The CHALLENGE of DIGITAL SCULPTURE: Or How to Become Better Tool Users

by Dan Collins, Associate Professor of Art, Arizona State University

This paper was first given at the 6th Biennial Symposium on Art and Technology, Connecticut College, February 27 – March 2, 1997

Introduction

Digital sculpture draws upon recent advances in data acquisition techniques, computer visualization, and rapid prototyping technologies. It utilizes the unique virtual space of the computer to pre-visualize form, to enable extraordinarily sophisticated formal innovations, to design at heretofore unmanageable scales with technical accuracy, and to produce objects impossible to create with the human hand. It opens a floodgate of questions regarding the use and future use of a technology that is predicated upon a “rapid response” to the needs of a culture.

Before addressing the larger question of “how to become a better tool user,” let me address the convergence of technologies behind what I am calling “digital sculpture.”

Three domains must be understood and mastered by the digital sculptor: Data Acquisition (input technologies); Computer Aided Design, modeling, and visualization (CAD), and Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM)…. to read more, click here