?
I think my work is first and foremost revolving around the idea of thingness and reconception of the material. If you bring it to its core, there is a metaphysical aspect of it, what is matter, what do we consider as real and granted ? I like to challenge that on the very banal/simple/immediate aspect of the material and the perception. I am always looking for ambiguity, and looking for the openness of a piece. When things don’t totally reveal themselves, when you think you understand them and suddenly they are slipping away. When you are not sure anymore. Again, it is not about bringing confusion and chaos on the level of the material, maybe it is more about embracing the fact that confusion is part of everything, and trying to overcome it with reassuring static objects might just be a little band-aid to hide the embarrassment of not knowing how to be.
Overcoming binaries is not making one, unique proposition, it is not an “all the same” type of answer. It is more about embracing the many, the multiple. Can matter (something that is in our Western societies envisioned as static and fixed) do that? Can we do it in the design of the things that surround us? Maybe opening this breach on the immediate level of perception can help the way we think, and be, and navigate these multiplicities on many different levels.
On another aspect, I think I try to bring emotion and sensitivity in the realm of the mechanistic, the computer, the machine. My work is more about approaching those tools in a spontaneous, sensitive way and bringing in as much personal language as possible. That’s way I am more interested in using it to create new forms than to use it as a tool for simulation of the real.
What's the role of glitches and machine errors in your research?
It depends on the project. In a project like Life.vfx, my diploma project at the Design Academy Eindhoven – I was as a designer very submitted to the software and the computer errors. I was filming myself using daily life objects, such as a carafe, to gather motion tracking data of my use of the object and apply these data on the 3d scan of the same original object – I would then obtain a glitched model that I would 3D print. And start again the same process, until obtaining a transformation line of glitched carafes. I rapidly felt stuck in the process, where I was investigating the translation gaps in between software, but was always submitted to the computer language who was generating shapes from my input.
And what happened next?
This brought me to the project “Implicit Surfaces”&MetaThings. Where I could spontaneously draw on the computer with my graphic tablet. It became possible to dig and push my personal language. In a project like this, there is very little error on the materialization side – I 3D print the 3d model I sculpt: it is a one to one translation, and I like when the mechanistic aspect disappears, when it is exactly like in the computer, as close as possible to the source file.
The “error” resides maybe more in the sensitive movements of my hand sculpting the surfaces of the file when I sculpt it. You can feel the trembling strokes of my pen. I believe this shaking imbues the file and the printed object with a very strong lively presence. For example, even if you can feel some symmetry in my work, it is always a handmade symmetry and it is never generated through mirrored tools in the computer. I am embracing the fluidity, the imperfection in the shape. It makes it more human. The objects might feel unreal, they might disturb perception, but they still feel very touching, and close in a way. I think it is because they are not abstract forms, and because you can feel the human touch in the shapes.
On the materialization side, I prefer the making process to be forgotten. It makes it more magical, like an illusion. As much as projects are always a strong dialogue with materials and the tools, I don’t like it when it screams its process. I am looking for a result that is a true outcome of its process but in such an unusual way / when you can’t grasp how it was made anymore – then there is much more open space for the possibilities of imagination and doubt of the true matter.
What about Dusky Waters of Dripping Disasters?
On a project like Dusky Waters of Dripping Disasters, I worked with a 3d printing company in China during an art residency – it was the first time I outsourced the production. The printed parts came out very smooth and perfect, the material was matt white, almost flattening the design. I couldn’t think about a color to paint it, it was feeling un-honest to just paint it in a shiny color. So what I did is to put blue ink in the water and let the fountain run. With time the ink colored the surface of the fountain into shades of blue, revealing all the drawings on its surface. Here I don’t know if we can speak about error, but it brings randomness and an evolving aspect to the surface, with a side that we can’t fully control.
For what concerns the shapes of your designs, do you conceive them as an organic, synthetic, animal, anthropomorphic form or something in between? Or neither?
I would say all of them and none of them. In general, I don’t like symbols or references too much. It encloses things with languages. It is more about gestures; senses. So I never start with strict references. I prefer to blend many things at the same time without following a plot. There is a lively aspect in the design, but I am not looking for direct creature/anthropomorphic references. I prefer to leave things open. It is less restricting the shape exploration, it uses all the potential the 3d modeling software gives me. Strangely, the more I add, the less recognizable the objects are. Still, every viewer has their way to appropriate the piece that I like to think of as opening doors to imaginary worlds.
LINK
- Between dust and algorithms. A day with Damiano Tata in his studio - October 24, 2025
- Giuliana Cunéaz: art as an exploration between science and wonder - September 12, 2025
- Beyond the screen: immersion, embodiment, and empathy at Venice Immersive - August 29, 2025
