User:Awerby/Digital sculpture

The realm of digital art is no longer confined to 2d prints.

Over the past few decades, numerous artists have begun to use computers to help them create physical three-dimensional art. Techniques used range from using the computer as a visualization tool, making blueprints in a Computer-Aided Design (CAD) program that fabricators can use as guides in cutting out metal plates for welding together, a process used by Bruce Beasley to creating art using mathematical algorithms and producing it directly with 3d printers, which is what Bathsheba Grossman does. The individual programs and equipment, and the artistic purposes they are employed for, are as varied as the sculptors who use them. While formerly the means of doing this have been restricted to those in industry or academia, the recent proliferation of powerful and affordable computers has democratized the field, and artists have either been able to afford the means of production individually, or have made use of service bureaus to produce physical versions of virtual models they create on their computers.

Programs used to create models suitable for physical output range from animation applications like Maya and 3d Studio Max, to engineering programs like Solidworks, IronCAD, or Inventor, to general-purpose modeling environments like Rhinoceros, Form Z, and Moi. A new generation of 3d programs have made sculptural effects easier to achieve. Programs like Z-Brush and Mudbox use techniques like displacement mapping to alter surfaces, while Sensable Technologies has developed a "haptic" 3d environment where users can use an articulated force-feedback stylus device to sculpt and modify forms in real time.

The use of 3d scanners, made by companies such as Roland DGA, Cyberware, and Creaform, which capture surface data from real objects, bringing them into the virtual space of the computer, means that modern sculptural strategies like deconstruction and assemblage can be practiced with new fluidity. A typical use of the scanning process is for the enlargement of sculpture made on a small scale by traditional means, replacing the operation of "pointing up" commonly performed by art foundries, another use replaces the scaling-down operation formerly done using pantographs.

In addition to the additive 3d printers developed for "rapid prototyping" by industry, sculptors can also use computer-controlled carving machines to work subtractively, in media like wood, plastic, and stone, on scales from the small to the very large. While CNC (Computer-Numerically-Controlled) milling and routing machines have been available for some time, it is only recently that the control systems that run them have been developed that run on consumer-grade personal computers, using inexpensive programs like Mach3 or even open-source ones like EMC, which runs under real-time Linux. This in turn has unleashed a wave of lower-priced and even home-built CNC machinery capable of turning virtual models into carved reliefs or sculpture in the round, with the help of affordable (or even free) CAM (Computer-Aided-Machining) programs from companies like DeskProto, Mecsoft, and MeshCAM.

Digital sculpture has been featured in various magazine articles, conference presentations and group shows. Christine Paul, for example, gave the subject a broad overview for the International Sculpture Center [1], which has also devoted time to the subject at its annual conferences , and Dan Collins gave an influential talk on it at the 6th Biennial Symposium on Art and Technology, Connecticut College, February 27 - March 2, 1997 [2]. Intersculpt, the first major show of digital sculpture was initiated by Ars Mathematica [3] in 1993 and continues biennially to the present day. It allows people around the world to participate by sending in a model electronically; it is built for the show and exhibited as a physical sculpture. Another notable show was the International Rapid Prototyping Exhibition [4], curated by Mary Visser and Robert Michael Smith, both themselves notable exponents of the medium. Another recent show, the Digital Stone Exhibition [5], toured various venues in China with a combination of digitally-manufactured works and some that had been mastered digitally but translated into stone by Chinese craftsmen.

As Moore's Law stays effective and computers become ever more powerful and ubiquitous, their role in creating 3d artwork will only increase. Sculptors will be empowered to extend what they are able to do, and the world of art will be enriched as they discover new ways to do things that never could be done before.