Desire fine art in your yard? Can't afford primo sculpture?
Well, just pick a sculpture from our website (or pick from our popular monthly newsletter), and choose a time for deliverance.
Then, at the appointed time, one of our 21rst century sculptors shows up at your requested time, & puts a block of stone on a turntable. She sets up the laser/scanner, loads the proper file, & sips tea with you making polite conversation while the sculpture is ablated before your eyes.
For extra, we'll scan your body (or other things) & make custom sculptures on-site. (Enlargement/shrinkage of features optional).-- sophocles, Mar 27 2014 Kitsch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitschthere are some perfect examples of the type of work much admired by [skoomphemph] here [xenzag, Mar 28 2014] What you specifically haven't invented is a method of sculpting rock [edit: laser], leaving us with a guy shows up with a rock and has a cup of tea with you... I will do that for gas money... I have done that for gas money.
Sandblasting might work - I think automated chiseling wouldn't.-- FlyingToaster, Mar 27 2014 Sorry Seniore Air Heater. I thought the HB community could easily envision a laser that was powerful enough to ablate (destroy a bit) of rock, & could be positioned by a a simple set of motors, controlled by a laptop, so I kept the orig description short as such.
Done & done, i change tone henceforth to profess much admiration for all of FlyingToaster's ideas & contributions to the glorious HB.
I simply meant that the material-removal-process- by-computer be a rather trivial component unworthy of explanation to the HB community.-- sophocles, Mar 27 2014 I'm sure laser ablation could be made to work.
However, some shapes would be problematic, unless you had a cleverly articulated laser head that could reach into crevices not accessible from the periphery.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 27 2014 yes, well, I read "laser/scanner" as "laser scanner" for some reason, defaulting to "chisel" as sculpting tool.-- FlyingToaster, Mar 27 2014 Is this a statement on mass production and the mass commercialization of art cos that's baked.-- the porpoise, Mar 27 2014 I think you'll find that rock carving of any kind is no longer considered to be sculpture. You could of course create a perfect in every detail replica of a dingy, discarded hat, and engage in a form of post-modern irony.-- xenzag, Mar 27 2014 // I think you'll find that rock carving of any kind is no longer considered to be sculpture.//
Do you have some technical definition there? Because common parlance, and Wikipedia, disagree.-- Loris, Mar 28 2014 I think [xenzag] just missed the capital S, there. By current aesthetic tastes (I mean those of people apparently in the know), a marble replica of a naked human being is a nice enough sculpture for the likes of us to use as the leg of the birdbath, but is not Sculpture.
Another good example of Sculpture might be a mangled tube of toothpaste with yellow stuff oozing out. Hang it from a very high roof with barbed wire, and you're really in business.-- skoomphemph, Mar 28 2014 //a marble replica of a naked human being// Next time you are looking up definitions spend some time in the section labelled Kitsch Art. (see link)-- xenzag, Mar 28 2014 I think it might still be possible to polish a stone (if it's big enough) and call that a Sculpture - even if the stone is made out of rock. It's certainly a safer bet than eg. using the 3 Graces to hold up the bird bath. Even if they're made of recycled plastic bags.
A bird bath that is actually a kind of rat trap for sparrows might be a Sculpture, too, although it's perhaps not ecological enough any more? This kind of thing is quite difficult to bet on, to tell the truth.-- skoomphemph, Mar 28 2014 Ah, yes. When the definition of "fine art" contains elitism, then, by definition, you cannot bring fine art to the masses.
My point of the idea was to bring "fine art" to the masses through automated, computer-controlled ablation to make replicas of anything, using better materials than plastic or plaster molds.
How "fine" (v. kitsch) it is should be based on what you're replicating, not the replication process. We now have better replicating processes.
Why restrict appreciation of the finer arts to fewer of the 7B+ people?-- sophocles, Mar 28 2014 Who restricts anyone from appreciating anything? You missed the point I was making, which was by definition that the process of carving objects out of stone is NOT called sculpture. It used to be, but now it's called Stone Carving. Contemporary practice no longer focuses on acquiring and refining a singular skill, such as engraving or carving materials. There was a time when these were the only method of production, but that is no longer the case. As with painting process, the ability to replicate "realism" has lost its value. People still do it, but it has no place of merit in contemporary practice.-- xenzag, Mar 28 2014 The first rule of Art Club is you don't talk about Art Club. The second rule of Art Club is you don't talk about Art Club. The third rule of Art Club is fight about what is good, not what is Art.-- WcW, Mar 28 2014 So actually [sophocles] is dead on the money, and well within the reach of the literal meaning of his stated intent. (Well actually *one* of the literal meanings, but that makes my head spin, so I'll settle for a little inaccuracy).
Skill is no longer needed, so the very last middleman (the sculptor) can be eliminated. I propose a new wave! Put all new art where it belongs: In beautiful algorithms. The algorithm becomes the True Art, but everyone can keep a physical execution instance simply as a memento of some encounter with True Art. This could be a "picture" - actually a 2D graph of the output (which is actually what the Mona Lisa was when it was once Art). This could be a sculpture (without the S) - a 3D trace of an instance of Art. This could be a cartoon - which has a somewhat 4D quality.
At last the 21st century has some artistic innovation to get its teeth into. A nice way to record your encounter with Art would be to call for the machine, above, and keep a little sculpture that results.
If you're lucky, it might even be adaptable to holding up the birdbath.-- skoomphemph, Mar 28 2014 random, halfbakery