Using the same marble found in Renaissance masterpieces, a team of robots is accepting commissions. Their owners say tech is essential to Italy’s ar

‘We Don’t Need Another Michelangelo’: In Italy, It’s Robots’ Turn to Sculpt

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2021-07-19 17:30:12

Using the same marble found in Renaissance masterpieces, a team of robots is accepting commissions. Their owners say tech is essential to Italy’s artistic future.

CARRARA, Italy — For centuries, the massive marble quarries above the Tuscan town of Carrara have yielded the raw material for the polished masterpieces of Italian sculptors like Michelangelo, Canova, Bernini and, most recently, ABB2.

Carving with pinpoint precision, and at least some of the artistic flair of its more celebrated (and human) predecessors, ABB2, a 13-foot, zinc-alloy robotic arm, extended its spinning wrist and diamond-coated finger toward a gleaming piece of white marble.

Slowly and steadily, ABB2 milled the slab of stone, leaving the contours of soft cabbage leaves for a sculpture designed and commissioned by a renowned American artist.

ABB2 is hardly a lone robotic genius, toiling away in anthropomorphic solitude. Just a few meters away, in a facility humming with robots, Quantek2 was rubbing away on another marble block, executing a statue envisioned by a British artist who had contracted out the manual labor to a robotic hand.