Hasta La Ideas

I want you to put this in your living room

If I were a famous sculptor, I’d sell you a block of raw granite that you’d put in your house in California, surrounded by a bunch of internet-connected industrial robot arms with sculpting attachments. In my apartment in New York I’d have an identical-sized chunk of granite. Whenever I felt like sculpting for a few hours, I’d put on some internet-connected gloves that tracked my hand motions and I’d begin taking chunks out of the block. Over in California, the robot arms would simultaneously whir to life and carve exactly what I was carving. So over a period of a few weeks, this sculpture would begin to take shape at random times of the day and you’d see the process happening.

Although all of the technology to make that happen currently exists, I’ve yet to see anyone do it. The closest thing I’ve seen to this pipe dream of mine is Antwerp-based Unfold Studio’s L’Artisan Electronique, a “virtual pottery wheel” that tracks your hand motions while you shape a laser-projected rotating shape. A printer that looks rather like a pastry tube then extrudes your creation in clay. It all happens in the same room and it’s not as cool (or messy) as my remote sculpting idea, but mark my words, it’s just a matter of time:

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