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Computer-generated Sculptures Honor Michelangelo’s Unfinished Works

Computer-generated Sculptures Honor Michelangelo’s Unfinished Works.

After Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to design and help construct a tomb for his burial in the early 1500s, the project was eventually put on hold following financial dilemmas and a lack of Carrara marble. Of the 40 pieces Michelangelo intended to produce, some were completed, others not even started, and at least 6 were left suspended in a sort of limbo, their male figures struggling to break free from an eclipse of rock.

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But when you take a close look at the resulting pieces of that last category, it’s easy to understand why some academics are split over whether Michelangelo intentionally left them as-is. Given the series’ title - “Slaves” or “Captives”, as translated from Italian to English - it begs the question: were the pieces truly unfinished, or is their half-figure, half-slab form a brilliant way of emulating their namesake?

As an homage to the series, Quayola’s newest exhibition at the MU Gallery in Eindhoven answers the question by deconstructing the notion of finality altogether, instead focusing on the intimate, layered relationship between artist and medium. In The Sculpture Factory, Quayola’s computer and robot generated sculptures display aside a six panel HD audio-video installation, with each piece testing conceptions of “complete” vs. “incomplete.”

Display at MU Gallery.

Display at MU Gallery via POSTmatter.

Display at MU Gallery.

Although this is Quayola’s first venture into physical sculpture, the process behind The Sculpture Factory is so intricate and enigmatic you’d think it was the result of a lifelong outline. Using custom-built software, the sculptures were architected through multi-tier coding processes split between two sets of computers. Once “completed,” the figures were then sculpted by industrial robots. When chiseling the forms, robots were programmed to follow 1.2 million lines of coding instructions, and since they ran for 24 hours during the process, an SMS notification system was installed to alert Quayola and his team if any problems occurred along the way.

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Stills of the design process via Creative Applications Network.

Captives - Robotic Milling from Quayola.

The 6 audio-video installation pieces that accompany the physical series were also created using custom software, with each incorporating its own unique audio channel. Watch a clip below.

Still from audiovisual installations.

Captives (excerpts) - Triptych from Quayola.

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Screens for the exhibition’s six audiovisual installations.

The Creators Project has followed Quayola extensively over the past few years. We exhibited the fourth episode in his Strata series at our New York event in 2011. We covered his and Abstract Birds’ sound visualization project Partitura-Ligeti (which he later [turned into a performance piece](http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/visualizing-music-in-real-time-with-quayola--sinigaglia –) with Abstract Birds member and The Sculpture Factory software programmer Natan Sinigaglia). Hell, you could probably put a small book together with the amount of content we’ve written on him.

This one, though, sits as the ultimate culmination of his past works - content-wise. With one foot out of the infinite freedom and space of computer programming, Quayola’s first step into physical art is as demonstrative of an untouched medium’s inherent potential as the sculpted forms which embody this series.

If Michelangelo meant to leave his six “slaves” suspended in blocks of unchiseled Carrara, The Sculpture Factory is as accurate a 21st-century rendition as possible. Ultimately, both are more fascinated by the abstraction of possibilities than the achievement of an ending point. And as Quayola considers even this exhibition to be a work in progress, it seems he wants any discussion of “start” and “finish” to be pushed entirely out of the picture.

All images via Quayola.com unless otherwise noted.

via CreativeApplications