La révolution robotique a eu lieu à Carrare, en Italie, et ce sont les carrières de cette ville qui ont fourni le marbre pour des sculpteurs tels que Michel-Ange ou Antonio Canova. Aujourd’hui, des robots, sur place, martèlent les blocs de pierre pour dégager le marbre et cisèlent le bloc de marbre pour y graver les formes les plus abouties, rivalisant avec les œuvres des grands maîtres que l’histoire des hommes a retenu.

Robotor

La start-up italienne Robotor a créé un robot qu’elle a simplement appelé One, proposé en différentes tailles. Le modèle One L est un bras robotisé qui mesure 3,5 mètres de hauteur pour un poids de 240 kilos, fabriqué principalement avec un alliage de zinc. Il est accompagné d’une table motorisée qui pivote et peut supporter jusqu’à 35 tonnes pour un volume de 35 m³.
Le robot italien est capable de sculpter une œuvre en quelques jours, au lieu des mois voir des années, autrefois nécessaires aux grands maîtres pour sculpter ce que leur imagination pouvait concevoir d’œuvre figurative.

Robotor, ambassadeur pour la paix

Cette innovation a également une résonance historique, car elle pourrait résoudre un conflit vieux de plusieurs siècles.

Les Sculptures du Ve siècle avant J.C du Parthénon, une collection de magnifiques divinités, d’hommes athlétiques et de chevaux à Athènes pourraient être restituées par la Grande-Bretague. Au début du 19ème siècle, l’ambassadeur britannique de l’Empire Ottoman, le comte d’Elgin, a légalement transporté les sculptures en Angleterre et les a installées au British Museum. Depuis 1983, la Grèce a demandé le retour des sculptures, affirmant que la permission a été accordée par l’occupant Ottoman et non par le gouvernement grec, argument resté inaudible par le musée britannique qui a, pour l’heure, refusé de restituer les oeuvres. Robotor pourrait les reproduire à l’identique.
L’Institut pour l’Archéologie numérique a proposé d’être à la manoeuvre. Il a effectué des balayages en trois dimensions d’un cheval de la collection avec les téléphones et les iPads de membres du personnel lors de leur visite au British Museum, ces derniers ont envoyé à Robotor les données. Le robot a, ainsi pu reproduire la sculpture de cheval jusqu’au dernier coup de bédane, en utilisant le même marbre que celui utilisé pour les sculptures classiques de la Grèce antique.

L’Institut propose que les Sculptures du Parthénon soient reproduites par robot pour un coût estimé à moins de 200 000 dollars. Le robotor, médiateur et constructeur, pourrait permettre de répliquer les sculptures installées au musée et de remettre à la Grèce son trésor perdu, source de tension diplomatique latente entre Athènes et Londres.

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We are entering a new era of Sculpture, no more broken stones, chisels and dust; but 3D scanners, pixel clouds, detailed designers, and sculpting robots.

An Italian startup called Robotor has invented a machine that can carve out stone masterpieces from Carrara marble, almost identical to the great works of Italian sculptors of the time. Renaissance.

The limitation of the artwork sculpted by the robot

As CBS News reports, Robotor founder Giacomo Massari claims that his robot-made marble statues look almost exactly like man-made ones. Most of them are like that.

“I think, assuming the robot-made statues are 99 percent similar,” he told CBS. “But it is people who can make the difference. That one percent is very important.” He wanted to emphasize that only humans can breathe souls into those statues.

Massari goes even further, arguing that “robot technology does not take away human work, but improves it” — a bold statement, considering the art field that has existed for thousands of years.

The Art and Aid of Robots (Robartist)

Robotor’s newest robotic ‘sculptor’, dubbed ‘1L’, is 1.2 meters tall, a zinc-alloy machine capable of carefully carving a slab of marble day and night into beautiful pieces artwork. People just need to breathe souls into them to create valuable works of art.

The company claims the technology is revolutionary.

The company proudly declares on its Robotor website: “It is in the heart of the Carrara quarry that produces the precious marble that Michelangelo used to sculpt his statues; we have developed an innovative solution based on research and interaction between art, local area, tradition and technology.

Now inanimate rocks can be transformed, even under extreme conditions, into works of art, in a way once considered unimaginable.

We are entering a new era of sculpture, no more broken rocks, chisels and dust; it’s the 3D scanner, the pixel clouds and the design. Robotic technology adds value by making work that is hard, risky and dangerous for humans, it makes life as easy as possible.”

Robots take jobs away from people?

Not surprisingly, not everyone is happy with robots taking over manual tasks, given that some important things can be lost in the process of modernizing processes with new technology.

“We run the risk of forgetting how to work with our hands,” sculptor Lorenzo Calcinai of Florence Cathedral told CBS. I hope that some know-how and knowledge will always remain, although the further we move forward, the harder it becomes to preserve it.”

(Text translated from Vietnamese)

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An automatic sculptor can reproduce impressive works of art. The robot first analyses the material it is about to process, then determines the points around the material from which it must cut off the excess, and begins production. The software helps the robot select which tools to use in each step of the production process: sculpting or polishing with water jets.

The place where the Robotor is used is famous, and, as they say, not by accident. Carrara is an Italian town with more than 62,000 residents. It’s where the famous white Carrara marble from the nearby Apuan Alps is processed.

(Text translated from Russian)

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Based in Carrara, Italy — the same city that supplied the marble used by 16th century artist Michelangelo to sculpt his masterpiece “David” — Robotor developed the machine by “drawing on research and interaction between art, the local area, tradition and technology,” according to the company website. Rather than replacing artists, the chisel is meant to supplement their skills “by doing work that would be strenuous, risky and dangerous for humans.”

Giacomo Massari and Filippo Tincolini, who co-founded Robotor, elaborated on the idea: “As sculptors, having to deal with works of immense complexity led to the need to equip us with anthropomorphic robots, technological tools that could simplify our lives,” they stated.

Their automated chisel can create works of art up to around 15 feet tall (4.5 meters), and works off of a photograph or 3D scan of the desired sculpture, which is designed by a human. Robotor begins by mapping out the shape and properties of the material it will carve, Designboom reported. The machine’s mechanical arm then relies on self-programming technology to decide which tools to use during each step of the process, including instruments that dust and polish the piece before completion.

And the device’s talents go beyond simply making life easier for humans. The chisel can be used to restore or recreate damaged sculptures, as it did in 2016 with the Monumental Arch of Palmyra in Syria, which had been destroyed by an extremist group.

“Our technology enabled us to reconstruct this precious ornamental archway in just 5 weeks, and from a three-dimensional scan,” Massari said in an October 2022 press release, explaining: “this work came to represent a symbol of the strength of technology at the service of mankind, standing against the barbarity and injustice of war. … it has proved to be of great importance for us.”

He later added: “Our goal is to push the boundaries! To push the boundaries in order to ensure that there are no limitations for the artist and to use technology to enable seemingly impossible feats to be achieved …  The robot-sculptor is already a reality, but the robot-artist will never exist!”

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Sculpting marble is a tiring, risky and dangerous activity. Or at least that’s what it used to be before the advent of robotic arms that can reproduce statues and sculptures starting from 3D models and scan.
One such robot is called Robotor and is currently operated in Massa Carrara, Italy, by Filippo Tincolini and Giacomo Massari’s TorArt contemporary art studio.
After analyzing the material it will sculpt, the Robotor robotic arm can reproduce a statue from start to finish based only on the input of a detailed 3D model. More interestingly, the interaction between experienced users and the machine during the carving can augment the artistic process and create a new way of sculpting marble.
According to Massari and Tincolini, Robotor has turned sculpture from an experience of “broken stones, chisels, and dust” into one where “scans and draws” play a central role.

“It was in the heart of the quarrying district of Carrara, the very same that produced the prized marble which Michelangelo used to carve his statues,” wrote the two co-founders, “that our company developed an advanced solution drawing on research and interaction between art, the local area, tradition and technology.”

TorArt’s custom OR-OS firmware enables the robot’s real-time programming, and it’s been developed explicitly for commanding Robotor during the carving process. While Robotor reduces sculpting time and the human effort required, the machine still requires a sizeable number of hours to complete and polish a statue. To make a copy of Antonio Canova’s Terpsichore as shown in the company’s promotional videos, for example, Robotor worked on a block of Bianco Carrara marble for about twelve days.

To make Terpsichore, Canova first realized a chalk model of the statue and subsequently sculpted the marble by transferring the proportions using a compass.
In a way, the initial process for carving a new statue is not that different even today. The only difference is that, instead of using a squadron of young apprentices to complete the heavy work, the 21st century Canovas can 3D-model on their computers and have a safe, fast, and hi-tech robotic stonemason do the heavy lifting for them.

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In particular, Barnes visited Carrara where TORART has carved replicas of the Parthenon works that are today housed in the British Museum.

Below is a summary of the article:

For the past three years, photographer Richard Barnes has been traveling the world to document a recent phenomenon in archaeology: a new generation of curators and artists who are calling for artifacts to be returned to their ancestral homes.

Barnes has journeyed to Carrara, Italy, where artists and researchers are carving replicas of ancient Greek marble statues to replace the originals standing in the British Museum. He’s also visited Benin City, Nigeria, where bronze casters still practice the centuries-old art form but have to travel to London to see their predecessors’ work.

We spoke to him about how he was able to capture the repatriation movement—and the artifacts that are finally making their way home—for National Geographic’s March issue.

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The article was also published in the “print” version of the newspaper in the “Science Times” section with the title “Is There Art in a Copy?”

Here is the beginning of the article:

Few cultural disputes inflame British passions more than the disposition of the Parthenon Marbles. Public debate about the statuary has raged since the early 1800s, when the sculptures and bas-reliefs, which date from 447 B.C. to 432 B.C., were stripped from the Parthenon and other Classical Greek temples on the Acropolis of Athens by agents of Thomas Bruce, a Scottish statesman and seventh earl of Elgin. The marbles were purchased — some say looted — by Elgin during his time as ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, the occupying power; they have resided in the British Museum since 1817.

Greek campaigners have repeatedly called on Britain to repatriate the works, arguing that the Turks were a foreign force acting against the will of the people they had invaded. The works, commonly known as the Elgin marbles, would instead be exhibited in Athens, in a purpose-built museum at the foot of the Acropolis. In May, the country’s culture minister, the archaeologist Lina Mendoni, said in a statement to the Guardian, “Lord Elgin used illicit and inequitable means to seize and export the Parthenon sculptures, without real legal permission to do so, in a blatant act of serial theft.”

But officials at the British Museum have staunchly rejected the requests. Backed by a succession of British governments, the museum has justified retaining the marbles on the grounds that Lord Elgin acquired them legitimately; it claims that taking the relics to London helped to safeguard them from neglect and the corrosive effects of Athens’ acid rain and that they are part of a shared heritage, and thus transcend cultural boundaries.

“We are open to exploring any potential loan,” a British Museum spokesperson said, “with formal acknowledgment of the lender’s title to objects and a commitment to return objects a standard precondition.” But Greece will neither acknowledge the lender’s title to the objects, nor will it abide by the “standard precondition.”

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The Institution was founded in 1846 with funds from the Englishman James Smithson (1765–1829) for the increase and diffusion of knowledge.
In December 2023, in the “Innovation” section, the article titled “Can Robots Replace Michelangelo?” was published.

Photographer Caleb Stein and journalist Elaine Sciolino have narrated the world of LITIX (the new company that incorporates the brands ROBOTOR and TORART) in the context of Carrara, the “homeland” of marble and sculptors, documenting the process of a single sculpture’s creation by a robot from beginning to end. The article earned the magazine’s cover featuring a work by Filippo Tincolini, founder along with Giacomo Massari of LITIX.

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It explains the entire path from the choice of marble to the realisation of the finished work with interviews with the two founding partners Giacomo Massari and Filippo Tincolini.

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In Anaïs Moutot‘s article, the focus is on the ability to meet the demands of the greatest artists contemporary artists and museums who use ROBOTOR for its ability to produce copies almost identical to the original.
Robotor is presented as “the vanguard of a revolution in the field of sculpture”.

Link to the article

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