Envision a robotic arm, eight feet high and covered in a fine white dust, intricately carving a massive piece of marble in a large, otherwise empty room, the buzzing sound of the machine bouncing off the walls. The “operator” is a computer guiding the arm to carve the marble based on a 3D model created by an artist who is not only absent from the room, but located an ocean away.
That artist is Cristin Millett, sculptor and associate professor of art at Penn State, who recently completed her second residency with the Digital Stone Project (DSP) at the Garfagnana Innovazione in Tuscany, a state-of-the-art center for carving marble using the newest technologies. Prior to her June 2016 residency, Millett spent almost a year perfecting the computer model of her planned marble sculpture, and then corresponding with the engineers at the DSP to ensure the seven-axis robotic arm was doing what she wanted it to do. By the time she arrived in Italy, the marble sculpture was ready for the detailed work only human hands can complete.
“The robot roughs out the form, and then I refine and finish the stone by hand, working in areas the robotic arm can't access," she explained. “I never thought I would carve marble, but new technology makes it possible.”
For Millett, an Embedded Faculty Researcher in the College of Arts and Architecture’s Arts & Design Research Incubator (ADRI) for 2016–18, computers and robots are simply additional tools she uses in her art, which has long focused on evolving perceptions of the human body, especially the female form. For her 2016 DSP project, she made a new piece in her series of “obstetrical phantoms,” or birthing models. Visible Phantom, 14” x 18.5” x 26”, capitalizes on the translucency of marble to suggest the sensual quality of skin. It was exhibited at the Sala Ex Marmi in Pietrasanta, Italy, in July, and is now on its way to the United States via ship. Once it arrives, sometime this fall, Millett plans to project digital imagery captured through medical imaging techniques onto its smooth ovoid surface.
“Obstetrical phantoms were, and still are, widely used in Western medicine to illustrate anatomical complications and to teach medical students and midwives birthing techniques during labor,” explained Millett. “By enveloping the form in marble drapery, I am paying homage to the long tradition of stone carving.”