My students are working on sculpting busts when we get back from break and I fell into this little nugget of a video while poking around: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p-nTYKPo_I
Absolutely unreal and yet again I know this can happen.
I love it and hate it all at the same time. I’m conflicted.
I find the use of robotics inside of the art world something fascinating and polarizing and interesting and I don’t even know where I stand on it.
Being a sculpture lover and even a sculpture teacher I’m very interested in the development in robotics – it’s natural and conceptually daring and expected as it’s a medium to be explored by artists equally as technicians.
I don’t think it’s automation/production I’m pondering about it’s about the fingerprints I see in sculpture that tie me to the maker. With that gone do I miss the concept? effort? or makers touch? I don’t think so but it’s just just just…ummmmmmm I DON’T KNOW.
Never shall we forget:
Hahaha good question the “official” word was this sculpture went out of control. Who knows what crimes were committed in the dark by this beast.
Design and execution have long been distinct processes within the same physical artifacts that we value differently.
We don’t care by what process a 1/4-20 x 3" PPH stainless screw is made nor how beautiful it might be - it just needs to be consistent and meet specifications. If it’s made by a machine even better - better consistency and cheaper cost.
We don’t care how our conpsicuous-consumption personal electronics are made, but we do care how they look. We like the look of the latest FruitPhone but don’t much care if it was crafted by machine or an army of laborers.
We care deeply about the narrative behind a fancy craft beer - who made it, how they made it, why they made it, their biography. It’s key to paying more than twice as much as mass-market product. It also helps if it’s presented in a more distinct way and tastes different/better.
A $2000 oak table we can care about both. If it’s flawlessly executed with elaborate details that’s interesting. If it’s roughly-hewn from ancient timbers but has a story that’s also interesting.
But back on point - a sculpture designed by a person but executed by a machine. That’s a sticky situation isn’t it. We seem to value both when it comes to art - the creative process behind the vision and the physical realization of the vision. We want it to be hard yet-seemingly-effortless in the realization, like reading a good book. The technique of realization is also part of this narrative … for some … for many others the manifestation of the thing itself is the value.
the sculpted bust reminds me of what I do - CNC cut molds.
For me, the CNC (my robot) gets me to the finish line but the real art is in the creation of the artwork or 3D model. Ok, most may not call that art but it does take a certain talent to create it well.
In the example in the video, an existing creation, I assume produced by hand tools and was then scanned and reproduced on CNC. They are two different things. One is an original the other a duplication.
If the bust was created inside a modelling program but physically produced using a CNC as the tool, then I think they and a hand made one and a CAD/CAM CNC made one are much more alike. They are different techniques and skills but the creative skills of rendering the artist conception are fundamentally the same using different media.
It is art @nicksilva, in the design and how the machinist develops the process to create the object. So much of cutting a part depends on the experience of machinist knowing how the material will react, what cuts need to be made in what order, what particular tool will yield the best results. We’re a long way from turning that over to a machine to figure out for the more interesting pieces.
I’m intrigued by this and it combines my love of CNC and math: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdseS4xLioo
There is so much beauty in mathematical forms and of all the languages that exist, math is the one that, despite it’s abstraction, most accurately describes our existence.
Is it art?
Or is it craft?
Wha’st the difference between art and craft?
I can make thing flat, straight, square, and round with well tuned tools and practiced techniques. I can’t "art’ worth a damn though…too much android in me.
Googled definitions: Art is the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination and craft is an activity involving skill in making things by hand. An artisan is a worker in a skilled trade, especially one that involves making things by hand.
To make things by hand requires the mind due to the neural connections to direct the hand to realize what the mind imagines. Using machines, specifically CNC, relies on the mind to communicate, via a different route, what it imagines into a tangible form, in effect taking the place of the hand. A CNC machine is a tool just as a brush or a chisel is. A tool is a means to an end and the skill of the artist wielding it is evident in the finished product.
Most people see art as some mystical practice that requires some supernatural knowledge thereby preventing them from being able to accept that they too can be an artist. It is a skill that anyone can acquire.
For me and the way I look at the world, creativity is the central component to art; yes you have to be able to wield a paint brush, or mallet and chisel, or pen and paper, but those tools are used as a means of expressing the creative thoughts and impulses and feelings of the artist.
In the original video above, the creativity (i.e. the artist’s activities) occurred while creating the original sculpture/bust. The scanning and replication of that original creative effort is a combination of software, hardware, technician/technical expertise, and craftsman efforts. No doubt those are truly impressive and worthy and important…but I can see an android or robot performing all of these activities either already (as partially demonstrated n the video) or in the near future. That’s just not art to me.
By the way, so you understand my perspective, viewing a stunning sunrise over a mountain range or looking up at the vastness of a star filled night may be awe inspiring or evoke certain feelings, but it’s not art because a human (or other sentient being or race) didn’t intend their creation, they just happened. Art takes intention.
Also, just because I intend to take a random handful of crayons and close my eyes and drag them over some paper doesn’t make it art. Art should require a certain emotional and intellectual engagement by the artist.
And, as implied above, just because I am intending to make a rough piece of lumber flat, straight, and square, and am conscious and engaged and concentrating on how I am doing it, it isn’t art. Art should be able to evoke an emotional experience in the viewer, not just “hmm…that’s pretty flat, straight, and square. Good job!”
Obviously, these are just my personal opinions. It can be a bit of an abstract, vague, and emotional subject. Art?
I concur on all you stated. My response was to Nick regarding what he does. The original video is merely copying a work. The second video is art. A robot squeegeeing what looks like blood certainly evokes an emotional response.
No worries…hope I wasn’t coming off as augmentative. Just having a rare philosophical moment…
lol…indeed!
I’ll throw in some opine here. First and foremost, it is my opinion that an audience must be met in order for something to BE art.
Artistic endeavors are undertaken by an individual intending to make art. Art does not actually happen, however, until an audience is reached which considers the artistic endeavor to be art. And there is no requirement for the work to have been created to BE art.
I would argue that the robot arm in the cage is not art. It was an artistic endeavor, I presume, but fails to actually BE art. Whereas I see plenty of art in the duplication of an existing work, not because of the duplication of the work, but because of the work that goes into the duplication. I think there is certainly art in massaging the algorithms into doing what needs done for this to happen. Much like the work that Nick puts into making a CNC machine do its thing. The artistry in either case is not so much in the finished work, as in the work that goes into getting the machine to MAKE the finished work.
Yep. Art is purely subjective. What was art to cave dwellers in Chauvet might not be to a modern New Yorker, who might like the works of Zephyr, whose work I find to be an artistic endeavor, but is not art. See: Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollack. Zero talent hacks without any artistic talent. Plenty of showmanship, but no artistic talent. I will get plenty of pushback on that, because they were popular “in the art community”, but still NOT artists in my book.
So, is Marshall a talented artist? Could be. If I find the flat, straight, square lumber aesthetically appealing, I can say that his endeavor is art, even if Marshall didn’t MEAN for it to be.
Art?
I’m a fan as a means to exploration. Woodcut print by hand months…by cnc hours. As an artist I’ve got more to explore within that media if I can translate my pen and ink drawn image to 5 other mediums. Or even as a part of statement. A kid of mine was told her art about standardization isn’t art because she’s using the Xcarve to repeat copies of her image…but really isn’t that entirely adding to the concept teying to be conveyed in the first place? The cnc clay sculptor at conference was a Meh for me. Like, yay for modeling and coding because that is for sure a type of art. But also her stuff is all Alice and Wonderland riffs so I wouldn’t appreciate it done in analog either